Still, although eager and anxious for the fray, I did not see how I was to participate in it.  I was not a novelist, not yet a dramatic author, and the possibility of a naturalistic poet seemed to me not a little doubtful.  I had clearly understood that the lyrical quality was to be for ever banished; there were to be no harps and lutes in our heaven, only drums; and the preservation of all the essentials of poetry, by the simple enumeration of the utensils to be found in a back kitchen, did, I could not help thinking (here it becomes necessary to whisper), sound not unlike rigmarole.  I waited for the master to speak.  He had declared that the Republic would fall if it did not become instantly naturalistic; he would not, he could not pass over in silence so important a branch of literature as poetry, no matter how contemptible he might think it.  If he could find nothing to praise, he must at least condemn.  At last the expected article came.  It was all that could be desired by one in my fever of mind.  Hugo’s claims had been previously disproven, but now Banville and Gautier were declared to be warmed up dishes of the ancient world; Baudelaire was a naturalist, but he had been spoilt by the romantic influence of his generation. Cependant there were indications of the naturalistic movement even in poetry.  I trembled with excitement, I could not read fast enough.  Coppee had striven to simplify language; he had versified the street cries, Achetez la France, le Soir, le Rappel; he had sought to give utterance to humble sentiments as in “Le Petit Epicier de Montrouge,” the little grocer qui cassait le sucre avec melancolie; Richepin had boldly and frankly adopted the language of the people in all its superb crudity.  All this was, however, preparatory and tentative.  We are waiting for our poet, he who will sing to us fearlessly of the rude industry of dustmen and the comestible glories of the marketplaces.  The subjects are to hand, the formula alone is wanting.

The prospect was a dazzling one; I tried to calm myself.  Had I the stuff in me to win and to wear these bays, this stupendous laurel crown?—­bays, laurel crown, a distinct souvenir of Parnassus, but there is no modern equivalent, I must strive to invent a new one, in the meantime let me think.  True it is that Swinburne was before me with the “Romantiques.”  The hymn to Proserpine and Dolores are wonderful lyrical versions of Mdlle. de Maupin.  In form the Leper is old English, the colouring is Baudelaire, but the rude industry of the dustmen and the comestible glories of the market-place shall be mine. A bas “Les Roses de Minuit"!

I felt the “naturalisation” of the “Roses of Midnight” would prove a difficult task.  I soon found it an impossible one, and I laid the poems aside and commenced a volume redolent of the delights of Bougival and Ville d’Avray.  This book was to be entitled “Poems of ‘Flesh and Blood.’”

“Elle mit son plus beau chapeau, son chapeau bleu” ... and then?  Why, then picking up her skirt she threads her way through the crowded streets, reads the advertisements on the walls, hails the omnibus, inquires at the concierge’s loge, murmurs as she goes upstairs, “Que c’est haut le cinqieme,” and then?  Why, the door opens, and she cries, “Je t’aime.”