everything; who had already edited ten volumes and written a hundred articles on every conceivable subject; who was filled with admiration for Mallarmé and swore by Villiers. Gourmont, leading a quiet life of seclusion, was unknown to the rendezvous of the younger writers who characterized themselves as symbolistes; but he seemed to know more about the movement than those who composed it. Rachilde, herself a novelist of this genre, entertained Gourmont many times at her Tuesday soirées. Le doux Remy stammered when he spoke and affirmed nothing; presently he would retire to his tour d'ivoire, carrying a curious bundle of débris to be examined and assorted.

The authorities dismissed Gourmont from the Library for publishing an article mildly denouncing the government's policy of revanche in Franco-German relations. Then began his greatest period of intellectual activity and literary production. He wrote Théodat, a play dealing with the fate of a bishop, who after forcing himself to abstain from his mistress, is again seduced by her in great anguish of spirit. It failed dramatically, and has been translated by Richard Aldington. Sex always intrigued Gourmont's interest. Woman possessed for him something of the divine. He treats the subject with clear detachment. Lilith, another dramatic poem in prose, presents the creation hypothesis in much the same way as Shaw's Back to Methusalah.

A severe illness left Gourmont more reclusive than ever. Some strange ailment, the doctors said; it was rumored that he had caught it from a supposedly defunct germ among the musty pages of an old libro. He received very few friends and seldom went out except for an occasional visit to the office of the Mercure. His capacity as a critic increased. Solitude was ameliorated by the comfort of good books. A characteristic picture shows him sitting at a square table by the window overlooking the court. It is night. He is clothed in a monkish gown of dark material fastened with bright buckles. He writes smoothly without erasure, pausing sometimes to reflect on a thought or to roll a cigarette. His cat perched on his shoulder casts a shadow across the manuscript that disappears with the light of morning......

The symbolist days were past. His first important critical work, the Esthétique de la langue française, appeared, followed by

Promenades Littéraires and the Culture des Idées, which included the essays published in the American edition called Decadence. Then came the Indian summer of his career. He met an American woman who had come to Paris to practice platonism. She was known as the "Amazon". Her house and garden on the Rue Jacob harbored many musicales and literary soirées. The Amazon drew Gourmont out of his cell and took him for walks into the country at springtime. During la belle saison she rented a yacht for a trip up the Seine; thus Gourmont came to meet Maeterlinck. She was an inspiration. Gourmont had experienced love before, but never had it seemed so refreshing. Under her influence he no longer wrote with irony; he revived his old familiarity of style. The Lettres à l'Amazone have been cited as the purest example of his art because they were written for pleasure alone.

Remy de Gourmont was ill at Coutances during the summer of 1914. The shock of the war depressed him and he felt unable to work. He returned to Paris. On the afternoon of July 15th he and his brother took a walk along the Quays to enjoy the air and to look over the bookstands. They wandered aimlessly along the boulevard, basking in the sunlight. There, some trees had just been pruned. Remy leaned over, picked up a branch, and looked at it. "A leaf is more beautiful than a flower," he remarked, "and more varied." They returned to the Rue des Saints-Prères at twilight, and Remy climbed the three flights to his library never to leave it again. That branch of plantane tree which he caressed was for him the last perfume of nature.

That was the end. The remarkable personality of the man remains in his work. The written word was to him the very mode of thought coducive to what he believed the highest form of self-realization. Remy de Gourmont lived and died true to his dreams of expression; his adventure in that dream is well reflected in "A Night in the Luxembourg". On one occasion the Master says, "My friend, I have shown you the philosophy of the gods. . I have favored the materialism of Epicurus, Saint Paul's Christianity, Spinoza's pantheism."

H. HAMLIN.

Interlude

HE stars shone out

THE

not with laughing summer eyes

however, but cold and wise

and patiently amused no doubt
that a young poet in the fallow-time
of love, should choose to freeze

his hands upon the hales of midnight rending
apart snow-clouds an hour, for a rhyme

of Venus violet-couched and bending
across June meadows, breathing upon trees.

JOHN DAVENPORT.

Civilized People

COLONEL NICOLAI REPIN sat benumbed on the floor of

his prison, where the brutal fist of Comissar Lebedeff had sent him a few minutes previously. Dizzy and sickened by the blow, weakened by three weeks of rough treatment and lack of food, he made no attempt to move and looked on, as if through a mist, at the preparations that were going on. The room was hot and stuffy, and even the gust of icy January wind that had penetrated it when the Comissar and his small party had come in failed to clear the atmosphere. In the far corner the other three prisoners were apparently praying: old General Dvorski and his two sons, recently graduated from the military academy. Both had served in the same regiment as Repin, under the General's command. All had been incarcerated at the same time for attempting to join the White armies and, apparently, the end had now come for them all. The Comissar had arrived as usual somewhat intoxicated, and had struck down Repin, who happened to stand in his way. With him came an ape-like Chinese soldier, one of the many hireling executioners of Trotzki's army. The third member of the party was Voronoff, a young officer who had been Repin's aide during the last months of the war. Repin had not seen him since the revolution. It was therefore with a distinct shock that he saw him wearing the red cockade, distinctive of Bolshevik officials. Turned traitor! Maybe he had been right. There he was, looking strong and healthy, while his chief... The young man stood with eyes averted, apparently not daring to look his former chief in the face. Repin, on the other hand, stared at him with as much scorn as he could summon into his dim. glance. The Comissar was nervously pacing the floor, enveloping Repin with the reek of cheap vodka every time he came near him. He finally stopped over the Chinaman, who was busy arranging a kettle of steaming water on a tripod under which some soldiers had dumped glowing coals.

"Hurry, Ling," he addressed him in a hoarse voice. "The com

rades are waiting." A diabolic look was in his bloodshot eyes as he surveyed each prisoner in turn. Repin hardly dared think what the words and the preparations meant. He did not mind dying; with his morale broken by suffering, he hardly minded anything. But he knew about the tortures that had been inflicted on some of his colleagues, and the idea alone made him shudder violently... He had returned to the front three months ago after a long stay in hospital, as a result of a bad wound in his arm. During his convalescence he had heard of the happenings in the capital and the army: the Emperor's abdication, temporary governments succeeding each other with rapidity, finally the enthronement of Lenin and Trotzki. He had come back to his post during the first days of the Bolshevik revolution in the hope that, notwithstanding the internal disturbances, the army was still fighting the Austrians. No matter what his political ideas were, he felt that his duty to his country came first. He had found the army almost disbanded. Discipline was a dead word, and the first experience he had was to have his stripes and decorations torn off his uniform, with a careful explanation that all in the army were now equals. He wandered around for several days, observing. His men had divided themselves into two definite groups. One, composed of more goodnatured souls, accepted events as they came. They were more or less bewildered by the new course of life and, unused to lack of leadership, wandered around helplessly, wondering what it all meant. The other group, which comprised all the disorderly element of the army, had taken the change as an opportunity to abandon themselves to the worst excesses. Their officers had been the first to suffer. Repin had seen with horror how some of his colleagues were killed off with consummate cruelty. Some had been buried alive. Others merely shot down without warning. He had stood the terrifying spectacle for some time and escaped persecution thanks to his former popularity among his men. One day, however, he could stand it no longer. He had gone to see a friend in a neighboring hut. It was at dusk. He had found the place dark and apparently deserted. No one answered his call. He pushed the door and entered. He had walked three steps across the room, when a ghastly sight met his eyes. His friend was