Alice: An Adultery

fulvous and fulgurous lady grew comparatively tranquil ; the pair withdrew. The old woman lay sprawled along the divan sunk in a drunken torpor. I unrolled the manuscript and read. Brutal truth-telling humour, at times perhaps too Rabelaisian ; lyrics, some of enchanting beauty, others painfully imitative ; sonnets of exceedingly unequal power, a perfectly heartless introduction (some fools would call it pathetic), and, as a synthesis of the whole, an impression of profound sadness and, perhaps, still deeper joy, were my reward. Together with a feeling that the writer must have been a philosopher of the widest and deepest learning and penetration, and a regret that he showed no more of it in his poetry. First and last, I stood amazed, stupefied : so stand I still. Dramatic propriety forbade me seeing him again ; he was alone when he started. Let us not too bitterly lament ! He would hate him who would “ upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer.” x