soul. But this craft, fashioned of mother o' pearl, with starlight at the
helm and moonbeams for sails, suddenly ran on a reef and went down, not out
of sight, but out of the agitation of actual life. The reef was Gautier; I
read "Mdlle. de Maupin." The reaction was as violent as it was sudden. I
was weary of spiritual passion, and this great exaltation of the body above
the soul at once conquered and led me captive; this plain scorn of a world
as exemplified in lacerated saints and a crucified Redeemer opened up to me
illimitable prospects of fresh beliefs, and therefore new joys in things
and new revolts against all that had come to form part and parcel of the
commonalty of mankind. Till now I had not even remotely suspected that a
deification of flesh and fleshly desire was possible, Shelley's teaching
had been, while accepting the body, to dream of the soul as a star, and so
preserve our ideal; but now suddenly I saw, with delightful clearness and
with intoxicating conviction, that by looking without shame and accepting
with love the flesh, I might raise it to as high a place and within as
divine a light as even the soul had been set in. The ages were as an
aureole, and I stood as if enchanted before the noble nakedness of the
elder gods: not the infamous nudity that sex has preserved in this modern
world, but the clean pagan nude,--a love of life and beauty, the broad fair
breast of a boy, the long flanks, the head thrown back; the bold fearless
gaze of Venus is lovelier than the lowered glance of the Virgin, and I
cried with my master that the blood that flowed upon Mount Calvary "_ne
m'a jamais baigné dans ses flots._"

I will not turn to the book to find the exact words of this sublime
vindication, for ten years I have not read the Word that has become so
inexpressibly a part of me; and shall I not refrain as Mdlle. de Maupin
refrained, knowing well that the face of love may not be twice seen? Great
was my conversion. None more than I had cherished mystery and dream: my
life until now had been but a mist which revealed as each cloud wreathed