Little Poems in Prose

divine and supernatural even into his most ex- travagant buffooneries. My pen trembles, and tears of an ever-present emotion rise to my eyes, while I seek to describe to you this un- forgettable evening. Fanciullo proved to me in a peremptory and irrefutable manner that the intoxication of art is apter than any other to veil the terrors of the abyss; that genius may play its part upon the edge of the tomb with a joy which prevents it from seeing the tomb, lost as it is in a Paradise which excludes all idea either of death or of destruction. The entire audience, right world-word and frivolous as it may have been, soon surren- dered itself to the all-powerful domination of the artist. Nobody thought any more of death, of mourning, of execution. Each one aban- doned himself without anxiety to the wave upon wave of pleasure which the sight of a liv- ing masterpiece of art always gives. Outbursts of joy and admiration shook and shook again the roof of the building like the rolling of con- tinuous thunder. The Prince himself, carried away, mingled his applause with that of his Court. Yet, for a far-seeing eye, his intoxication, his own, was not unmingled with other ele- ments; did he feel himself abased, his despot’s power broken? Humiliated in his art, that of