"No, near by."
"Very well then, you can go home and bring me the money."
He issued this command with such an air of authority that I went home and brought him the money. He came to the door of the wine-shop, took it from me, and then said:
"You may go now."
This was the way in which insignificant bourgeois admirers were treated in the school of Baudelaire and Verlaine.
Later again, when I brought out Sombre Lives, I sometimes saw Sawa in the small hours of the morning, his long locks flowing, and followed by his dog. He always gripped my hand with such force that it did me some hurt, and then he would say to me, in a tragic tone:
"Be proud! You have written Sombre Lives."
I took it as a joke.
One day Alejandro wrote me to come to his house. He was living on the Cuesta de Santo Domingo. I betook myself there, and he made me a proposition which was obviously preposterous. He handed me five or six articles, written by him, which had already been published, together with some notes, saying that if I would add certain material, we should then be able to make up a book of "Parisian Impressions," which could appear under the names of us both.
I read the articles and did not care for them. When I went to return them, he asked me: