“Du temps que la Nature en sa verve puissante
Concevait chaque jour des enfants monstrueux
J’eusse aimé vivre auprès d’une jeune géante,
Comme aux pieds d’une reine un chat voluptueux.”
Of course a poet is sure to use strong language which goes better with some grains of salt; but there is no doubt touching the following sketch of a New Woman:—
“J’eusse aimé . . . . . .
Ramper sur le versant de ses genoux énormes,
Et parfois en été, quand les soleils malsains,
Lasse, la font s’étendre à travers la campagne,
Dormir nonchalamment à l’ombre de ses seins,
Comme un hameau paisible au pied d’une montagne.”
To be a very large woman’s little cat might not satisfy the highest aspiration of a manly man, even among fin de siècle poets; and to be as a mere village in her bosom’s mountain shadow is not open to consideration in the most degenerate masculine mind of our epoch. Still Baudelaire’s verses, being neither humor nor satire, adumbrate a possible outcome of civilization, were the New Woman to take a giantesque turn. She might be supremely pleased with having man purring at her toes, or hopelessly asleep in her shadow.