The sunshine holds of loveliness,
What tragedy in what dark dawn
Hath lent thine eyes such mournfulness?
O——”
“Oh, stop!” said Toto. “Your poetry makes me want to commit suicide.”
“That,” said Gaillard, “shows but the beauty of it. My ambition is to write a quatrain that will be as poisonous to hope as strychnine. Hope, that accursed allurement born of the——Heaven! I am going to be ill; I have swallowed a bad oyster.” “Run to the window,” commanded Toto.
“Brandy,” suggested Pelisson.
“I am better,” declared the poet. “The taste has passed. The question is, Will it prove poisonous? Mon Dieu! and the proofs of my ‘Fall of the Damned’ are not corrected.”
“Never mind,” said Toto gloomily. “You can correct them as you are falling. Oh, what a wretched world this is! I’m going to drown myself in the Seine.” He rose, yawning, from his chair. “Who will follow me?”