[Illustration:  CHARLES BAUDELAIRE]

The Baudelaire legend, as it is called by French critics, is one of the blooms of that romantic period of French literature which is presided over by the genius of Theophile Gautier.  Indeed; it is against the golden background of Gautier’s imagination that the picture of the youthful poet is best preserved for us, appearing in all the delicate and illusive radiance of the youth and beauty of legendary saints on the gilded canvases of mediaeval art.  The radiant youth and beauty may be no more truthful to nature than the gilded background, but the fact of the impression sought to be conveyed is not on that account to be disbelieved.

Baudelaire, Gautier writes, was born in the Rue Hautefeuille, in one of those old houses with a pepper-pot turret at the corner which have disappeared from the city under the advancing improvement of straight lines and clear openings.  His father, a gentleman of learning, retained all the eighteenth-century courtesy and distinction of manner, which, like the pepper-pot turret, has also disappeared under the advance of Republican enlightenment.  An absent-minded, reserved child, Baudelaire attracted no especial attention during his school days.  When they were over, his predilection for a literary vocation became known.  From this his parents sought to divert him by sending him to travel.  He voyaged through the Indian Ocean, visiting the great islands:  Madagascar, Ceylon, Mauritius, Bourbon.  Had there been a chance for irresolution in the mind of the youth, this voyage destroyed it forever.  His imagination, essentially exotic, succumbed to the passionate charm of a new, strange, and splendidly glowing form of nature; the stars, the skies, the gigantic vegetation, the color, the perfumes, the dark-skinned figures in white draperies, formed for him at that time a heaven, for which his senses unceasingly yearned afterwards amid the charms and enchantments of civilization, in the world’s capital of pleasure and luxury.  Returning to Paris, of age and master of his fortune, he established himself in his independence, openly adopting his chosen career.

He and Theophile Gautier met for the first time in 1849, in the Hotel Pimodau, where were held the meetings of the Hashish Club.  Here in the great Louis XIV. saloon, with its wood-work relieved with dull gold; its corbeled ceiling, painted after the manner of Lesueur and Poussin, with satyrs pursuing nymphs through reeds and foliage; its great red and white spotted marble mantel, with gilded elephant harnessed like the elephant of Porus in Lebrun’s picture, bearing an enameled clock with blue ciphers; its antique chairs and sofas, covered with faded tapestry representing hunting scenes, holding the reclining figures of the members of the club; women celebrated in the world of beauty, men in the world of letters, meeting not only for the enjoyment of the artificial ecstasies of the drug, but to talk of art, literature, and love,