la chose_."

I remember, too, a few stray snatches of thy extraordinary music, "music
that might be considered by Wagner as a little too advanced, but which
Liszt would not fail to understand"; also thy settings of sonnets where
the _melody_ was continued uninterruptedly from the first line to the
last; and that still more marvellous feat, thy setting, likewise with
unbroken melody, of Villon's ballade "Les Dames du Temps Jadis"; and
that Out-Cabanering of Cabaner, the putting to music of Cros's "Hareng
Saur."

And why didst thou remain ever poor and unknown? Because of something
too much, or something too little? Because of something too much! so I
think, at least; thy heart was too full of too pure an ideal, too far
removed from all possible contagion with the base crowd.

But, Cabaner, thou didst not labour in vain; thy destiny, though
obscure, was a valiant and fruitful one; and, as in life, thou didst
live for others so now in death thou dost live in others, Thou wast in
an hour of wonder and strange splendour when the last tints and
lovelinesses of romance lingered in the deepening west; when out of the
clear east rose with a mighty effulgence of colour and lawless light
Realism; when showing aloft in the dead pallor of the zenith, like a
white flag fluttering faintly, Symbolists and Decadents appeared. Never
before was there so sudden a flux and conflux of artistic desire, such
aspiration in the soul of man, such rage of passion, such fainting
fever, such cerebral erethism. The roar and dust of the daily battle of
the Realists was continued under the flush of the sunset, the arms of
the Romantics glittered, the pale spiritual Symbolists watched and
waited, none knowing yet of their presence. In such an hour of artistic