There is little to add to this strange tale. The wilder wanderings of a sick mind followed the wild wanderings of his broken body. He was lodged in a private house where he had good care, but his case was hopeless from the start. About a month before his death I received a note written in his own hand. It read:
“They says I am vury sick but I doo not beleeve them in a few days moor I am gooen back to Mawbooj. I beleeve my sister is there still goodbie.
Yurs truly
Mr. Solslog.”
His sister was never found.
IV
FIGURES OF THE DANCE
The poet finished his recitation and resumed his cigarette, waiting for our applause.
“It is a man absolutely extraordinary,” murmured the dancing-master across the table at my left, under cover of the hand-clapping. “He is the greatest poet of Belgium, monsieur. Verhaeren, Cammaerts, Maeterlinck—they are nothing. If you bring him an album—presto! he writes you an ode in it.”