‘I will go; but stay, I return this night to Paris—but I shall return, and then, perhaps, you will introduce me?’ Serena shook his head.
‘I’m afraid not,’ he answered. ‘The lady sees no one, and is quite a recluse. What is still more peculiar is the fact that she has a particular aversion to gentlemen of your nation—to France and to Frenchmen without exception.’
‘You amaze me, Monsieur! Ah, this insular prejudice, how bête! But perhaps she has reason—perhaps she has lived in my country.’
‘Can’t say,’ returned Serena, as if tired of the subject; and he commenced again to work at the picture.
Ponto looked over his shoulder as he worked with admiring eyes.
‘You must know Gavrolles better,’ he observed; ‘I like him; we all like him. He is a man of ideas.’
Gavrolles placed his hand upon his heart and bowed.
‘I have learned of my master, the immortal Théophile, to worship what is beautiful, to adore what is superb.’
‘In France, at the present moment,’ continued Ponto, patronisingly, ‘Gavrolles represents the school of supersensuous personal yearning. In his last book of poems, “Parfums de la Chair,” and particularly in that superb fragment, “Cameo Satanique,” he has supplied the connecting link between the celestial appetite of Gautier and the divine nausea of Baudelaire. Till Gavrolles came, the calendar of imperial passion was incomplete. What Smith, Jones, and Keats are to our august poetry, that is he to the poetry of modern France.’
‘Ah, Monsieur, forbear!’ cried the Frenchman. ‘You overwhelm me with shame. Such praise—before the master!’