She has "cold eyelids that shut like a jewel:"—
"Tes yeux, où rien ne se révèle
De doux ni d'amer,
Sont deux bijoux froids!"
She is cold and "sterile:"—
"La froide majesté de la femme stérile!"
She is, necessarily, like "a snake:"—
. . . "un serpent qui danse," &c., &c.
She is, in fact, Faustine, Mary Stuart, Our Lady of Pain, Sappho, and all the rest,—quite as nasty, and to all intents and purposes, in spite of her attraction for young poets, seemingly as undesirable. It is quite impossible for me, without long quotation, to fully represent the unpleasantness of Baudelaire, with his "vampires," his "cats," and "cat-like women," his poisons, his fiends, his phantoms, his long menagerie of horrors, his long catalogue of debaucheries. At one time we are in a brothel, and the poet is lying by the side of a dreadful Jewess with "cold eyelids:"—
"Une nuit que j'étais près d'une affreuse Juive,
Comme au long d'un cadavre un cadavre étendu!"
At another time we hear the poet saying to a fair companion—"Seek not my heart; the beasts have eaten it." Grim and wearied as he is, our poet is not above the favourite conceits of his school:—
"Tes hanches sont amoureuses
De ton dos et de ses seins,
Et tu ravis les coussins
Par tes poses langoureuses!"
And this is quite in the symbolizing style of the Italian school, of which I shall give many examples when treating of Mr. Rossetti:—
