The instrument is the saddest, yes, truly; the piano scintillates, the violin opens the torn soul to the light, but the barrel-organ, in the twilight of remembrance, made me dream despairingly.  Now it murmurs an air joyously vulgar which awakens joy in the heart of the suburbs, an air old-fashioned and commonplace.  Why do its flourishes go to my soul, and make me weep like a romantic ballad?  I listen, imbibing it slowly, and I do not throw a penny out of the window for fear of moving from my place, and seeing that the instrument is not singing itself.

II

“The old Saxony clock, which is slow, and which strikes thirteen amid its flowers and gods, to whom did it belong?  Thinkest that it came from Saxony by the mail coaches of old time?

“(Singular shadows hang about the worn-out panes.)

“And thy Venetian mirror, deep as a cold fountain in its banks of gilt work; what is reflected there?  Ah!  I am sure that more than one woman bathed there in her beauty’s sin; and, perhaps, if I looked long enough, I should see a naked phantom.

“Wicked one, thou often sayest wicked things.

“(I see the spiders’ webs above the lofty windows.)

“Our wardrobe is very old; see how the fire reddens its sad panels! the weary curtains are as old, and the tapestry on the arm-chairs stripped of paint, and the old engravings, and all these old things.  Does it not seem to thee that even these blue birds are discoloured by time?

“(Dream not of the spiders’ webs that tremble above the lofty windows.)

“Thou lovest all that, and that is why I live by thee.  When one of my poems appeared, didst thou not desire, my sister, whose looks are full of yesterdays, the words, the grace of faded things?  New objects displease thee; thee also do they frighten with their loud boldness, and thou feelest as if thou shouldest use them—­a difficult thing indeed to do, for thou hast no taste for action.

“Come, close thy old German almanack that thou readest with attention, though it appeared more than a hundred years ago, and the Kings it announces are all dead, and, lying on this antique carpet, my head leaned upon thy charitable knees, on the pale robe, oh! calm child, I will speak with thee for hours; there are no fields, and the streets are empty, I will speak to thee of our furniture.

“Thou art abstracted?

“(The spiders’ webs are shivering above the lofty windows.)”

To argue about these forgotten pages would be futile.  We, the “ten superior persons scattered through the universe” think these prose poems the concrete essence, the osmazome of literature, the essential oil of art, others, those in the stalls, will judge them to be the aberrations of a refined mind, distorted with hatred of the commonplace; the pit will immediately declare them to be nonsense, and will return with satisfaction to the last leading article in the daily paper.