It is to his shamelessness that we owe his most beautiful poems, all
written in garrets, in taverns, in hospitals--yes, and in prison."
"In prison! But he didn't steal, did he?" and the _commercant's_
wife looked at me with a frightened air, and I think her hand went
towards her pocket.
"No, no; a mere love story, a dispute with Rambaud in some haunt of
vice, a knife flashed, Rambaud was stabbed, and Verlaine spent three
years in prison. As for Rambaud, it was said that he repented and
renounced love, entered a monastery, and was digging the soil
somewhere on the shores of the Red Sea for the grace of God. But these
hopes proved illusory; only Verlaine knows where he is, and he will
not tell. The last certain news we had of him was that he had joined a
caravan of Arabs, and had wandered somewhere into the desert with
these wanderers, preferring savagery to civilization. Verlaine
preferred civilized savagery, and so he remained in Paris; and so he
drags on, living in thieves' quarters, getting drunk, writing
beautiful poems in the hospitals, coming out of hospitals and falling
in love with drabs."
Dans ces femmes d'ailleurs je n'ai pas trouve l'ange
Qu'il eut fallu pour remplacer ce diable, toi!
L'une, fille du Nord, native d'un Crotoy,
Etait rousse, mal grasse et de prestance molle;
Elle ne m'adressa guere qu'une parole
Et c'etait d'un petit cadeau qu'il s'agissait,
En revanche, dans son accent d'ail et de poivre,
Une troisieme, recemment chanteuse au Havre,
Affectait de dandinement des matelots
Et m'.
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