Little Poems in Prose

ing shadows, behind his torn curtain? In sooth I did not dare, and, though the reason for my timidity will make you laugh, I will avow it: I feared to humiliate him. At the end I brought my courage to the sticking point; I resolved, as I passed, to lay some money on one of the boards, hoping that he would divine my inten- tion, when a great eddy of people, caused by I know not what disturbance, bore me far away from him. And, on my homeward round, obsessed by this sight, I sought to analyse my sudden sad- ness; and I said to myself: I have just seen the image of the old man of letters who has survived the generation which he so brilliantly amused; of the old poet, without friends, with- out family, without children, degraded by his misery and by public ingratitude, into whose booth the forgetful world will no longer come.