José Maria de Heredia, on the contrary, filled me with enthusiasm--ruins
and sand, shadow and silhouette of palms and pillars, negroes, crimson,
swords, silence, and arabesques. As great copper pans go the clangour of
the rhymes.

"Entre le ciel qui brûle et la mer qui moutonne,
Au somnolent soleil d'un midi monotone,
Tu songes, O guerrière, aux vieux conquistadors;
Et dans l'énervement des nuits chaudes et calmes,
Berçant ta gloire éteinte, O cité, tu t'endors
Sous les palmiers, au long frémissement des palmes."

Catulle Mendès, a perfect realisation of his name, of his pale hair, of his
fragile face illuminated with the idealism of a depraved woman. He takes
you by the arm, by the hand, he leans towards you, his words are caresses,
his fervour is delightful, and listening to him is as sweet as drinking a
fair perfumed white wine. All he says is false--the book he has just read,
the play he is writing, the woman who loves him,... he buys a packet of
bonbons in the streets and eats them, and it is false. An exquisite artist;
physically and spiritually he is art; he is the muse herself, or rather, he
is one of the minions of the muse. Passing from flower to flower he goes,
his whole nature pulsing with butterfly voluptuousness. He has written
poems as good as Hugo, as good as Leconte de Lisle, as good as Banville, as
good as Baudelaire, as good as Gautier, as good as Coppée; he never wrote
an ugly line in his life, but he never wrote a line that some one of his
brilliant contemporaries might not have written. He has produced good work
of all kinds "et voilà tout." Every generation, every country, has its
Catulle Mendès. Robert Buchanan is ours, only in the adaptation Scotch
gruel has been substituted for perfumed white wine. No more delightful
talker than Mendès, no more accomplished _littérateur_, no more fluent