tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-930672028246626152024-02-20T08:38:55.651-08:00Counter-rhymesOccasional musings on art, poetry, France, and Paul-Jean TOULETOldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-14987487489358629972020-07-15T12:50:00.002-07:002020-07-15T12:50:35.184-07:00Toulet in Algiers, Part 4 – the Marguerite Affair<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We have already remarked, in the chapter on Mauritius, on Toulet’s precocious interest in the fair sex. With his gifts and his money, girls were easy prey, and he was always in control. When in Algiers he fell for, and was cheated on by Marguerite, he took it very badly indeed, so much so that it may well have coloured his relationships with women from then on. It has been suggested (by Guitard) that it is to this Marguerite that we owe, in part (because it was already in him), the melancholic and disillusioned irony that bathes his work.<br /><i> « En plus des travaux accumulés, les aventures charnelles suivent les aventures charnelles, comme toujours avec Paul-Jean… Mais vient le jour où il tombe sur un bec…. Le conquérant est conquis. »</i> <br /><br /><br />The best – the only account – we have of this doomed affair is that of Louis Martin, fellow student, and later judge in Philippeville, Algeria. This account is taken from a longer reminiscence that appeared in the Mercure de France, in February 1927. It should however be noted that in his Journal, dated 8th February, 1889, Toulet writes that he has already broken up with S*, who had slept with a friend, and appeared ready to take up with another, and he regrets to admit that he had already replaced her on the 7th. This can scarcely have been Marguerite, since his grand passion for her only became apparent in March. Not only that, but Casanova avers that Toulet accompanied a troupe of strolling players to Algiers, and that his “Ophelia” had left him for a wealthy merchant in the rue de la Lyre before joined the company of friends in the restaurant Fautrier. <br /><br />*Casanova refers fondly to “Suzanne with the golden laugh” – was this the mysterious “S”? <br /><br /><b>This is Martin: </b><br />“Attracted, as were we all, to easy pleasures, he was a libertine, but not debauched. And it was especially as a dilettante, in thrall to novelty, that he sometimes lingered in our company in some lost house in the old Casbah, whose tiny courtyards, anaemic fountains, and shady corners held his surprised gaze, while our greedy attention, like foals set loose, went straight to this Zohrad or to that Meriem, over-painted, sumptuous and degenerate, who made us quiver with our first longings. <br /><br />One afternoon in March - it was four months since Toulet was in Algiers - I went to inform him of a lightweight piece which I intended for a city revue. Wearing the Basque beret which he had made his work-dress, he opened the door, and straight away, in the half-light of the enclosed room where my short sight had not noticed anything, he introduced me to Marguerite. I knew her well, of course! The tall, pretty girl with the dark complexion who frequented, not far away, a sewing shop whose lively chatter could be heard from the street, where at the turn of the rue Dupuch one turned into the ladder-like steps of the rue Levacher ... I knew her well, Marguerite ... and her blue-green eyes, almond-shaped, shadowy with thick eyelashes, and her chignon heavy with dark braids, and her queenly walk, a little feline under the finery of a maid in her Sunday best. <br />But to find her there, suddenly, this March evening, timidly snuggled up in that old-fashioned pouf, the crumpled veil, her cheap if pretty hat visibly askew, like a frail skiff laden with flowers on a dark stream... no, it seemed bewildering, fantastic, that left my eyes wide and my brain empty. Toulet, however, had pulled out a chair with some ceremony, and very distinctly uttered these peremptory words: "My friend." She said nothing, nor contradicted him. I could only bow, risk an obsequious "Mademoiselle ..." and confirm inwardly that I wasn’t dreaming. <br /><br />It was a long and tortuous affair. In many of the <i>Contrerimes</i>, Toulet speaks with a bitterness tinged at times with cruelty of the disenchantments of love and inconstancy of women who, be it for an hour, a week or a season, left their mark on his life. Indeed, as it happens to all men, he was often deceived, scoffed at, bruised. But it is also that he left himself exposed, more perhaps than others, to these bruises. Sensitive souls, precisely because they "feel" keenly, almost always have a moody side. Like a rope stretched taut, they vibrate at the slightest pinch, at the slightest shock, and this vibration, far from being attenuated according to physiological law, is on the contrary amplified in them, becomes exaggerated to the point of discomfort, in some even to suffering. Toulet, who was also cerebra and who had taken early to self-analysis, of "taking his morale pulse", as he liked to say, suffered doubly from this excess of sensitivity; and he wanted, I believe, to suffer from it, or at least he did nothing to cure his ailment; "What a splitter of hairs you make!,” I often said to him to tease him, “and how you remind me of these people of whom Chamfort speaks, who by dint of carding their mattresses are left with nothing to sleep on" <br /><br />After three weeks of an intense love affair, during which time he was seen neither by the guests of the pension Fautrier nor, at the Café du Ballon, his usual partners at manille or pamphile, he returned one morning in April, haggard and broken, with drawn features and weary legs, sitting before the mid-day meal at the large oval table where we used to meet twice a day. His presence was greeted with cries of joy. He was unmoved. To a question that Casanova asked him, perhaps indiscreetly, he replied between clenched teeth: "I was ill", and nose in plate, obstinately dumb, he began to eat. Lunch was dull and quick…. <br />He didn't touch the dessert, nodded to us all, and left the table. Before he left, however, he passed near me, leaned over my shoulder, and in a voice that sounded distant and cold, he said simply: "Martin! I'll see you tonight." <br /><br />He came to see me about four o'clock, in fact, in my room where I waited patiently, having preferred to cut lectures than to miss my friend. <br />As I expected, Toulet was ill with jealousy. Later, grown wise with the years, he would mock this sentiment with an aphorism: 'Jealousy is a test of the heart, as gout is of the limbs.' But at that point in his life he was fiercely jealous. For an instant he seemed to reflect, collect his thoughts, then, at a stroke, as though he had thrown off a heavy burden: 'Marguerite has deceived me,' he said." 'Impossible,' I exclaimed.<br /> He must have taken my astonishment for an demurral, for, calmly and gravely, with his nervous and staccato elocution, he confided to me the secret of his heart Opening the flood-gates, he spared no detail. Little by little he grew more animated, his own words stoking the fire. Then it was a new and pathetic Nuit d'Octobre in tumultuous prose—because, that evening, he strangely resembled Musset—he who, for a full hour, shook and trembled with indignation before me! <br /><br />"She cheated on me, I tell you ... Again, last Thursday, at nightfall, I surprised her chatting with a young brown man, poorly dressed, at the corner of rue Randon. I could hardly stifle my laughter. He noticed it and got up suddenly, like a spring released. "So, you don't believe me and you make fun of me! You take me for a moron, it's obvious! ... And me who thought you were my friend! .. But no! I was wrong ... I am always wrong, me ... and I am wronged too, just say the word, I am the fall-guy! Exhausted by his sudden explosion, he sank into a creaking chair, and, his head in his left hand, resumed the usual curled up position he adopted when thoughtful or annoyed. His chest barely moved with his breathing, and I thought I could hear his heart beating. He was suffering, really suffering. Touched by his deep hurt I leaned towards him like a brother and spent long minutes calming him down. <br />That unexpected scene, a genuine twist, was a revelation to me. The everyday Toulet, ironic, blasé, he who coldly and cruelly behind his mask of impassibility toyed with everything and everyone, I saw him, that day, unmasked, almost broken under the moral pain which tortured him and I could not but feel pity for him. I noticed, however, that he shed not one tear and he did not avert his gaze. He felt ashamed of his suffering, and when he had calmed down, I understood how much he had steeled himself by sheer willpower in order that I should bear witness to an even greater weakness and disorder… <br />Thrice in less than two years,<i> [in fact it was less than one]</i> Toulet broke with Marguerite who, ever submissive, returned to the fold and, from the threshold, fell into the arms of her lover. And the love affair started again, like from the first. There was something singular, almost abnormal in their attachment that confounded the most penetrating psychology. While, in general, one lover does not take long clearly to dominate the other - and it is not always the male - our two lovers seemed to alternate the roles of master and slave in a manner plain to a careful observer. <br /></span><div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Certainly Marguerite had been, from the first, drawn by the strange charm which emanated from Toulet and which, even on us, his friends or companions, acted infallibly from the first meeting; and this charm came from everything about him, from his eyes, deep and clear, in which gold dust seemed to shine, from his warm and engaging voice, a little curt, which could become harsh and domineering, from the languid nobility of his movements, but especially from the integrity of his character and the delicate grace of his wit. How could a modest working girl have resisted such prestige? <br />But if Marguerite was without culture, she lacked neither intelligence nor finesse, and she quickly realized that the hold she had on her "great friend" came from an eminent sensuality, and that it was particularly by the seductions of her body that she had conquered this refined artist whose first romantic conquests had not yet made blasé, whatever he may have claimed. And she knew very well that she was holding him there, that she had only to offer him, at the right moment, the caress of her fresh, brown skin, and that more disturbing caress of her changing eyes, whose long, thick lashes enhanced the mystery, to make him fall at her feet, stricken and repentant, forgetful of everything. She had also noticed, almost immediately, that she had the power to suddenly give her look such a cold expression that her friend, even in a fit of anger, calmed down, admitted defeat in seconds and begged forgiveness. This icy look of his mistress really frightened him, less by what he saw as indifference or disdain than by the idea of the irreparable and of death that his restless mind took pleasure, even in the times of passion, in seeking and finding there. <br />Toulet never did confess this vulnerability to his mistress - he would have been too humiliated ; but one day I guessed it and he himself indirectly confessed it to me, shortly before his departure from Algeria, by sending this sonnet, which had no title, but which for me was clearly full of the girl he had loved whom he was leaving for good this time.<br /><br /><i>Ne cueillez point le myrte: aucun épithalame <br />Pour chanter les amours joyeux, demi-moquers, </i></span><div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Mais un psaume plutôt, funebre et qui proclame <br />L'amertume sans fin qu’elle met dans les coeurs. <br /><br />Pâle et hautaine, avec des prunelles sans flamme, <br />Elle a le geste las et grave des vainqueurs ; <br />Et dans ses longs baisers qui coulent jusqu'à l'âme <br />Réside le pouvoir des pesantes liqueurs. <br /><br />Elle inspire la peur comme d'autres la joie : <br />Plaine glacée ou nul Helios ne rougeoie, <br />Marbre hystérieux, impassible décor ! <br /><br />Et je révère en vous, ô sinistre amoureuse, <br />L'image de la mort, qui, mieux que vous encor, <br />Me sera bienfaisante, et fraiche, et langoureuse. </i><br />And there is no doubt that he had Marguerite in mind when he wrote these lines: <br /><br /><i> J'admire qu'un regard ait ce pouvoir en lui <br />Qu'un homme en fait sa joie ou sa désespérance <br />Sur qui l'œil souverain de sa maîtresse a lui.</i> <br /><br />And perhaps these too, both outdoors: <br /><br /><i>J’évoque sur tes bords heureux, <br /> O Méditerranée, <br /> D’une amoureuse après-dînée <br /> L’ombre, le rocher creux. <br /><br />Ou ce vestige périssable <br /> Et trop vite effacé <br /> Qu’en témoignage avaient tracé <br /> Ses hanches dans le sable. </i><br />and indoors: <br /><br /><i>Derrière les rideaux des fenêtres closes <br /> Tes yeux rient et la nacre de ta pâleur <br /> Et l’or de la chambre où naguère est éclose <br /> Notre amour ainsi qu’une fleur. <br /><br />Nous oublierons la rue aux voix étrangères <br /> La blanche cité vide excepté de nous ; <br /> L’heure est pleine de rêve et d’ailes légères, <br /> J’ai mis mon front sur tes genoux. </i><br /><br />Toulet’s Algerian poems comprise the pre-typical verses he wrote while there, and those written in his prime, but inspired by his sojourn. He already has a taste for the constraints of structure, of form. The best has been gathered by Martineau in Vers Inedits. The sonnets are not quite juvenile, and already the vocabulary is a foretaste of what is to come – myrte, amertume, dévasté – even the bees get a look in! <br /><br /><i>Fatigué de m'étendre en des couches banales, <br />De couvrir de baisers un front inhabité, <br />D’inscrire quelques noms en mes sèches annales <br />Avec ce qu'ils couvraient de vice ou de beauté ; <br /><br />Avant que le cadran des heures automnales <br />Sonne le couvre-feu dans mon cœur dévasté, <br />J'arracherai ma vie aux vaines saturnales <br />Pour rentrer dans la paix et la simplicité. <br /><br />Dans un bourg verdoyant de la vieille province, <br />Celle qui doit m'aimer a grandi, blonde et mince ; <br />Elle a l'éclat des fleurs et le pas des oiseaux. <br /><br />Je la vis, par un soir doré, cueillant aux treilles <br />Le raisin transparent avec de grands ciseaux <br />Dont le bruit argentin effrayait les abeilles. </i><br />The sonnet appeared in <i>La Revue Algérienne</i> which encouraged young colonial writers. Collin calls it one of the most perfect poems Toulet wrote, and very personal, an adieu to the Old Casbah, to Marguerite, to hectic voluptuousness and vice and beauty. A vain aspiration, for one so addicted to wine, women, and opium. <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> </span><br /> </div>
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Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-71695231882719302632020-03-25T13:22:00.002-07:002020-03-25T13:22:45.257-07:00Indo-China, Part 2, April - May 1903<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />On April 1st Toulet left Hué by sampan during the night, most probably on the An Cựu tributary of the Perfumed River (Sông Hương ) so as to reach Cauailles (nowadays Cầu Hai) by early morning. Dawn found them in the middle of the Cầu Hai lagoon, from whose south bank they entered the meandering and pretty little river that brought them to the town. In Cầu Hai they hired the chairs that were to carry them over the Hải Vân Quan (Pass) – the <i>Col de Nuages</i>*. They spent the day ascending, the it was nightfall when they started the final ascent of the col. Then darkness, fireflies, and the coolies huddling close to one another. Toulet kept an ear out for the cry of a tiger. (<i>“Quelquefois Hubert est arraché de son sommeil par un cri. Il se réveille en sursaut, les yeux grand ouverts. De toute son âme il interroge la nuit : il écoute l’ombre. Et il n’entend que le noir silence, implacable.”</i> - from the episode in <i>Béhanzigue </i>titled “le cri dans la nuit”). <br /><br />Nothing was heard that night, but the following evening one took a pig not far from the lighthouse that illuminated the outskirts of Tourane. This experience was to inspire not only <i>Béhanzigue</i>, but also Contrerime XLIII: <br /><br />Ainsi, ce chemin de nuage, <br />Vous ne le prendrez point, <br />D'où j'ai vu me sourire au loin <br />Votre brillant mirage ? <br /><br />Le soir d'or sur les étangs bleus <br />D'une étrange savane, <br />Où pleut la fleur de frangipane, <br />N'éblouira vos yeux ; <br /><br />Ni les feux de la luciole <br />Dans cette épaisse nuit <br />Que tout à coup perce l'ennui <br />D'un tigre qui miaule. <br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">*From Hué to Tourane (modern Da Nang) by the Col de Nuages – this is the Hải Vân Pass, which crosses over a spur of the Trường Sơn (Annamite) Range that runs from east to east west and juts into the South China Sea, forming the Hải Vân Peninsula. The pass, which once formed the boundary between the kingdoms of Đại Việt and Champa, also forms a boundary between the climates of northern and southern Vietnam, sheltering the city of Da Nang from the "Chinese winds" that blow in from the northwest. During the winter months of November–March weather on the north side of the pass may be wet and cold, while the south side may be warm and dry. </span><br /><br />Tourane was the last link with China. They left on April 5th on <i>la Tamise </i>for Saïgon, where they arrived on the 8th. On Friday 10th they boarded the <i>Sydney </i>at 11.00 p.m. and celebrated Easter on board on Sunday 12th April. <br /><br />The experience Toulet described later, in February 1905, on a postcard of Hué: "We set sail for the island of Taprobane. The mountainous coasts of Cathay sank slowly behind the horizon. It was only the beginning of summer in Annam; the long-stemmed lotus had not yet begun to blossom on the sacred waters which reflect the tombs of the Emperors. But, on the ponds at Candy, we saw them smile; some were white as the lingerie that, in her eagerness to love, my friend strews about her room in the twilight. There were also some as rosy as her finger tips.” <br /><br />But first there was a stopover in Singapore. On April 13th Toulet wrote that he had been employed by a wealthy Parsee family to teach French and translate contemporary French authors into their tongue, which may have been Gujerati – can Toulet really have known this? In his next Journal entry, dated Colombo, April 20th, he laments his ignorance of foreign languages! <br /><br />Curnonsky records an instance of Toulet’s wicked wit in a memoire written fifty years after. “ As we were returning to France, as we had anchored in Ceylon and stretched out on deckchairs trying to digest this incendiary Indian cuisine based on curry which is a promise of scurvy, a colossal foreigner who spoke Pidgin (that's to say the gibberish of the Oceanian islands), tapped on the shoulder of Toulet and asked him the way to the lavatory. Toulet. who lived in Mauritius and knew all these cosmopolitan jargons, replied: - You follow the corridor on the right. You arrive in front of a door where you can read this legend: ‘Gentlemen’. But you may enter anyway.” <br /><br />They arrived in Colombo on April 18th, where they stayed at the Galle Face Hotel, which Toulet described as a typical vast, dark, expensive English hotel. He continues his diatribe on April 22nd, repeating his first decription and adding that the bathrooms lack water, the cellars wine, the sea breeze replaced by mosquitoes, and good breeding by bad cooking. An escape by train to Kandy on the 21st April brought some relief, fresh air, a lake, temples, silence. Kandy is some seventy-five miles from Colombo by rail at an altitude of five hundred metres or sixteen hundred feet above the sea. The high altitude makes the climate congenial. The Queen's Hotel, said Toulet, is so comfortable that it might have for its sign "coolness". Half in banter, he wrote: "I have marked with a cross the alcove of the room you occupied, henceforth illustrious. But what one cannot see, what only the mastery of your pen can render, is the lake in front, shimmering between the drooping, trees and the balustrades; and the shade where Cakya-Mouni meditated; and the flowery walk perfumed with red jasmin, where a black serpent is erect and whistling, until a handsome bonze, dressed in yellow like a beetle, tenderly puts it to one side with his naked foot." <br /><br />Kandy, Toulet remarked, is like England of fifty years previously, large simple houses with verandas, nothing Victorian about ther style. The people he met at the hotel were old-fashioned gentlemen, completely unlike (Joseph) Chamberlain, which made him reflect on the distance that separated Dickens and Thackeray from Kipling and Rider Haggard! <br /><br />The stay in Kandy was brief. They were back in Colombo on April 22nd, to embark on the <i>Dupleix </i>for Calcutta. The pair arrived in Pondichery, on the east coast of India, on April 25th – a Pondichery miserable, degraded, teeming, redeemed only by a porcelain blue sky at sunset. </span><div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />After Pondicherry, the two travellers made a quick excursion through India by the Coromandel coast to Calcutta, then Benares (Vārānasi), Agra and Delhi by Ahmadabad to Bombay. <br /><br />They arrived in Calcutta on April 28th. The heat was oppressive – 58oC. Despite that they visited th Botanic Gardens and admired the snakes and the tigers. On the 29th they arrived in Benares at 11.00 p.m. The Indian landscape, what they saw of it at Benares, was "a sky the colour of tin, a kind of metallic dust which eats up the colour of everything, which settles far and wide on a confusion of temples and mosques with rickety steps and domes in ruin, and amongst all that, thousands of emaciated Hindoos bathing or praying. . . two or three dead bodies nearly burned away over a slow fire at the foot of some marble steps." </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />Benares smelled of death. There were monkeys in the white marble temples, cows in the golden temples, and all around the white and gold domes in the shape of closed umbrellas. <br />The heat was so intense that Toulet was prostrated with sunstroke, and when he came too found that he was “deaf as a Pole.” Sailland went so far as to stick his fingers in his ears, to no avail. With Toulet unable to hear, and Sailland unable to speak English, the pair paid over their money to be conducted to the French consulate. Instead of this, their guides brought them to the Ganges and had them strip off and bathe in the sacred but unhealthy water! <br /><br />On Saturday, May 2nd, the pair visited the Taj Mahal, both during the day and by moonlight. On Sunday they journeyed from Agra to Delhi, where next day they visited the Red Fort and Great Mosque (the Dewan-e-khas and Jama Musjid) before taking the evening train for Bombay. <br /><br />Nearing Ahmadabad, Toulet, on the advice of Sailland, ordered lunch by telegram. "We were gloriously received," he says, "by people who were waving fans made of feathers. And the eggs were fresh but a little dear, so that we hardly had any money left and we had to live after that on a pot of jam which came from Hué and a bottle of cognac which we had bought at Hanoï. That lasted two days and we were sizzling in a train so hot that even the black leather of the seats and the pig-skin of our valises were crying out for rain; but Curnonsky simply because he was hungry. Whilst I was stirring up his memory by talking to him about marrow patties and Rhône wine, India, with its dry mud and crumbling temples, was flying past the windows. Finally, unable to contain himself any longer, he brought his fist down on the hinged table and cried: 'For G..'s sake ! I'm in the habit of eating beefsteak, I am.' " <br /><br />On Thursday May 7th they finally arrived in Bombay after a train journey of 58 hours. On Sunday they embarked on the <i>Tonkin </i>of the <i>Messageries Maritimes</i>. Some difficulties with their baggage were followed by a visit to the doctor because of concerns about the plague, but at last the intrepid voyagers were on their way home. <br /><br /><i>Lettres à Madame Bulteau, p. 1209, En vue de Marseille, 25th May 1903. </i><br />“When we embarked at Bombay, Sailland and I, we had between us 5fr. 50. Since I had broken a window in the hotel, I was extremely anxious that it would be added to the bill, as perhaps window glass is very expensive in Bombay… As for Kurne, he is well. The idea that he will have to return to work is making him melancholy, which he calls “missing Indochina”. I believe that he especially misses the 18 hours a day that he slept at Hanoï. India was less kind, he had to get up, take trains, pack his baggage, everything to be done in a temperature that a lobster, even after cooking, would have thought excessive.” <br /><br />What Toulet failed to relate to Madame Bulteau was a further reason for Kurne missing Indochina, a tale that emerged in the <i>Commentaires du Night Cap</i>: <br /><br /><i>« Vous pouvez même dire, Whynot, que, moyennant le versement d'une dot fabuleuse de cinq cents piastres, vous fûtes pendant cinq lunes l'heureux seigneur et locataire, de Mme Ti Nam, qui passait, non sans raison pour la plus jolie congaï d'Haïphong. »</i></span></div>
Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-32305575492931796322019-10-11T10:51:00.003-07:002020-03-25T13:07:23.365-07:00Indo-China, Part 1, November 1902 - March 1903<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">In
November 1902 Toulet and Curnonsky embarked on a six-month tour of Indochina. A
report on the Hanoï exhibition and World Fair<sup><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1</span></sup> was the excuse. Henri
Dartiguenave (<i>Les Nouvelles Littéraires,</i> 23, ii, 1929) claimed that “Toulet,
with Curnonsky, </span><span style="line-height: 107%;">undertook
the trip to Indo-China in connexion with a Parisian newspaper on the occasion
of the Exhibition in 1900”. Jacques </span><span style="line-height: 107%;">Dyssord
claimed that there was an expectation of riches (wasn’t Montpezat, there since
1894, and working on his own behalf from 1898, already rolling in gold!) or at
least a good quality “bénares”.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 107%;">Notes
on the voyage appeared in <i>Le Damier</i>,
May 1905 (Aller et retour) and <i>L’Ermitage</i>
in March 1906 (Carnets de voyage) <i>Chroniques
parisiennes</i> appeared in 1904 in <i>L’Echo
du Tonkin.</i> </span><span style="line-height: 107%;">Curnonsky relates
some of their adventures in <i>Commentaires du Night Cap</i>, published in <i>Le
Journal</i> in 1911, calling himself “Whynot”
and Toulet, “Corzébien”.<span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><sup><span style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 107%;">1</span></sup><span style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 107%;">Organised by Paul Doumer, the Hanoï exhibition
was open from November 1902 to January 1903. It proclaimed the great progress
made in Indochina in the previous 4 years, since Doumer’s appointment as </span><span style="background: white; line-height: 107%;">Governor-General of
French Indochina</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 107%;">. Upon his
arrival the colonies were losing millions of francs each year so Doumer
introduced taxes on </span><span style="background: white; line-height: 107%;">opium</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 107%;">, wine and the salt. He
established Indochina as a market for French products and a source of
investment by French businessmen. Doumer set about creating the infrastructure
appropriate to a French colony in. Indochina, especially in </span><span style="background: white; line-height: 107%;">Hanoï</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 107%;">, the capital. The </span><span style="background: white; line-height: 107%;">Long Bien Bridge</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 107%;"> linking Hanoï and Haiphong was among
large-scale projects built during his term. It was built in 1899-1902 by the
architects Daydé & Pillé of Paris, and opened in 1903. Before North
Vietnam's independence in 1954, it was called the <i>Paul-Doumer Bridge</i>.<br />
<br />
(</span><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 107%;">On 6 May 1932, Paul Doumer was in Paris at the opening of a book
fair at the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild, talking to the author Claude
Farrère. Suddenly several shots were fired by Paul Gorguloff, a mentally
unstable Russian émigré. Two of the shots hit Doumer, at the base of
the skull and in the right armpit. Farrère wrestled with the assassin before
the police arrived. Doumer is the only French president to die of a gunshot
wound.<br />
Andre Maurois was an eyewitness to the assassination, having come to the
book fair to autograph copies of his book, and later described the scene in his
autobiography, "Call No Man Happy". As Maurois notes, because the
President was assassinated at a meeting of writers, it was decided that writers
- Maurois himself among them - should stand guard over his body while he lay in
state at the Elysée.<span style="background: white;">)</span></span></span><span style="background: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">In
Toulet’s notes on the expedition, he refers in the very first paragraphs to a
Hayashi kakemono and to the fashion for bonsai trees that hailed from that
exasperating Lilliput that was Japan – almost the sole reference to that
country despite the fact that he must have visited it. Be that as it may, on
November 2<span style="font-size: x-small;">nd</span> the pair left Marseilles on board the <i>Ville de La Ciotat</i> of
the Messageries Maritimes, whereupon Curnonsky lost no time in getting on
familiar terms with both passengers and crew. Apart from some brief notes on the
antics of the passengers, Toulet’s first notes were written from Port-Said on
November 7<sup>th</sup> and <o:p></o:p></span>then
off Aden, remarking again on the passengers, and also on the porpoises and
flying-fish. Columbo followed, as much a disappointment as Singapore was later
to prove. Toulet’s disapprobation was more for the British colonial
architecture than for the countryside, the horror of the Victorian style,
gothic terraces and Ionic columns of reinforced concrete. The overwhelming
heat, and the overcharging as he saw it at the post office, by the rickshaw
drivers, the barmen, the currency changers all left a sour taste.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Although he doesn’t mention Malacca, neither in his correspondence nor
in his Journal, it is likely that Toulet
stopped off there. The evidence is in Giraudoux’s novel, <i>Suzanne and the
Pacific</i>, in which Toulet features and Curnonsky as his right hand man.
Toulet, Giraudoux claims, spent a thousand piastres on lobsters so that he
could drop them into the aquarium at Malacca just to see the octopus snap them
up in their suckers and return the carapace empty. It sounds a likely anecdote,
probably retailed on their return by Curnonsky.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">By 23rd November they were off Singapore, comical and ugly, built by the British. (The following September he was dreaming again of Singapore, a Singapore more acceptable, he says, than the burning and glaring horror he experienced with its waters like metal). It seems to have been a brief landfall, because on 24th November he is writing of Saigon and his first impressions on Indochina, a green land of flat rice-paddies, and violet bougainvillea to enliven the shadows.<br />The pair were now on the <i>Gironde</i>, and not having a cabin, Toulet stayed in the bathroom, leaving the shower running to alleviate the heat. He describes with evident approval the local architecture, visible via the porthole, built of fired brick, and red as girls’ chignons. <br />After Da Nang (Tourane in French colonial terms), the next entry in the Journal is merely dated 1903. But in 1903 they were in the bay of Ha Long, a landscape so Chinese in character it reminded him of a garden constructed by a giant mandarin, half-submerged in the sea, reminding Toulet of a marine version of Karnak, and just a few hours from Haiphong. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It may have been there, or more likely in Saigon, that the voyagers spent Christmas. There is no mention of it as such, just a reference to the Asiatic winters spent by the fire reading old copies of the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes,</i> or English adventure stories, far from the “glaring oppressiveness of this port of Cochinchina …and the pewter sky that hangs over the teeming ant-heap of Cholon” – in Toulet’s time an independent town, now a district of Saigon and considered the largest Chinatown in the world by area.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In
commenting on the Tonkin landscape, (the name used since 1883 for the French
colonial Tonkin protectorate, a constituent territory of French
Indochina) Toulet recalls the fields of home, the reapers lying under the shade
of a plane trees, and Toulet waiting in ambush behind a hedge to kiss the the
harvesters returning from the well - the subject matter of Contrerime XXXI.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A
Chinese parade at Haiphong caught his eye, with dancers, children riding
miniature horses, floats, firecrackers,
and fakirs with cheeks pierced by enormous needles, for the most part stoical
except for one misfortunate who looked as if her had been to the dentist, with
a cloth held to his mouth to muffle his cries. The final figure was a toothless
crone, her cheeks pierced through and through, waxen in her bloody shroud as if
taking part in her own funeral procession.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In February
Toulet was in north-east Tonkin, where he visited the Ky-Lua caves, near Lạng
Sơn. He does not describe them, only relating with ill-concealed glee that the
most serious member of his group split the top of his head on a
stalactite. (The two caves, well
illuminated, with Buddhist altars, are the Tam Thanh Cave and the Nhi Thanh
Cave.) He claims to have travelled from Sơn
Tây, 35 km west of Hanoï, to Đồng
Đăng by rickshaw, a distance of some 200 kilometres. Perhaps he took a rickshaw
only to Hanoï, as the Hanoï - Đồng Đăng rail link was inaugurated on 1900. Đồng Đăng is within a few kilometres of
the Friendship Pass border crossing, one of three main border
crossings with China. It was built in the early Ming dynasty with the
name of "South Suppressing Pass" or Zhennan
Pass (Zhennanguan). Toulet knew it as the China Gate - Porte de Chine. He
found the place full of sacks of rice, presented by the Governor of Indochina
to the Chinese Marshal Sou, military chief of Guangxi province, a regular
payment for keeping Chinese bandits under control and on his side of the
frontier.</span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/null" name="_Hlk21174432"><span style="background: rgb(248 , 249 , 250); color: #222222; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The
scene shows the arrival at the “Porte de Chine” of the military commander of
Guangxi, Marshal Su Yuan Chuan [Su Yuanchun] and his official entourage on 16
July 1900. The large main gate, located behind the small outer gatehouse, survives
today as a heritage building near today’s Friendship Pass.</span></span></a><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Toulet was back in Hanoï for Mardi Gras, (Tuesday February 24th ) as he
diverts into a longish narrative of a night spent in an opium den.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Hoan Kiem (Returned Sword) Lake, covering 12 hectares (30 acres), is
possibly the most popular place in Hanoï.
There is a small, four-tier pagoda on a small island at the south end –
Thap Rua, the Turtle Tower. One of Hanoï’s
most iconic attractions, it was constructed in 1886 to commemorate a local folk
hero, Le Loi, who had freed the Vietnamese from Chinese forces back in 1425.<br />
One evening Toulet and Curnonsky, in a schoolboy prank (Toulet was 35,
Curnonsky 30!) and out of sheer boredom, decided to paint it. Here is Toulet’s
account of the adventure, in one of his <i>Letters to himself</i>, on a postcard from Tourane (Da Nang) depicting Hanoï lake,
and dated 2 April 1903; and repeated in his Journal with just “Hanoï</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, 1903” as date and location:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">TOULET, Hanoï, 1903<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>To oneself. Dear Mr. Toulet, let me tell you the travails
of a pagoda. Formerly a daring scholar had it "adorned" with a
cast-iron reduction of Bartholdi's statue of Liberty. Another city councilor,
better informed, removed La Liberté (a rather ordinary phenomenon) and
replaced it with a Chinese gable. It was then that someone painted the whole a
delicate chamois shade (buff, camel, ecru) that you could have admired if you
had come with us in Indochina. But, one night, in our boredom, Sailland and I took
a boat and a pot of indigo, and painted the unfortunate monument blue.</i></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglffwZujMeqsJSMWmVZPbKed_8-KeEpm8wf3bg1WpkA5Y9JMe4A81iYOSIDwdnBVWSptOqdRLfKk-EweMYIEkHFn8rMxiSH8ueuRB5jdhzu9KH3D8mtvuYay9rGKdDiFKKuWeDe0L2cQ/s1600/Turtle+Tower.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglffwZujMeqsJSMWmVZPbKed_8-KeEpm8wf3bg1WpkA5Y9JMe4A81iYOSIDwdnBVWSptOqdRLfKk-EweMYIEkHFn8rMxiSH8ueuRB5jdhzu9KH3D8mtvuYay9rGKdDiFKKuWeDe0L2cQ/s400/Turtle+Tower.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>The city were quite surprised the next day; and, numbering 102,000
inhabitants (plus the floating population), assembled on the edge of the lake. Came
a shower: everyone went home. But the indigo took advantage of the moisture to
mix with the red layer of buff, and when the populace returned the pagoda had
become purple like an amethyst. After night fell the indigo, continuing its
unspeakable manoeuvres, reached the lowest yellow layer; after which the pagoda
became green and the town Hanoï insane.</i></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">The pair were in Manilla in early March. Toulet’s brief
<i>Journal</i> entry for February 28<sup>th</sup> is labelled “Pr</span><span style="line-height: 107%;">è</span><span style="line-height: 107%;">s Manille”; and his
March 3rd <i>Journal</i> entry states that he had arrived (“me voici </span><span style="line-height: 107%;">à</span><span style="line-height: 107%;"> Manille”). </span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Francis Carco mentions, in <i>Memoires d’une autre vie</i>,
that Léon Barthou gave him a little diary of Toulet’s in which he had noted
brief impressions, including this: “<i>1903, debarked at Manila, a Spanish town
with Yankee signs. Extraordinary fuss with the customs. Promenade round the
“Luneta” and the sea beneath a fading violet sky.”</i></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The next entry in his </span><i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Jo</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">urnal</span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> is
labelled “Near Hong-Kong, March 9</span><sup style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">”,
in which Toulet recounts his visit to the Philippines, and wonders what on
earth Sailland and himself were doing there. In this note he refers to being
there on a Sunday, which was most probably March 1</span><sup style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">st</sup><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, and heading back to Hong-Kong on the </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Ho</i></span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">ï</span><span style="line-height: 107%;">hao</span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"> – a boat he describes as suspect, having been
refloated after sinking in China. But he doesn’t state in this entry that he
was on the <i>Ho</i></span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">ï</span><span style="line-height: 107%;">hao</span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"> - could he have been on the <i>Rosetta Maru</i>
? (See March 11<sup>th</sup> entry). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">
Of Hong-Kong he had little to say, taking up most of the entry with an anecdote
about a Japanese colonel, and prefacing his tale with “<i>On reproche aux
Japonais de ne point nous aimer</i>”; which may indicate that he had already
visited Japan.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">In
the 11th March entry in his Journal, aboard the <i>San-Cheun</i> off Canton (Guangzhou),
Toulet lists the various departures made since leaving Hanoï; the lack of
organisation is evident - at Haïphong, there were no rooms available; the pair
spent four hours in a sampan, under the influence of opium, searching for their
boat which they were unable to recognise. Manilla, detained by customs, and
dragging themselves from pillar to post looking for a hotel. Arrival at
Hong-Kong to find the hotels full and obliged to sleep on board the <i>Rosetta
Maru</i>, whose purser would not accept the local currency. Arrival at Canton –
once again the hotels were full up, the
pair were obliged to sleep in an ambulance. They left Canton with the intention
of going to Macao but the boat was fully booked so they ended up back in
Hong-Kong! </span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></span>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">(Not
all of their experiences in Canton were disorganised. Fifty years later,
Curnonsky reminisced: “…the great Chinese Ignace Bou, who we knew from Canton,
and who spoke very pure French, was able to tell me at the end of an excellent
dinner, aboard a flowery boat…: <i>Your friend Toulet has a very bad temper,
but so even!</i> ... As we had proclaimed, Toulet and I, our enthusiasm for
Chinese cuisine, justified by an admirable swallows nest soup with and a
delicious lacquered duckling: <i>Yes! </i>said Ignace Bou<i>, I raise this
glass of champagne in a toast to the only two peoples who have created the two
most beautiful things in the world, cuisine and etiquette!”)</i></span></span></div>
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</span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It would seem therefore that Toulet was in Japan either between 11<sup>th</sup> and 21<sup>st</sup>
March; or between March 3<sup>rd</sup> and March 9<sup>th</sup>, which seems too
brief a timescale, unless he sailed directly from the Philippines. But that is
unlikely as he states in a letter to Mme Bulteau dated 28 March that he sailed
from Manilla to China, with no mention of Japan. (The <i>Rosetta Maru</i> was a
Japanese boat, of the <i>Toyo Kaisen Kabushiki Kaisha</i>, which certainly had
routine sailings between Japan and Hong Kong.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">I</span><span lang="EN-US">n
his <i>Letters to Himself</i>, dated </span><i>Ho</i><i>ï</i><i>hao,</i>
22 March 1903, when off the island of Haïnan, he wrote on a post-card of the <i>Bronze Horse
Temple Nagasaki</i>, so he must have been there by then. <span lang="FR">He starts off with “<i>Que n’ai-je, tr</i></span><i><span lang="FR">è</span></i><i><span lang="FR">s honoré monsieur, ce cheval de bronze </span></i><i><span lang="FR">à ma portée</span></i><span lang="FR">.</span><span lang="FR">” </span>He had left Quantchéou-Wan (now Guangzhouwan), a territory on the
Luichow Peninsula in southern Canton (Guangdong) province the previous day, finding the French military
installations praisworthy while wondering if there were more dug-outs than
inhabitants – were it not for <i>“the
multitude of fishing boats where the innumerable Chinese live out a fishy
existence.”</i> Japan was on his mind even before he set sail from France.
Travelling by train among the vineyards of Guienne, a siren from the port
brought to mind a kakemono in the Hayashi sale* where <i>“perched on a rock, a
species of vulture with a blue plumage on his belly, hungry watcher of the sea,
seemed with his golden eye to weep that
he too could not eat nor love his fill. But the ladies preferred to buy these tortuous little trees, Dodone or
Libane, of that exasperating Lilliput that is Japan….”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span lang="FR" style="line-height: 107%;">*</span><span lang="FR" style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 107%;">Hayashi,
Tadamasa. Objets d'art du Japon et de la Chine; peintures, livres. Don't la
vente aura lieu du lundi 27 janvier au samedi ler février 1902 inclus, dans les
galeries de MM. </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 107%;">Durand-Ruel. 1902</span></span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 107%;">.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">His dissatisfaction is also expressed in this ironic
<i>Letter</i>, dated Canton, March 1903: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“<i>How right you were, unlike me, my dear friend, of
not going to Japan. Your systematic mind, the depth of which is not equalled,
if I dare to write thus, but by the very breadth that it presents, would have
been blunted, in a way, by the restless frivolity of this edgy race that is
dying to imitate Europe before understanding it ...”.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In <i>Comme une fantaisie</i>, published in 1918, Toulet has M.
l'Églantin, the sentimental professor of geography, refers to some quaint
Japanese habits :<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“Japan is a rainy country, where you can admire a mountain like a cocked
hat (Fujiyama). The inhabitants are brave, and they like the patent leather
boots that usually, going barefoot, they carry at the end of a stick. An
American named Loefcadio who, during his lifetime, taught English at a
Pomeranian elementary school, has told about them a thousand cheeky stories
taken for the most part from the Jesuits of the 18<sup>th</sup> century. Thus
he claims that the women bathe without any clothes, in front of their door, in
blue-flowered porcelain bowls. But for a long time they have, thanks to the
Protestant missions, turned to modesty, without, however, becoming lascivious;
which is a hateful contradiction.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">LE JAPON<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">La Jap’, qui raffole, dit-on,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">De chaussure vernie, <br />
Les porte – chacun sa manie – <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Au bout de son bâton.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Ainsi l’éclat les en décore<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sans blesser leurs pieds nus.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Aimsi, sans doute, eût fait Vénus :<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">J’en sais d’autres encore….<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Lafcadio
Hearne wrote a number of books about Japan from 1894 up to 1904, the year of
his death. They garnered great popularity and were much translated. It is
certain Toulet came across them before he set out. About Hearn he seems to have
been somewhat ambivalent, as <b>Contrerime XLIX</b> (first published in 1910 in <i>La
Grande Revue</i>, under the title “Le Foujiyama”) and its earlier variant express.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">J'ai beau trouver bien sympathique<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Feu
Loufoquadio,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Ses Japs en sucre candiot,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Son Bouddha
de boutique ;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">J'aime mieux le subtil schéma,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Sur l'hiver
d' un ciel morne,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">De ton aérien bicorne,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Noble
Foujiyama,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Et tes cèdres noirs, et la source<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Du temple
délaissé,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Qui pleurait comme un coeur blessé,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="FR"> </span>Qui pleurait
sans ressource.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In
1913, the early variant was published in <i>Vers et Prose</i>,
octobre-decembre. In it these lines occur:<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Je n’aime pas – je m’en explique – <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Ce Japon idiot<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Qu’a peint feu
Loufcadio<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Du
sein de l’Amerique.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The
last line is quite untrue, as Hearn moved to Japan in 1890, and remained there for the rest of his life, married the daughter of a Samurai family, had
four children with her, and wrote all his Japanese books there. He may have
become more popular in France due to his enthusiasm for French authors,
translating into English Gérard de Nerval, Anatole France, and most remarkably Pierre
Loti, who was casually racist about the Japanese in some of his writings. One
wonders if Toulet picked up on that, as not only does he not chronicle his
Japanese visit, he is less than flattering about the Japanese he encounters
elsewhere on his trip.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;">Japan
bookends the Indo-China section of Toulet’s Journal. He began with the
“exasperating Lilliput”, and concluded, in October 1910, with a Loti-like memory
of Tokyo:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>“</i></span><i><span style="color: black;">One
evening while in Japan, the moths were banging against the coloured paper
lantern. It was that of my three neighbours, one of whom was always dressed in
blue and and another nude. But the third, in pink, was watching<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>through the bars of her window the moon play
in the bay of Shinagawa.”</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The
22 March note written aboard the <i>Ho</i></span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;">ï</span></i><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;">hao</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">
on the Japanese postcard was followed by another where he views the town of Ho</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">ï</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">hao (Haikou) on the northern shore of Hainan while aboard the
eponymous steamer.</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">They
sailed west, at Pakho</span><span lang="EN-US">ï (now
Beihai), sweaty and smelly, on March 23<sup>rd</sup>,
to reach Haïphong on March 26<sup>th</sup>, when they left by the night ferry
for Tourane, arriving on the 28<sup>th</sup>. He left for Hué on Sunday, March 29th by the steam boat <i>Thuan-an</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the
letter to Mme Bulteau dated 28<sup>th</sup> March, within view of Haïphong,
Toulet says: « Tous ces paquebots, où je passe mes jours, et hélas, mes nuits,
depuis cinq semaines, sont fort abominables… Il y a eu un mois et demi à
Hanoï de pluie, de brouillard et de moisissure qui aurait rendu un officier
anglais neurasthénique. Vous jugez si j’y ai échappé ; et malgré un beau
feu de bois qui brûlait sans cesse à côté de mon lit, j’ai passé là
quelques-unes des plus horribles heures de ma vie.»<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At six a.m.
on<span lang="EN-US"> March 31<sup>st</sup> Toulet took a steam sampan from Hué to tour
various sites, including the tombs of Gia Long – where he was received by an
elderly grand-daughter of the Emperor - and Tự Đức . </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The tomb of Gia Long (officially Thien
Tho Tomb) is a royal tomb of the Nguyễn Dynasty which is located in
the Hương Thọ commune of Hương Trà district, some 20 kilometres south
of the city of Huế. Gia Long ( 1762 –1820), was the first Emperor of
the Nguyễn dynasty of Vietnam. Unifying what is now modern
Vietnam in 1802, he founded the Nguyễn dynasty, the last of the Vietnamese
dynasties. The tomb of Tự Đức, officially Khiêm Tomb, is located in Huế, Vietnam. It was
built for the Nguyễn Emperor Tự Đức and took three years to build
from 1864–1867. It is divided into a Temple Area and a Tomb Area.</span></span></div>
</div>
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Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-20718422597790626602019-05-11T12:39:00.001-07:002019-05-11T12:39:43.629-07:00Contrerime LXVI<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Sur l'océan couleur de fer <br /> Pleurait un choeur immense <br />Et ces longs cris dont la démence <br /> Semble percer l'enfer. <br /><br />Et puis la mort, et le silence <br /> Montant comme un mur noir. <br />... Parfois au loin se laissait voir <br /> Un feu qui se balance.</i><br /><br /><br /><b>Translation</b><br /><br />On the ocean’s steely swell<br /> an immense chorus wailed<br /> and the frenzied cries exhaled<br /> seem to transfix hell. <br /><br /> And then death, and the deathly pall<br /> building like a black wall. <br />... meantime a swaying light <br /> shone afar in the night.</span><div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Notes:</b> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">(Published in <i>Les Marges</i>, december
1912) : this is about the Titanic, that went down in April 15, 1912. The
“feu qui se balance" probably refers to the <i>Californian</i>, the
nearest ship to the Titanic, that did not at first hear the alarm (it was the <i>Carpathia</i>
that arrived sooner).</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-4987964301261856512019-05-11T11:48:00.001-07:002019-05-11T11:48:32.019-07:00Contrerime LXIX<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Quand l' âge, à me fondre en débris, </i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i> Vous-même aura glacée <br />Qui n'avez su de ma pensée <br /> Me sacrer les abris ; <br /><br />Qui, du saut des boucs profanée, <br /> Pareille sécherez <br />À l' herbe dont tous les attraits, <br /> C' est une matinée ; <br /><br />Quand vous direz : " où est celui <br /> De qui j' étais aimée ? " <br />Embrasserez-vous la fumée <br /> D' un nom qui passe et luit ?</i></span><div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Translation</b></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /><br />When age, that crumbles me to pieces,<br /> You will have turned to ice <br />Who had not thought to recognize<br /> The sanctuary of my thesis;<br /><br />Profaned by mincing goats, you too<br /> Will shrivel swiftly as<br />The splendour in the grass<br /> That won’t outstay the dew.<br /><br />When you ask: "in what place seems<br /> He who loved me most?",<br />Will you then embrace the ghost <br /> Of a name that passes and gleams?</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Notes: </b></div>
This was first published in <i>Burdigala </i>1913 under the title “Quand vous serez bien vieille” - cf Ronsard 5th ode to Hélène de Surgères:<div>
<br /><div>
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><i>Quand vous serez bien
vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,<br />
Assise aupres du feu, devidant et filant,<br />
Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous esmerveillant :<br />
Ronsard me celebroit du temps que j'estois belle.<br />
<br />
Lors, vous n'aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,<br />
Desja sous le labeur à demy sommeillant,<br />
Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s'aille resveillant,<br />
Benissant vostre nom de louange immortelle.<br />
<br />
Je seray sous la terre et fantaume sans os :<br />
Par les ombres myrteux je prendray mon repos :<br />
Vous serez au fouyer une vieille accroupie,<br />
<br />
Regrettant mon amour et vostre fier desdain.<br />
Vivez, si m'en croyez, n'attendez à demain :<br />
Cueillez dés aujourd'huy les roses de la vie.</i></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">And of course one cannot omit W.B. Yeats:</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i>When you are old and grey and full of
sleep,<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i>And nodding by the fire, take down this
book,<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i>And slowly read, and dream of the soft look<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i>Your eyes had once, and of their shadows
deep;<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i>How many loved your moments of glad grace,<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i>And loved your beauty with love false or
true,<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i>But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i>And loved the sorrows of your changing
face;<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i>And bending down beside the glowing bars,<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i>Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i>And paced upon the mountains overhead<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i>And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></div>
Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-25086312902595687532019-04-22T05:21:00.002-07:002019-04-22T05:21:54.309-07:00Commentaires du Night Cap - Les jeux sont faits<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is the text, accompanied by an image, of the article published in <i>Le Journal</i> on 19.10.1911, under the byline Curnonsky in the series <i>Commentaires du Night Cap</i>. It throws some light on Toulet's familiarity with the Casino, and on his skill - or lack of it - at cards.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Cg3pLLrfGLoRZZOK7QhhyphenhyphenMlFnmHzRN6B0ilYiXUvmI5VjMf-FOwT5RJvHpwSzOwOi8E0J1swVvT4RGG8ZiApyVyztZHskDeY6Gt5ZlGGVUO8sXi22PK-ZFlBKWyHEJzQrhCc2Jw5_g/s1600/Le_Journal__19.10.1911+Les+jeux+sont+faits.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="417" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Cg3pLLrfGLoRZZOK7QhhyphenhyphenMlFnmHzRN6B0ilYiXUvmI5VjMf-FOwT5RJvHpwSzOwOi8E0J1swVvT4RGG8ZiApyVyztZHskDeY6Gt5ZlGGVUO8sXi22PK-ZFlBKWyHEJzQrhCc2Jw5_g/s640/Le_Journal__19.10.1911+Les+jeux+sont+faits.jpg" width="164" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /><br />Les Commentaires du "Night Cap" <br /><br /><b>Les jeux sont faits. </b><br /><br />Au « Night Cap », le bar qui fait le coin de la place de l’Entente-Cordiale et de la rue Alphonse-Allais… à deux pas de l'Opéra. <br />Quatre heures du matin. Une seule table reste occupée par cinq clients sérieux qui viennent là, chaque nuit, échanger quelques idées qu'ils se plaisent à croire «générales », et, parfois, quand le petit jour bleuit les vitres… quelques propos aigres et quelques injures sans résultat. <br />Un noctambule averti reconnaîtrait facilement : <br />TEDDY WHYNOT, Angevin jovial et ruiné (de son vrai nom, Maurice-André Monillon) que se amis ont affublé d'un pseudonyme anglo-saxon sans que ni lui ni eux aient jamais su pourquoi. Chroniqueur au <i>Quotidien</i>. <br />P.-J.-T. CORZÉBIEN, dit « Le Jeune Homme à l'Amer », dipsomane désabusé, fils d'alcoolique, alcoolique lui-même ; met son orgueil à toujours penser le contraire des autres, ce qui lui permet quelquefois de penser tout court. <br />ADRIEN BIDAREL, dit « Mèlé-Cass », fils des grands distilleries Bidarel-Chavard et Cie, héritier présomptif d'une de nos plus importantes « firmes » nationales. S'intéresse à tous les sports et à Mlle Margarine de Fécamp. <br />LACOUCHE DE PONTAYAC, ou « Inexorable Anecdotier » Propriétaire d'une immense concession en Inde-Chine. A beaucoup vu et beaucoup retenu, d'où lui vient sa manie irréductible de raconter des histoires auxquelles il finit par croire lui-même. <br />LE COMTE DE BRÉCHAIN, colonel de cavalerie en retraite. Le plus jeune des « cinq » malgré ses soixante-quatre ans...qui en paraissent à peine cinquante. Excellent homme, prend tout au sérieux… même les « petites femmes ». Représente la Tradition. <br />Ces messieurs causent en attendant le sommeil et Mlle Margarine de Fécamp qui BIDAREL a plaquée tout à l’heure chez Maxim's, après avoir « rompu » pour la vingt-sixième fois. Personne (même Adrien) ne doute que la blonde enfant n'arrivera tard ou tôt. <br /><br />TEDDY WHYNOT - Alors, on boit jusqu'à l’aurore, ? <br />BIDAREL. —Non… jusqu'à la garde…la garde montante. Je vous répète que Margarine sera là dans dix minutes. <br />TEDDY WHYNOT. — Tu le répètes même tous les quarts d’heures. Moi, je m'en vais. <br />LACOUCHE DE PONTAYAC — Rappelez-vous, jeune homme, le principe de notre immortel Raoul Ponchon : « Il ne faut jamais se quitter sans prendre le dernier ». <br />CORZÉBIEN, — Je sais un autre axiome de Ponchon qui me permet en ce moment de considérer le fâcheux terme d'octobre sous l'aspect de l'éternité : « Il vaut mieux ne pas payer que d'avoir des histoires ! » <br />TEDDY WHYNOT. – Il ne faudrait payer que les dettes de jeu: ce sont les seules qu'on fasse avec quelque plaisir. <br />LACOUCHE DE PONTAYAC — Vous ne dites pas cela, je pense, pour ce brave Francfortois qui fut la proie de trois aigrefins ? <br />TEDDY WHYNOT. — Mais il a dû s'amuser follement ! S'il est une chose plus douce au monde que de gagner de l'argent, c'est de le perdre…M. Goescher a vécu quelques mois dans la compagnie de gens délicieux. Ces « grecs », d'ailleurs Italiens, qui cachaient des portées dans leurs souliers. <br />LACOUCHE DE PONTAYAC — Peuh ! des fourberies d'escarpins, comme dirait. <br />CORZÉBIEN. — Il l’a même déjà dit. Tout a été dit, Pontayac. Et vous venez tard. <br />TEDDY WHYNOT. — Il n'empêche que je me suis follement amusé à lire les comptes rendus du procès en correctionnelle où furent débinés les petits trucs de ces messieurs : les monocles à crochets, les porte-cigarettes à miroirs, et surtout cette symbolique poire en caoutchouc. Ah ! ce sont de vrais maîtres ! <br />LE COMTE DE BRÉCHAIN, <i>éclatant</i>. — Des maîtres ! Mais vous n'avez jamais joué, mon pauvre enfant ! Des maîtres, ces vulgaires filous ! Des savates, monsieur, des savates ! De mon temps, oui, il y avait des tricheurs - et qui fondaient leur industrie sur la connaissance des hommes. Vous rappelez-vous Lardichon ? <br />LACOUCHE DE PONTAYAC — Lardichon ? Mais je l'ai connu intimement Figurez-vous qu'une fois, à Pau… <br />CORZÉBIEN. — Je sais. Vous m'avez déjà raconté. <br />LACOUCHE DE PONTAYAC. — Avec cet animal-là, pas moyen de placer une histoire.<br /> Il se tait à tue-tête et s'absorbe dans la confection d’un gin-soda. <br />LE COMTE DE BRÉCHAIN, — Oui, sans doute, vous, Pontayac, vous devez vous rappeler Lardichon, puisque vous frisez les quarante-cinq ans. Mais ces messieurs sont trop jeunes. Ah ! je puis dire qu'il m'a bien amusé, ce philosophe-là. C'était un psychologue : il n'avait pas besoin de tout un attirail pour… travailler. Ainsi, son fameux « coup de l'orangeade » - Mais tout le monde le connaît! <br />CORZÉBIEN, <i>par politesse</i>, BIDAREL et TEDDY WHYNOT. — Mais non, pas du tout! <br />LE COMTE DE BRÉCHAIN, <i>méfiant</i>. Non ? Vous voulez me faire marcher ?...<br /> Ça a couru tous les cercles! Enfin, puisque vous insistez ! Eh bien, il était simple et génial, ce « coup de l'orangeade ». Mon Lardichon, qui était brûlé partout, fréquentait alors d'innomables tripots, où la clientèle n'était même pas mêlée. Quand il s'était bien assuré que la majorité des joueurs avaient des figures sinistres, il prenait une banque et se mettait à tailler négligemment. La ponte une fois allumée par quelques petits coups habilement malheureux, il donnait soudain <i>huit </i>à droite et <i>huit </i>à gauche, et s'adjugeait une bûche pitoyable. Les deux tableaux abattaient. Sur quoi, mon Lardichon tournait le dos à la table et, s'adressant à un garçon, lui commandait une orangeade, une orangeade bien servie, avec très peu d'eau et deux pailles, dans un grand verre. Pendant qu'il avait le dos tourné, les pontes sans scrupule, et sûrs de leur coup, se livraient à une <i>poussette </i>acharnée et doublaient ou triplaient leur mise à qui mieux mieux. Alors, Lardichon, revenant à sa taille, s'excusait auprès des joueurs. <br />CORZÉBIEN, <i>continuant</i>. — Et abattait un neuf tardif, mais triomphal ! <br />LE COMTE DE BRÉCHAIN, <i>décontenancé</i>.'— Comment ! vous le saviez! Je le disais bien que vous me faisiez marcher ! Et je vous attraperais si je n'apercevais pas notre charmante Margarine. <br />MARGARINE DE FÉCAMP, <i>jolie comme les Normandes quand elles se mêlent d'être jolies. Cliché 4,616 bis. Un teint éclatant, une auréole de cheveux paille, un petit nez droit, aux ailes mobiles, d'immenses yeux verts ponctués d'or, des épaules divines. Magnifique toilette de chez Cazaloué</i>. — Bon matin, mes enfants. <br />BIDAREL, <i>sévère</i>. — Je ne t'attendais plus, ma petite ! <br />MARGARINE. — Non ? Tu ne faisais que ça, mon pauvre Mêlé-Cass ! (<i>Elle s'assied et commande un milk-punch, parmi des protestations générales ; puis, sans faire aucune allusion à sa « rupture » avec Bidarel :</i>) Imaginez-vous, mes agneaux, que je suis venue à pied pour promener mon chien. <br />TEDDY WHYNOT. — Comment ! tu as un chien, à présent ! Où le mets-tu ? <br />MARGARINE. — Le voilà ! Tiens, regarde s'il est joli, le fifi à sa mémère ! <br />C'est un havane : il s'appelle Bock. <br />TEDDY WHYNOT. — Naturellement ! Et par où le fume-t-on ? <br />MARGARINE. — T'es bête! Et, figure-toi, ce satané cabot, il sent tout le monde, excepté moi. Tout à l'heure, j'ai été forcée de le rattraper, rue Royale, dans les jambes d'un vieux monsieur qui m'a demandé son chemin pour aller rue Saint-Florentin. <br />CORZÉBIEN. — A cette heure de nuit ? Un étranger, sans doute ? <br />MARGARINE. — Non : il avait l'accent anglais. Alors, je lui ai dit de suivre la rue Royale et de tourner à droite dans le faubourg Saint-Honoré. A ce moment-là, je me suis aperçue qu'il tenait sa canne de la main gauche. Alors, tu comprends, j'ai été forcée de recommencer toute mon explication. <br />BIDAREL. — Et pourquoi ça, petite ? <br />MARGARINE. — Dam ! puisqu'il est gaucher, s'pas ? c'est tout le contraire ! <br />BIDAREL, <i>attendri</i>. — Embrasse-moi, Rinette, embrasse-moi. Je ne pourrai jamais me brouiller plus d'une heure avec toi ! <br /><i>Silence respectueux et approbatif.</i> <br />LACOUCHE DE PONTAYAC, <i>qui tient à placer son histoire</i>. — Ah ! oui, colonel… je l'ai connu ce Lardichon ! Je l'ai même reconnu, une fois, à Pau, au Cercle britannique, où il s'était faufilé grâce à un déguisement qui le rendait pourtant méconnaissable : il s'était maquillé en vieux professeur norvégien, et il avait ahuri deux bons petits jeunes gens qui lui avaient servi de parrains. J'eus la discrétion de ne pas le trahir. Ce n'est pas mon métier ; et, d'ailleurs, je ne pouvais me défendre d'une certaine sympathie pour ce roi des grecs. Je me contentai de prononcer son nom à voix basse en passant derrière lui, tandis qu'il taillait avec un insolent bonheur. Cinq minutes après, il me rejoignit dans le petit jardin du cercle, me remercia de ne point l'avoir donné et me raconta les plus belles histoires de son répertoire. <br />CORZÉBIEN, <i>inquiet</i>. — Vous n'allez pas nous les redire toutes. <br />LACOUCHE DE PONTAYAC. — Si ! mais pas ce matin. Enfin, Lardichon se dévoila entièrement. si bien que le jour naissant nous trouva attablés dans un petit café de la rue de la Préfecture, lui, moi et deux amis que j'avais amenés pour jouir de sa conversation. Le goût de l'aventure et peut-être quelque diable aussi me poussant, je finis par proposer un petit poker intime. Lardichon se récusa, alléguant que, lorsqu'il verrait des cartes, il ne pourrait pas s'empêcher de travailler. Je lui fis remarquer que nous étions en bras de chemise et que, n'ayant rien dans les mains, rien dans les poches, il aurait fort à faire pour aider la chance… Il se contenta de sourire doucement et finit par se laisser convaincre, à condition que nous jouerions des haricots. La partie commença. Dès le premier « tour de pot », la veine s'attacha à Lardichon, et ne le quitta plus. Enfin, je me trouvai tout à coup à la tête d'un poker de rois, qui autorisait les plus belles espérances… et je me jetai dans une série de relances où Lardichon me suivit sans désemparer. Je me croyais bien maître de la situation, quand mon adversaire, haussant les épaules, abattit sou jeu et dit : « Le coup est nul ! Je ne veux pas travailler avec des amis. Mais voyons, monsieur de Pontayac, vous auriez dû pourtant deviner que j'avais quatre as. » Et il les avait, l'animal ! <br />CORZÉBIEN, <i>excédé</i>. — Lardichon, que j'ai connu aussi, ne m'a jamais dit à moi qu'une seule phrase. Elle demande moins de préparations...mais je la trouve d'une portée, si j'ose ainsi parler, plus générale. Comme je venais de perdre 35,000 francs au casino de X...-sur-Mer, Lardichon, qui pontait à ma droite, me frappa sur l'épaule et me dit simplement : « Ah ! monsieur Corzébien, tant que vous vous obstinerez à prendre le baccara pour un jeu de hasard, vous êtes un homme perdu » <br /><br />CURNONSKY. <br /><br /> </span>Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-38493789206272260802019-04-15T07:36:00.001-07:002019-04-15T07:46:10.192-07:00Commentaires du Night Cap - Réminiscences Jaunes<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">This is the text, accompanied by an image, of the article published in <i>Le Journal</i> on 25.11.1911, under the byline </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">Curnonsky in the series <i>Commentaires du Night Cap</i>. </span></span><br />
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<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-no-proof: no;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Les
Commentaires du Night Cap<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-no-proof: no;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Réminiscences
jaunes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></h2>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Il commence à se faire tôt… cinq heures du matin, peut-être. Laconche de Pontayac s'est enfin tu. — Le barman du « Night Cap » a pris le parti de se faire acheter les journaux qui viennent de paraître. Maurice-André Monillon (dit « Teddy Whynot ») croit devoir insinuer mollement pour la septième fois « qu'il serait peut-être temps d'aller se lever».<br />Mais Corzébien, qui sent, avec son « douzième whisky-soda, les idées et les souvenirs lui remonter en foule, a pris fortement la parole et s'écoute avec déférence. Laconche de Pontayac voudrait bien l’interrompre : mais il trouve pas le joint.<br />Le colonel comte de Brechain se contente d'émettre, à intervalles irréguliers, des monosyllabes approbatifs.<br />CORZÉBIEN. - Il faut avouer que nous avons quelque mérite à reconnaître tous les quatre que nous ne comprenons pas grand’chose à cette révolution chinoise, et cela tient sans doute à ce que nous avons vécu là-bas. Depuis que la Chine est devenue, comme on dit, d'actualité on lit chaque jour des articles étonnants. <br />TEDDY WHYNOT. — Et qui sont de nature à nous désorienter. <br />CORZÉBIEN. - J'ai passé, voilà déjà bientôt huit ans, hélas ! tout un mois délicieux à Canton, avec vous, d'ailleurs, Whynot! Nous n'avions pu trouver place dans aucun des deux hôtels du quartier européen, et le docteur Masse nous avait gracieusement accueillis dans l’hôpital français, qu'il venait de fonder, de sorte ue nous disposions chacun d'une vaste salle, propre et claire, et d'une installation hydrothérapique dont je conserverai le regret toute ma vie.<br />Canton était alors, paraît-il, en révolution. Nous ne nous en sommes jamais aperçus. J'avais découvert, pour ma part, au cercle de Chamine, une collection complet du <i>Magasin Pittoresque...</i><br />LACONCHE DE PONTAYAC. —— Et c'est tout ce que vous avez vu de la Chine ?<br />CORZÉBIEN — Non. Mais j'ai toujours pensé que les récits de voyages et les descriptions de pays lointains gagnent beaucoup à être lus sur place. Cela ne m'empêcha point, d'ailleurs, de lier connaissance avec un Chinois aimable et poli, qui parlait fort bien notre langue.<br />LACONCHE DE PONTAYAC. - Quoi d'étonnant ? Beaucoup de riches Cantonais font le commerce de la soie et vivent en relations constantes avec nos grands <i>fabriciens </i>de Lyon...<br />CORZÉBIEN - - - Je m'en doutais. Et je n’ai jamais en la folle prétention de vous étonner. Si je parle de mon ami Kuan Tseu Wan, c'est que je lui dois d'avoir compris a quel point les Chinois différent de nous et nous restent pourtant si sympathiques, je dirais presque si fraternels... Je me souviens qu'un soir il m'avait invité à dîner sur un <i>bateau fleur</i> avec deux de ses compatriotes et quelques Français de passage.<br />LACONCHE DE PONTAYAC. -— Prenez garde, Corzébien ! Vous allez raconter une histoire !<br />CORZÉBIEN - Non. Kuan Tseu Wan, par un raffinement d'hospitalité, avait retenu tout le restaurant pour que nous fussions bien chez lui…ou plutôt chez nous, et avait commandé en même temps que le repas chinois, un diner à la française... au cas où l’estomac des convives se fût insurgé contre le potage de lait d'amandes, les foies de canard au sucre, les poulets laqués ou les ailerons de requin à Ia frangipane. Mais il se trouva que chacun fit honneur au menu national : les trois Français surent picorer avec des baguettes dans les cinquante ou soixante plats disposés sur la table, et tout se passa pour le mieux dans le meilleur des anciens mondes. Au dessert, Kuan Tseu Wan saisit à deux mains son verre et but à la France et à la, Chine, « comme aux deux plus nobles nations de l'univers ». Nous nous inclinâmes, sans trop de conviction, ne voyant là qu'une de ces politesses dont les Chinois ne sont point avares. <br />» Mais le rusé Cantonais sut deviner restriction. Il sourit malicieusement et-reprit:<br />» — Vous croyez que je ne dis là qu'une banalité aimable. Mais non ! Très sincèrement, je crois que nous sommes les deux premiers peuples du monde…parce que nous sommes les seuls qui aient inventé une politesse et une cuisine. Et ces deux choses-là, résument toute la douceur de vivre.<br />» Il me parut que, pour penser avec un cerveau différent du nôtre, mon ami Kuan Tseu Wan ne pensait déjà pas si mal. Il lut mon approbation dans mes yeux et continua : <br />« - Car la vie est courte et dure à vivre, et rien ne compte ici-bas que ce qui peut nous la rendre plus supportable. Vous êtes très fiers, vous autres, Européens, de votre science et de vos inventions, — comme si nous n'avions pas inventé la poudre! Mais, dites-moi, toutes vos découvertes vous ont-elles rendus plus heureux ? Croyez-vous sentir mieux que vos ancêtres la beauté d'un paysage, la grâce d'une attitude, la mélancolie d'un crépuscule ou le doux sourire du matin sur la mer? Et croyez-vous que, parce qu'il passera des tramways sous ma fenêtre, cela me consolera d'avoir perdu un être aimé ? Et, si j'ai commis une mauvaise action, les sirènes de tous les paquebots couvriront-elles la voix terrible de mon remords ?... Comme l'a dit un de vos anciens sages: « Tout » n'est que signe, et signe dé signe. »<br />Et nous ne vous avons point attendus pour savoir que tout le bonheur de vivre peut tenir dans le regard d'une femme, tout le malheur dans un pli dédaigneux de ses lèvres... »<br />TEDDY WHYNOT. - Ce Kuan Tseu Wan était vraiment un brave homme, et grâce à lui, nous allons enfin pouvoir, avant d'aller nous coucher, parler un peu de petites femmes!<br />LE COMTE DE BRÉCHAIN. . – Je crains que le sujet ne soit un peu épuise et que cela ne fasse dévier l'entretien.<br />TEDDY WHYNOT. — Aussi bien, colonel, je ne veux parler que de petites femmes jaunes! J'en ai connu plusieurs, et qui m'ont donné cette délicieuse impression de je ne sais quelle fraternité obscure.<br />CORZÉBIEN — Vous pouvez même dire, Whynot, que, moyennant le versement d'une dot fabuleuse de cinq cents piastres, vous fûtes pendant cinq lunes l'heureux seigneur et locataire, de Mme Ti Nam, qui passait, non sans raison pour la plus jolie congaï (1) d'Haïphong.<br />TEDDY WHYNOT. — J'ai beaucoup aimé cette gamine jaune, je ne m'en défends point.<br />CORZÉBIEN. — Et la modestie seule vous empêche d'ajouter qu'elle vous le rendait bien. Il me souvient même qu'un soir, où j'étais venu vous rendre visite dans votre « canha », Mme Ti Nam, qui prenait part à notre entretien, vous jeta ses bras nus autour du cou et me dit avec un accent de sincère conviction — et dans son « sabir » un peu spécial : « Li Phalangtsé, li pas vini pou lien!... »<br /> Ce qui pour tous les coloniaux, signifie clairement : « Les Français ne sont pas venus pour rien! »<br />TEDDY WHYNOT. — Je n'eusse point osé rappeler cet aveu dénué d'artifice. Mais il est vrai que nous nous entendions fort bien, Ti Nam et moi, et que la séparation nous fut également cruelle.<br /><i>Invitus invitam</i>… Mais vous savez que ces fleurs exotiques ne se transplantent pas. Il me fallut donc quitter ma petite amie. Je sus qu'un an après mon départ elle s'était remariée, grâce à la dot que je lui avais laissée, avec un brave Annamite qui ne la rendait pas trop malheureuse et ne la corrigeait qu'à bon escient…<br />» Et puis, je ne sais pourquoi, un soir de nostalgie où j'avais touché le fond de cet incurable ennui qui s'exhale des endroits de plaisir, j'écrivis à Ti Nam, chez ses parents, dont j'avais gardé l'adresse, une lettre ardente et triste, où je lui disais qu'aucune femme d'Europe ne la valait… que nulle n'avait pu me consoler d'elle… enfin, des histoires, quoi! Je restai toute une année sans recevoir de réponse, et je pensais un peu moins à Ti Nam, lorsque la poste me remit une grande enveloppe jaune où je reconnus l'écriture enfantine et démesure et de ma jeune veuve. L'enveloppe contenait une lettre et un autre pli cacheté sur lequel était écrit cet avertissement:<i> Lire la lettre, d’abord</i>... Je me conformai à cette prescription. Je ne puis malheureusement vous donner une exacte idée du style bizarre de cette lettre, écrite dans un intraduisible « désespéranto », mélange de français, d'annamite, de pidjinn et d'argot montmartrois. Mais le sens m'en est resté très présent à l'esprit. Ma petite amie me disait en substance — et en quatre pages d'une calligraphie irrégulière. mais appliquée:<br />«Il ne faut pas te faire de chagrin. Je ne veux pas que tu me regrettes. L'ami docteur Le Lan a dû te dire, quand il est allé en France, que je suis remariée avec Nguyen Van Teu, qui vend du riz dans la rue du Cuivre, à Hanoi. Si tu reviens, tu nous feras le plaisir de descendre chez nous, car nous faisons de très bonnes affaires. Mais il ne faut pas penser à moi comme à ta petite femme. Celle-là est morte. Car je suis vieille, à présent. Je viens d'avoir dix-huit ans, et j'ai eu deux enfants. Et tu sais que nous autres, femmes d'ici, cela nous change beaucoup. Alors, je suis devenue très laide, une vraie <i>baya </i>(2). Et, pour te montrer comme je dis vrai, je t'envoie ma photographie. »<br />CORZÉBIEN. —Vous l'avez gardée, cette photo?<br />TEDDY WHYNOT. -- Non! Elle était trop décolletée, et Ti Nam avait trop raison. Le visage seul, était resté joli… Mais le reste! On eût dit qu'une tempête avait passé sur tout cela. Et, si je vous ai raconté cette petite histoire c¡ ce n'est pas pour me vanter, mais pour vous amener doucement à vous demander quelle femme d'Europe eût trouve le courage d'écrire une lettre pareille.<br />LE COMTE DE BRÉCHAIN. — Oui sait ? Votre petite amie n'a peut-être montré là qu'une espèce de coquetterie posthume. Et je gagerais qu'après avoir lu sa lettre vous ne l'en avez que davantage regrettée.<br />TEDDY WHYNOT. -- un peu mélancolique, à cause de l'heure, peut-être. — Je la regrette encore. mais moins que ma jeunesse…<br /><br /></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="FR" style="text-indent: -18pt;">(1)<span style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span lang="FR" style="line-height: 107%; text-indent: -18pt;">[Au temps de la
colonisation] Femme annamite; <i>en partic.</i> compagne indigène
d'un européen </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="FR" style="line-height: 107%; text-indent: -18pt;">(2) </span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Vieille femme.</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></span>Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-91520757366545103392019-04-15T04:17:00.002-07:002019-04-15T07:53:10.940-07:00Commentaires du Night Cap - A L'Encre de Chine<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In his biography of Toulet, La Vie de P.-J. Toulet, Henri Martineau devotes eight pages, (78-85) to Toulet's 1903 voyage to Indo-China. Toulet was of course accompanied by Curnonsky. Martineau makes reference to some slight pieces published by Curnonsky in <i>Le Journal</i> during the course of 1911. While adding little to our knowledge of Toulet, these slight pieces are of some historical interest, as they have a bearing on the attitude of the French towards China and Vietnam during the colonial era. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This is the text, accompanied by an image, of the article published on 11.11.1911. <i>Teddy Whynot</i> is the name adopted by Curnonsky in these anecdotes. He bestows the name <i>Corzébien </i>(a play on <i>corps et biens</i>) on Toulet.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBBGhNbdVSDUGk2YAeGoTkKNWKh70eJ7y8B3stMOSl5gs0spcXkdKq7d8RBUuHTyiaUP4atLW2VbVZyxCERL0R7EJYU-23Z4yoYy0PlVbXWhS99pYu4Uuy5xuohw4oYa40t2DMN5bs0A/s1600/Le_Journal__11.11.11+l%2527Encre+de+Chine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="813" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBBGhNbdVSDUGk2YAeGoTkKNWKh70eJ7y8B3stMOSl5gs0spcXkdKq7d8RBUuHTyiaUP4atLW2VbVZyxCERL0R7EJYU-23Z4yoYy0PlVbXWhS99pYu4Uuy5xuohw4oYa40t2DMN5bs0A/s640/Le_Journal__11.11.11+l%2527Encre+de+Chine.jpg" width="323" /></span></a></div>
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<br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Les Commentaires de "Night Cap"<br /><br />A L'ENCRE DE CHINE.<br /><br />A peine deux heures du matin le bar est encore plein de clients qui parlent « étranger » P. J. T. Corzébien (« le jeune homme à la mer »), Laconche de Pontayac et le colonel comte de Bréchain ont reculé devant l’invasion et se sont réfugiés autour d'une table ètroite, tout au fond du petit salon contigu au bar. L’humeur agressive et violemment particulariste de Corzèbien, « qui n'aime pas les autres », suffit à créer autour d'eux trois une zone réputée dangereuse qu'aucun intrus ne s'aviserait de franchir. <br />Ils attendent André Monillon, dit Teddy Whynot, que des besognes nocturnes retiennent à son journal. Et l'hostilité de l’endroit les incite à parler politique.<br />Le COMTE DE BRÉCHAIN. — On se croirait dans la tour de Babel!<br />CORZEBIEN — Vous voulez dire de Bebel. Car, autant que j'en puis juger, la plupart, de ces gens, discutent dans la langue de M. Mâximilien Harden la conclusion du désaccord marocain.<br />LACONCHE DE PONTAYAC. — Ils ne semblent pas d'ailleurs s'entendre entre eux beaucoup mieux qu'avec nous. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="FR">CORZEBIEN, </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR">grincheux</span></i><span lang="FR">. — Je me demande ce qu'ils voudraient de
plus. L'Anjou, peut-être, ou la Bretagne ? Ah! comme disait naguère ce
pauvre Jean de Tinan : « Tant que nous n'aurons pas repris l'Allemagne aux
Alsaciens-Lorrains… »<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">LACONCHE DE
PONTAYAC, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">prophétique
et grandiloquent</i>.— Le péril jaune forcera toutes les nations
de l'Europe à s'unir.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="FR">CORZEBIEN </span><span lang="FR">. — Il me semble
l'avoir déjà entendu dire. Et je me résigne à cette éventualité lointaine.
Après tout, invasion pour invasion, je préférerais encore les Chinois.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">LE COMTE DE
BRÉCHAIN. — N'est-ce pas? A travers la différence des civilisations.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">CORZÉBIEN, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inquiet</i>. - Ah! mon Dieu!
colonel, voilà que vous aussi vous vous mettez à parler comme un livre!<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">LACONCHE DE
PONTAYAC — En vérité, Corzèbien, vous finirez par nous réduire à la pantomime!<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">CORZÈBIEN. —
Dieu vous entende, Pontayac! Je voulais seulement rappeler l'admirable conseil
de La Bruyère aux écrivains, le meilleur qu'on leur ait jamais donné : « Vous
voulez dire : « Il <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pleut. » Dites : « Il
pleut. » A part cela, je me félicite de me trouver pour une fois d'accord avec
le colonel. Tous ceux qui sont allés en Chine comme nous trois.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">TEDDY WHYNOT,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">se montrant tout à coup.</i> —
Vous en oubliez un !<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">CORZÈBIEN. —
Certes, non ! puisque nous avons fait le voyage ensemble.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Vous me
rappelez même fort à propos que je vous ai prêté, en 1903, alors
que nous étions délégués de la presse à L’Exposition d'Hanoï, un
roman de Mme Scarlett et une jeune congaï.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">TEDDY WHYNOT. - Le roman n’a pas vieilli. Je l'ai prêté avant-hiér à Margarine, qui est partie pour Nice avec Bidarel. (<i>Il s'assied et commande des sandwiches. Corzèbien, « qui n'a jamais faim entre les repas, » lui jette un regard méprisant, mais envieux-.</i>) -Oui, c'est comme ca! J'ai très faim. Et, puisque vous parliez des Chinois, imaginez-vous qu'on a apporté ce soir au journal une série de photos qui illustreraient à merveille le <i>Jardin des supplices</i>. Il y a là quelques bourreaux célestes qui s'occupent d'une malheureuse femme. Ça m'a creusé!. Oh! moins que la victime.</span><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">CORZÈBIEN. —
Elle était jolie ?<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">TEDDY WHYNOT. — En commençant.
Très changée, à la fin.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">LE COMTE DE
BRÉCHAIN. — Je me demande d'où nous vient à tous quatre notre sympathie pour ce
peuple cruel.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">CORZÈBIEN. -
Cruel ? Croyez-vous. Ils attachent moins de prix à la vie que nous autres. Et
peut-être que, pour eux, le sadisme n'est même plus une distraction.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">LACONCHE DE
PONTAYAC. — Cela me rappelle qu'il y a cinq ans, à Canton.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">CORZÈBIEN — Voilà ce-que
je craignais ! Pontayac va raconter une histoire !<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">LACONCHE DE
PONTAYAC. - Mais enfin, sapristi! on n'entend que vous, Corzébien! Vous ne
souffrez pas qu'on prenne la parole, même pour vous approuver.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">CORZÈBIEN — C'est
que le suffrage universel m'est odieux. Mais j'apprécie le
vôtre à sa valeur. Causez, Pontayac;
Ces messieurs vous écoutent;.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">LACONCHE DE
PONTAYAC, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">impavide</i>. Je disais donc
que voilà cinq ans, à Canton, par un gris et doux matin d'avril.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">CORZÈBIEN. — </span><span lang="FR" style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Ça</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> c</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ommence comme un roman-feuilleton !</span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">LACONCHE DE
PONTAYAC. - nous nous promenions, quelques Français et moi, à travers la ville,
dans ces étranges chaises à porteurs. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">CORZÈBIEN. —
Vous n'allez pas, je pense, nous les décrire.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">LACONCHE DE
PONTAYAC — lorsque notre petite caravane fut arrêtée aux abords
d'une place par une foule grouillante.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">CORZÈBIEN. — Un rassemblement, sans doute ?<br />LACONCHE DE PONTAYAC. — Notre guide alla s'informer et revint nous dire qu'on allait décapiter une douzaine de malandrins, quelque chose comme des apaches locaux. Je me serais, bien passé de ce spectacle, que j'avais vu plusieurs fois. Mais une jeune et charmante Parisienne, qui nous accompagnait avec son mari, insista pour pénétrer jusqu'au lieu de l'exécution. L'un de nous, qui était consul de France et parlait le chinois comme Kou Fu Tsen, voulut bien se dévouer et alla parlementer avec le mandarin chargé de présider à la cérémonie.<br />Il revint, au bout de quelques minutes, suivi d'un petit vieux, gras et court, a la mine joviale, qui se confondit en layes et révérences. Notre compagnon traduisait à mesure : « Le mandarin Huong Li Wan s'excuse auprès de vous, madame, de n'avoir ce matin que quatorze condamnés à vous offrir. Il regrette infiniment dé n'avoir point été averti de votre venue. Sans quoi il eut retardé jusqu'à aujourd'hui l'exécution des vingt-six condamnés qui ont été décapités ici, voilà huit jours. Et vous auriez eu le spectacle d'une cérémonie plus solennelle et de quelques supplices plus rares. Il vous supplie de l’excuser et de né point juger le Cèleste Empire d'après ce que vous allez voir. »<br />La jolie Parisienne souriait avec grâce. Je vis bien qu'elle soupçonnait notre consul de traduire à sa fantaisie les paroles du mandarin. Moi, je savais assez de chinois peur me rendre compte qu'elle se trompait.<br />Cependant, nous étions descendus de nos chaises, et Huong Li Wan nous fit ouvrir un passage, à travers la foule, jusqu'au lieu du supplice. C'était une place droite et triangulaire, d'où l'on dominait au loin le panorama de la Rivière de Canton. Un large et lourd billot se dressait au centre, et les condamnés, reconnaissables à leurs torses nus et à leurs cous écorchés par la cangue*, causaient avec leurs parents et leurs amis en attendant le bon plaisir du magistrat.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="FR" style="color: black;">*<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Instrument de torture portatif, en Chine,
ayant la forme d'une planche ou d'une table percée de trois trous dans lesquels
on introduisait la tête et les mains du supplicié.</i></span><span lang="FR"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="FR" style="color: black;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></span></span>
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Le bourreau
vérifiait le fil de son sabre, court et convexe, et ses deux aides échangeaient
d'amicales bourrades. Huong Li Wan nous fit placer à ses côtés, non
sans s'excuser de n'avoir point de sièges à nous offrir, puis frappa dans ses
mains, tel un professeur qui requiert l'attention de ses élèves. Le bourreau,
un de ces colosses comme il y en a parmi les Chinois du Sud, alla toucher
l'épaule nue d'un condamné, qui s'entretenait avec sa femme et ses quatre
enfants. Mais la femme, dont il nous fut facile de traduire les gestes, vint
expliquer à Huong Li Wan qu'ils avaient encore quelque chose à se dire et
désigna de la main un autre condamné, qui se trouvait seul à quelques pas
de</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> l<span lang="FR" style="line-height: 107%;">à </span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> - un célibataire, sans doute! Le mandarin acquiesça d'un
signe, et le bourreau alla frapper sur l'épaule de l'autre, qui, sans se
faire prier, vint s'agenouiller auprès du billot. L'un des aides lui saisit sa
natte et la ramena en avant. Le bourreau se pencha vers la victime
pour lui demander « si ça pouvait aller comme ça ». L’autre répondit
par un petit grognement approbatif. Puis, sans faire tournoyer son sabre autour
de sa tête ni se livrer à de vaines </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">fantasias</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, l'exécuteur regarda fixement pendant quelques secondes
la nuque découverte, et, dès que son oeil exercé eut distingué nettement l’attache
du cou, il abaissa sa lame d'un geste bref et sûr. La tête alla se balancer au
bout de la natte, que l'aide avait gardée dans sa main. Le sang jaillit par
saccades, et le corps décapité se renversa en arrière. Le second aide le poussa
du pied pour faire place au condamné suivant.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
Je regardai la jolie Parisienne. Elle avait un peu pâli.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
— N'est-ce pas, me dit-elle, on se croirait au théâtre! Ça n'a
pas l'air vrai! </span><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
En effet, rien ne saurait rendre l'impression de bonhomie, je dirais
presque d’intimité cordiale, qui se dégageait de toute
cette horreur.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">TEDDY WHYNOT. -
La « mort heureuse », quoi!<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">LACONCHE DE PONTAYAC.
— Ma foi, oui…un peu. De deux en deux minutes, les autres exécutions se
suivirent sans plus d'apparat. Nous finissions par ne plus prendre tout cela
très au sérieux. Les veuves elles-mêmes nous donnaient l'exemple du calme; il
est vrai que, dans la plupart des cas, la commune leur assure, paraît-il, une
petite pension. Et alors… vous comprenez !... Pourtant, quand ce fut fini, je
m'avisai tout à coup que mes pieds s'enfonçaient dans un sol humide et gluant.
Je baissai les yeux et je vis que les bottines blanches de ma jolie voisine
étaient devenues toutes rouges jusqu'à la cheville.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">CORZÈBIEN. —
Et vous ne manquâtes point, sans doute, de le lui faire remarquer?<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">LACONCHE DE PONTAYAC
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">un peu confus.—</i> En effet. Elle en
prit même une crise de nerfs un peu tardive.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">CORZÈBIEN. —
Je l'aurais parié! Vous n'en ratez jamais une!.<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
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<br />Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-87234686605737654062018-12-26T08:33:00.000-08:002018-12-26T08:33:15.517-08:00Contrerime XLIV<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />VOUS QUI RETOURNEZ DU CATHAI <br /><br /><i>Vous qui retournez du Cathai <br /> Par les Messageries, <br />Quand vous berçaient à leurs féeries <br /> L' opium ou le thé. <br /><br />Dans un palais d' aventurine <br /> Où se mourait le jour, <br />Avez-vous vu Boudroulboudour, <br /> Princesse de la Chine, <br /><br />Plus blanche en son pantalon noir <br /> Que nacre sous l' écaille ? <br />Au clair de lune, Jean Chicaille, <br /> Vous est-il venu voir, <br /><br />En pleurant comme l' asphodèle <br /> Aux îles d' Ouac-Wac, <br />Et jurer de coudre en un sac <br /> Son épouse infidèle, <br /><br />Mais telle qu' à travers le vent <br /> Des mers sur le rivage <br />S' envole et brille un paon sauvage <br /> Dans le soleil levant ? </i><br /><br /> <br /><br />You who return from Cathay<br /> By mailboat, when rocked on the sea</span><div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By the magic alchemy<br /> Of opium or tea. <br /><br /> In a palace of aventurine <br /> In the waning hour <br />The princess, Boudroulboudour,<br /> By you was she seen<br /> <br />Whiter in her black pants </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Than nacre in the shell? <br /> By moonlight, Jean Chicaille, <br /> Is it you he wants, <br /> <br />Weeping like the asphodel <br /> In the Islands of Ouac-Wac, <br />And swearing to sew in a sack <br /> His wife, unfaithful, <br /> <br />And untamed as a peahen <br /> That flies away, ablaze<br />In the onshore winds and the rays <br /> Of the rising sun? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>NOTES</b></span></div>
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Badroulbadour (Arabic بدر البدور, badru l-budūr, "full moon of full moons") is an Asian princess from China whom Aladdin married in the story of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp. (The full moon as a metaphor for female beauty is common throughout the Arabian Nights).<br />She is also mentioned in a poem by Wallace Stevens called The Worms at Heaven's Gate in his book Harmonium.<br /><br /><b>The Worms at Heaven's Gate </b><br />Out of the tomb, we bring Badroulbadour,<br /> Within our bellies, we her chariot.<br /> Here is an eye. And here are, one by one,<br /> The lashes of that eye and its white lid.<br /> Here is the cheek on which that lid declined,<br /> And, finger after finger, here, the hand,<br /> The genius of that cheek. Here are the lips,<br /> The bundle of the body and the feet.<br /> . . . . . . . . . . .<br /> Out of the tomb we bring Badroulbadour.<br /><br />The name Badroulbadour also appears in the novel <i>Come Dance with Me</i> by author Russell Hoban. <br /><br />Toulet has fashioned <b>Jean Chicaille</b> from the Chinese <b>Yuan-Tché-Kaï</b> , or <b>Yuan Shikai.</b><br /><br />The provisional government of the Republic of China was formed in Nanjing on March 12, 1912 with Sun Yat-sen as President, but Sun was forced to turn power over to Yuan Shikai, who commanded the New Army and was Prime Minister under the Qing government, as part of the agreement to let the last Qing monarch abdicate (a decision Sun would later regret). Over the next few years, Yuan proceeded to abolish the national and provincial assemblies, and declared himself emperor in late 1915. Yuan's imperial ambitions were fiercely opposed by his subordinates; faced with the prospect of rebellion, he abdicated in March 1916, and died in June of that year. <div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><b>Ouac-Waco :</b>
Imaginary islands in 1001 nights inhabited only by women. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><b>Aventurine</b>: reddish variety of quartz, found by chance, hence its
name, containing tiny flakes of mica that reflect the light.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-25849726885699741042018-12-26T06:26:00.000-08:002018-12-26T06:26:09.445-08:00Contrerime XLIII<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><i>Ainsi, ce chemin de nuage, <br /> Vous ne le prendrez point, <br />D'où j'ai vu me sourire au loin <br /> Votre brillant mirage ? <br /><br />Le soir d'or sur les étangs bleus <br /> D'une étrange savane, <br />Où pleut la fleur de frangipane, <br /> N'éblouira vos yeux ; <br /><br />Ni les feux de la luciole <br /> Dans cette épaisse nuit <br />Que tout à coup perce l'ennui <br /> D'un tigre qui miaule. </i><br /><br />So you state your resistance <br /> To taking the cloudy way, <br />Where I saw your shining fay <br /> Smile at me from a distance.<br /> <br /> The gold of eve on the pools of blue <br /> Of a strange savannah <br />That rains frangipane <br /> Will not dazzle you; <br /> <br />Nor the light of fireflies <br /> In the night’s depth <br />That abruptly is ripped <br /> By a bored tiger’s cries.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">NOTES:</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The section of <i>Behanzigue </i>entitled "le cri dans la nuit" gives details of the impressions that inspired this poem: "From Hue to go to Tourane, instead of railroad, if we prefer to stick to the the ancient road of the Col des Nuages, we rent one of these black-bellied sampans ". Further on Toulet speaks of "a thousand fireflies leading in the air their luminous dance" and shows the appearance of a tiger. The Col des Nuages also merits a mention in his Journal.</span></div>
Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-72182809679363278812018-12-08T15:48:00.001-08:002018-12-08T15:48:10.991-08:00Contrerime LVIII<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>C'était sur un chemin crayeux <br /> Trois châtes de Provence <br />Qui s'en allaient d' un pas qui danse <br /> Le soleil dans les yeux. <br /><br />Une enseigne, au bord de la route, <br /> - Azur et jaune d' oeuf, - </i></span><div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Annonçait : Vin de Châteauneuf, <br /> Tonnelles, Casse-croûte. <br /><br />Et, tandis que les suit trois fois <br /> Leur ombre violette, <br />Noir pastou, sous la gloriette, <br /> Toi, tu t'en fous : tu bois... <br /><br />C' était trois châtes de Provence, <br /> Des oliviers poudreux, <br />Et le mistral brûlant aux yeux <br /> Dans un azur immense. </i><br /><br /> TRANSLATION<br /><br />Under Provencal skies <br />Three girls on a chalk road <br />Went dancing abroad <br />With the sun in their eyes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By the side of the track, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Blue, egg yellow, a sign <br />Said : Chateauneuf wine <br />Arbours, snacks. <br /><br />While their violet shadow <br />Followed all three <br />You, dark shepherd, carefree <br />Were drunk in the meadow. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Three girls in Provence, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Powdery olive trees, <br />An eye-searing breeze, <br />The skies azure, immense.</span></div>
Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-63112802295594930172018-02-11T11:51:00.005-08:002018-02-12T05:56:31.424-08:00Toulet in Béarn<br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">At the end of 1889 Paul-Jean was back in Béarn. He had
planned his return for some time, having written to Jane in August of that
year, asking her if she really intended to come home from Mauritius, and with
Papa too. He departed Algiers on the 19<sup>th</sup> of November, 1889,
spending three days in Marseille before getting home. His father had in fact
just brought Jane back. Jane settled down in la Rafette, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">chez</i> Aristide Chaline, who had married Amélie, Paul-Jean’s aunt, and
who had raised her until her departure for Mauritius eight years previously. Toulet
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">père</i> only stayed a few weeks in
France, with his relations, returning to Mauritius in early January 1890.
Paul-Jean met them at times at Carresse, or at Pau, or at la Rafette, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">He was to stay nine years in Béarn. Apart from brief trips to
Spain and Paris, Navarre was to be his constant playground. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h4>
<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">J’ai trouvé mon Béarn le même,<o:p></o:p></span></span></h4>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Le morne Béarn des jours froids,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Et trouvé tous ceux que j’aime<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Les mêmes qu’autrefois.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">J’écoute à travers l’air sonore<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Croasser les corbeaux, leur cris<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Dans mon cœur éveillent encore<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Les battements de jadis.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Je revois le vieux mur d’où elle<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Que j’aimais, souvent, m’a parlé<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Et rien ne me manque, rien qu’elle,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Et l’amour, comme elle envolé.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">(Vers
inédits, date Carresse 1889.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In the beginning he didn’t seem to be very serious about
becoming a man of letters, but he read much, nourishing and maturing his ideas.
Now effectively left to his own devices, Paul-Jean decided to abandon his
studies entirely and to live the high life. His <i>port d'attache</i> was
officially Le Haget at Carresse, that he had inherited from his mother. <span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">The painter Labrouche has left us a
description. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">« Une
tranquille maison d’autrefois, enfouie dans la verdure. Un vieux mur, une
grille en fer, la séparent du chemin qui tourne à cet endroit et descend vers
le gave. Devant le perron, un très joli jardin très feuillu, plein d’arbres,
des ormeaux, des magnolias. </span>Un grand silence. »</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But he was more frequently to be found at Pau, at the Café
Champagne (now the Brasserie Royale) or the Petit Casino in the Place Royal.
His favourite was the Champagne, where one could make out beyond the statue of
the <i>Vert-Galant</i>, (Henri IV) the picturesque scenery of the Pyrenees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He could be found there almost every day, in
late afternoon, a port or an armagnac before him, flashing his ironic wit at
his friends and acquaintances, many of whom he had known since childhood –
Henri Dartiguenave, Léopold Bauby, or Henry de Monpezat, idle son of the mayor,
whom he would later stake for a business venture in the Far East. He became a
night-owl, never rising before 3 p.m., arriving at the café at 4 p.m., and dining
at the Casino, where he spent the night dancing, gaming and drinking. He only
went to bed at 3 or 4 in the morning. Then he started over next day,
establishing over a period of nine years a pattern that he took with him to
Paris. In the afternoon he explored the environs, Salies-de-Béarn, Biarritz, Bayonne,
Saint-Jean-de-Luz - the towns most frequently mentioned in his notebooks. Often
he would go surprise his sister at la Rafette, at Saint-Loubès.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">He was belligerent in the fashion of the time. Ichas mentions
that Paul-Jean duelled with Émile Thore on the steps of the Loustau dwelling in
1896, when he was 28. Jean Thore witnessed the duel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is said that at the first sight of blood
the young man “manqua de défaillir”. (In 1889 already, Paul-Jean had provoked a
duel with Alfred Coste (Chapter on Mauritius). The bone of contention was a
girl. His friend Henry de Monpezat was another machismo of privilege. Dyssord
relates an imbroglio with some army officers. Having forbidden a local regiment,
whose barracks were near, the use of a private road, he noticed one day that
the officers were paying no attention to his ban. Montpezat, furious, seized
the regimental standard and broke his flagpole across his knee. Four
lieutenants provoke him to a duel, there was a fight and two of them were
put out of action. There was a scandal, and popular thought consigned to obloquy
the hothead and his entourage. (See Note of Monpezat for more on his propensity
for duelling).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Echoes of Toulet’s leisure activities are later to be found
in his verse – the Foires Saint-Martin, promenades in the Carresse woods, the
sleepy banks of the Saleys, a walk beneath the arcades of Bayonne to the detriment
of both his heart and his purse, Spanish chocolate chez Guillot, a ride in a
calèche, Jurançon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The contrerimes XXXI, XXXII, XXXIV, XXXV, XLI are evidence
of these excursions, although he published nothing between 1889 and 1898. In
January1890 he visited Saint-Jean-de-Luz, and Guéthary, where he ended his
days:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“A Guéthary, la mer par une fenêtre, un carré bleu
tendre et des oiseaux qui passent, continuellement dans le même sens.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When he wasn’t taking trips or meeting his pals in the
Casino, he might go for a promenade with his petites amies <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“sur les routes de son pays”</i> in the Carresse woods or on the banks
of the Saleys. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><span lang="FR">XXX</span></b><i><span lang="FR"><span style="mso-tab-count: 10;"> </span>la
cigale.<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Quand nous fûmes hors des chemins<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Où la poussière est rose,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Aline, qui riait sans cause<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>En me touchant les mains ; -<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">L' écho du bois riait. La terre<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sonna creux au talon.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Aline se tut : le vallon<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Était plein de mystère...<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Mais toi, sans lymphe ni sommeil,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cigale en haut posée,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Tu jetais, ivre de rosée,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ton cri triste et vermeil.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Some evenings he brought them to the carousel at the Saint-Martin
fair:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><span lang="FR">XXXII<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></b><span lang="FR"><span style="mso-tab-count: 8;"> </span><i>Chevaux
de bois.<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">À Pau, les foires
saint-Martin,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>C' est à la Haute Plante.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Des poulains, crinière
volante,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Virent dans le crottin.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Là-bas, c' est une autre
entreprise.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Les chevaux sont en bois,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">L' orgue enrhumé comme un
hautbois,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zo' sur un bai cerise.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Le soir tombe. Elle dit :
" merci,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>" pour la bonne journée !<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">" mais j' ai la tête
bien tournée... "<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-ah, Zo' : la jambe aussi.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>or to drink a glass of jurançon <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“couleur de maïs</i>” chez M. Lesquerré, the
innkeeper. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><span lang="FR">XXXIV</span></b><span lang="FR"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Ce fut par un soir de l'automne<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A sa dernière
fleur<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Que l'on nous prit pour Mgr<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>L'Evêque de
Bayonne,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sur la route de Jurançon.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>J'étais en
poste, avecque<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Faustine, et l'émoi d'être évêque<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lui sécha sa chanson.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Cependant cloches, patenôtres,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Volaient
autour de nous.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Tout un peuple était à genoux :<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nous mêlions
les nôtres,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Ô Vénus, et ton char doré,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Glissant parmi
la nue,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Nous annonçait la bienvenue<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Chez Monsieur
Lesquerré.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><span lang="FR">XXXV</span></b><span lang="FR"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Un Jurançon 93<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Aux couleurs
du maïs,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Et ma mie, et l'air du pays :<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Que mon coeur
était aise.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Ah, les vignes de Jurançon,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Se sont-elles
fanées,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Comme ont fait mes belles années,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Et mon bel
échanson ?<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Dessous les tonnelles fleuries<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ne
reviendrez-vous point<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A l'heure où Pau blanchit au loin<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Par-delà les
prairies ?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Other times he would go as far as Bayonne, where, chez
Guillot, under the arcades, he had the happy band share scented chocolate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">XLI<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">-" Bayonne ! Un pas sous les arceaux,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>que faut-il
davantage<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">pour y mettre son héritage<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>ou son coeur
en morceaux ?<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Où sont-ils, tout remplis d' alarmes,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>vos yeux dans
la noirceur,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">et votre insupportable soeur,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>hélas ; et
puis vos larmes ? "<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">tel s' enivrait, à son phébus,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>d' un chocolat
d' Espagne,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">chez Guillot, le feutre en campagne,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Monsieur
Bordaguibus.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As for literature, there was no question of it. Walzer
remarks that during this period he only wrote 18 lines in his journal and
composed about 15 pieces that are found in his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vers Inédits.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But he read prodigiously, became familiar with Greek, quoted
by heart great Latin speeches, and read fluently in English, Spanish, Italian. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And much was inspired: the contrerimes included in the text,
and those appended.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The character Jean-Prudence Michon-de-Cérizolles in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La Jeune Fille Verte</i> talks not just of love,
but of baccarat, tyrant of men and gods. Paul-Jean must have sacrificed more
than a little to his “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">caprice</i>” if we are
to believe these words a croupier said to him: “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ah! </i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">Monsieur, tant que vous vous obstinerez à prendre
le baccara pour un jeu de hasard, vous êtes un homme perdu…”</span></i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>“Ah!
Monsieur, as long as you continue to think baccarat is a game of chance, you
are a lost man.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">While in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Les Tendre
Ménages,</i> Antoine de Mariolles Sainte-Mary claims that the auberges of the
Pyrennées, be it in the mountains or by the sea, it suffices to satisfy the
three instincts of drinking, gambling and loving that are the triple nobility
of man, putting him so far above the beasts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Paul-Jean would abscond as often as he could, often under
some false pretext, to Salies-de-Béarn, or to Pau, where he would enjoy the
company of friends, many of whom he had known since childhood – Henri
Dartiguenave, Léopold Bauby, or Henry de Monpezat. There were others too – d’Astis,
John de Bienville Grant, 9th Baron de Longueuil, <span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Antoine Riquoir, Henri de Montebello.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Dartiguenave recalled: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“When
he arrived from Carresse, it was with the declared intention of staying
twenty-four hours at Pau, but he was still there two weeks later. He never
brought any baggage, no case or overnight bag.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As he prolonged his stay, he would call at the Chemiserie Blanc in rue
Saint-Louis to buy a shirt, a collar or socks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He did that every two or three days. As he did the same in the bookshops
(especially Ribaud and Lafon); he had an ample supply of books and magazines, a
corner of his room became nothing but a pile of linen and papers.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Bauby recalled<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">: “How
often have I gone to pull him out of bed at three in the afternoon. I always
found him under the covers, the curtains always drawn, and the room in perfect
disarray with such a pile of books that we used to wonder what he could do with
them, because, paradoxically, we never thought, any of us, that Toulet did any
work, and we were astonished to hear of the publication of Monsieur de Paur in
1898.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">He was not the only one to express disbelief.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>While waiting for the sale of Le Haget
and settle the details of his move to Paris, Toulet rented a room in Pau from
1897, while perhaps M du Paur was ripening. Jean de Longueil, while visiting
Mme de la Salette, a neighbour of Toulet at Carresse, asked if she had read his
book. “What book,” she asked. “PJ Toulet has written a book?”<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“Well, yes.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“Ah, my dear friend, he is my neighbour, and that is not
possible. Had he written a book, I would know about it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When he returned to Carresse he left everything behind in
his hotel, solely occupied with the many gold louis left at the Casino. The
proprietor might send after him to Carresse, if he remembered. As he returned
home the porters hurried through the lanes that led from the Place to the Gare.
Beret pulled down over his eyes, an eight-day beard, stinking of garlic and
white wine, the wanderer returned home. His friends meanwhile might have set
out for Jurançon, Chez Lesquerré, having waited in vain for him at the Café
Champagne.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">He had his choice of hotels at which to stay- <i>le Gassion,
Hôtel du Parc, Hôtel du France, Hôtel Beauséjour,</i> or the <i>Hôtel de la Paix</i>. Later, when he decided to stay in the city,
he took a room in the rue Sully. He also lived at 4, rue Bordenave d’Abère;
then from 1897 to 1898 he lived at 5 rue Montpensier. By this time he had
gambled away the greater part of his fortune, and it was not long before he
made the move to Paris.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">At this epoch people from Béarn identified themselves as
Béarnais first, then French. In the great houses and private palaces, it wasn’t
long since Béarnais was the language of formal discourse. Servants were usually
addressed in this tongue. Paul-Jean spoke it, especially when in amorous
pursuit of the shop-girls and laundresses who constituted his usual prey, and
who were themselves more at home in Béarnais than in French. In a letter to
himself<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>dated 25 May 1903 he reminisces
about an evening in a little apartment in rue Sully when he was 22<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and his companion 18, and the warm breath of the
autumn entered through the blinds together with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“la rumeur des petites gens, en bas, qui causaient sur le pas des
boutiques, en béarnais.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">XXXVIII<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Quel pas sur le pavé boueux<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sonne à
travers la brume ?<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Deux boutiquiers, crachant le rhume,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>S'en
retournent chez eux.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">- " C'est ce cocu de Lagnabère.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- Oui,
Faustine.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- Ah, mon Dieu,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>En çà de
Cogomble, quel feu !<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oui, c'est le réverbère.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">- Comme c'est gai, le mauvais temps...<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Et recevoir
des gifles.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">- Oui, Faustine. " <o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A présent, tu siffles<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>L'air d<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">'</span></span></i><span lang="FR">Amour
et Printemps</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Querelles, pleurs tendres à boire -<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Et toi qu'en
tes détours<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">J'écoute, ô vent, contre les tours<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Meurtrir ta
plume noire.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Hostelleries were not yet common. But one could find some
auberges or tables d’hôte such as <i>La Belle Hôtesse</i> at Orthez; the <i>Panier Fleuri</i>
at Bayonne, the <i>Hôtel Loustalot</i> and the <i>Cor d’Henric</i> at Oloron. But nothing
compared to the <i>Lesquerré</i>, whose kitchen glowed with copper pots, its spit was
polished like a Toledo blade, under the spread of the wide mantel, over a fire
of oak logs, would not have displeased the Abbé Jérôme Coignard in <i>La
Rotisserie de la Reine Pedauque.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Dressed in a beret, the flat horn handle of a makila in his grasp,
he would set out for Salies-de-Béarn, a stifling spa popular at the time, and
with the advantage of being only six kilometres from Carresse. It was at
Salies, Dyssord relates, that Toulet was annoyed by a verbose commercial
traveller, who asked him if it were true that his father was in Mauritius.
“Indeed”, said Toulet. “And what is he doing there?”, continued the salesman.
Toulet took out his pocket watch, consulted it, and replied, “He’s dining.”
(Toulet recounts the same incident in one of his letters to himself.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Dyssord also tells an anecdote about a confrontation between
Paul-Jean and a sandal maker who threatened him with a knife for seducing his
daughter; the story goes that Paul-Jean so disarmed him with an off-colour joke
that he accepted several drinks from him and ended by offering him his wife,
and when Paul-Jean seemed reluctant, he launched into a panegyric on his better
half, claiming that she was a “goer” (<i>franche du collier</i>) unlike any other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In a letter to himself, dated March 3<sup>rd</sup>, 1903, Manila,
he remembers the occasion when he came to watch a bullfight but instead he lost ten gold
louis at the card table - “<i>manille aux enchères</i>” – money that his wily opponents
treated as fleeting as snowflakes in a child’s fist. He writes of the loss and
his excessive bad humour – anguished cries, and even more threatening silences,
that made of him “one of the least tolerable players”. The <i>Petit Casino</i> of Pau
remembered only a player of excellent temperament, imperturbable and disdainful
of his bad luck. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">He liked the chocolate of chez Guillot, scented, in Spanish
style, under the arcades of melancholy Bayonne, or outside the ramparts, some
Basque cottages, and the Café Farnier. Then there were random encounters - at
Saint-Jean-de-Luz he met a Spaniard who spoke disrespectfully of St Thomas
Aquinas. A bather distracted him at dusk as she skinny-dipped from a beach
frequented by fishwives. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On the 24<sup>th</sup> March 1891, Toulet left Saint-Loubès
for Bordeaux-Bastide, and he was in Madrid on the 25<sup>th</sup>, passing
through San Sebastian, Vitoria, Burgos and Avila, each of them garnering a
comment. The following day, Holy Thursday, he was in Seville, where he
witnessed the Holy Week processions. He scribbled in his notebook this poem
about the Madonna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">O Madone à la
lourde traîne<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Délice et
décor de Séville<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Qu’aux jours
de la Sainte Semaine<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On promène à
travers la ville,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Pitoyable dame
aux sept glaives,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Par le doux
Jésus, je vous prie,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Exaucez mon
rêve (un rêve)<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Et faites, ô
Vierge Marie,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Qu’un cœur
pour moi seul fleurisse<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Castillan,
français ou mauresque<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Mais qui
n’oublie ou trahisse<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Jamais, Vierge
sainte – ou presque.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">An ultimate reservation worthy of Saint Augustine himself!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">He waxes most lyrical about the Alcazar, even if it was, he says, a
great confection. However, he continues, it is the product of a very particular
artistic formula which values voluptuousness in the place of grandeur, and
there are corners that belong to paradise, if not to heaven. Arcade follows
arcade, the sun shines through and there are delicious blue and white
arabesques. And in the Alcazar gardens, a golden hour spent sitting on the
grass under the orange trees, backs to the ramparts, and nightingales singing
overhead.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">He left Seville on Easter Monday, and was back in Madrid on Tuesday
when he re-visited<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the Prado. Wednesday
April 1<sup>st</sup> was spent at the Escorial, which he found deserted, vast,
quiet, boring. The Panthéon redeemed it somewhat, grand and macabre and rich
with its royal tombs and long, white row of children’s coffins.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">He was back in Salies on April 3<sup>rd</sup> after spending a day at
Biarritz as he passed through.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“After Andalusia, it is old Castille, and La Mancha where
Don Quixote has left so many windmills.” For the moment it was Seville that
left the most lively souvenir, and later he started one of his poems with these
lines: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Comme un
papillon du Brésil, <o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Bleue et
noire, ô Séville…<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Pour un
barbier la belle ville<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">Et pour moi
quel exil !</span></i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A verse not found in his collected works. His Journal has
more to say on the charms of the flamenco and malagueña, the dancers’ costumes,
and drinking manzanilla. What impressed him most were his evenings in the
Alcazar, its murmuring fountains and the song of the nightingales.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<b><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">XLII<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">À l' Alcazar neuf, où don Jayme<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gratte un air
maugrabin,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Carmen dansant dans son lubin :<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ce n' est pas
ce que j' aime.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Mais, à Triana, la liqueur<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>D' une grappe1
où l' aurore<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Laissa des pleurs si froids encore<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Qu' ils m' ont
glacé le coeur.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The return to Béarn served only to emphasise the solitude of
Carresse. To add to his loneliness, his grandfather Pierre died on May 8<sup>th</sup>.
Carresse was too quiet, too tranquil – too much for a 24-year-old who had lived
the high life in Mauritius and Algiers. <span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">In September 1891 he wrote in his journal: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“De retour à la maison si triste et solitaire déjà je maudis la
campagne et le pesant silence de la nuit qui m’oppresse à peine troublé par la
pluie monotone. Que ne puis-je encore entendre les clameurs citadines, le
tintement des hautes horloges et le bruit aussi des fiacres ébranlant le
pavé !<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Il me semble qu’un lourd couvercle s’est refermé
sur moi, et que je suis seul, implacablement. J’ai trouvé des lettres amies
mais on dirait qu’elles ont été ecrites il y a cent ans. Ne suis-je pas un
fantôme égaré parmi des lieux qu’il croit reconnaître ; et tous ceux que
j’aime, morts ?<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Ô choses, êtes-vous hostiles ? Écrasez-moi si
je ne puis vous aimer.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But Pau remained his base and while Joe Guillemin was working
through his fortune, Toulet was trying to keep up. <span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">He liked Pau because, as he wrote to Tristan
Derème in April 1913, from La Rafette, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“les
horizons en sont tels qu’on voit bien que le Bon Dieu s’en est mêlé Soi-même,
au lieu de les faire faire par ses domestiques, comme la Campine, Zanzibar,
l’île de Haïnan et quelques autres lieux où je fus sans doute que pour avoir la
joie de rentrer en France.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But what he liked
most about Pau was that the girls were compliant, complaisant, accommodating,
easy: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“C’est que les filles y ont de la
politesse et de la vassalité.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Toulet did
not scorn the professionals either. He confided to </span>Francis <span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Jammes his feelings about them: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“C’est curieux, on tient pour des oies toutes ces
filles de Pau. Quant à moi, je leur trouve un cru délicieux; un cru qu’il faut
savoir dégager.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“It’s odd,
people think of all these Pau girls as so many geese. For my part, I find them
a delicious vintage; a vintage that one has to know how to bring out.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">He got to know Jammes during this period, and formed a
lasting friendship with him. There was only a year between them – Jammes was
born in Tournay in 1868. In the foreword to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La
Jeune Fille Verte</i> he mentions “this bucolic poet that Béarn is so proud to
have given to France.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He showed some
early verse to Jammes, who suggested that they were not ready for publication
-<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a sentiment that was echoed by Louis
de la Salle in Paris. As Toulet admired both of these poets, he had confidence
in their criticism. He concentrated on his work in prose, and not until he had
discovered the form of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Contrerimes</i>
did he begin to write and publish rare examples of his verse. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">His friendship with Jammes did not prevent him from playing
tricks on him. On one occasion when both were seated on the terrace of the Café
Champagne, Paul-Jean called Charlie, the porter, and offered him a hundred <i>sous</i>
to bring over a donkey that was tethered across from them at the Hôtel de
France. Charlie duly obliged, and when the donkey was before them Toulet turned
to Jammes and said, “My dear poet, since you know how to talk to donkeys, say
something to him.” Jammes got up and stroked the donkey’s nose. The donkey
baulked and tried to bite Jammes’ hand, to the great amusement of Toulet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Jammes has left his own reminiscences of Toulet, the “young,
honey-coloured god”:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“Toulet maigre
et long est assis, les pieds dans des sandales blanches, et les mains jointes
enserrant son genou droit. Il est tellement replié sur lui-même qu’il a l’air
bossu et que son estomac s’appuie sur le genou que j’ai dit…Ses gros yeux bleus
de jeune fille vous fixent de sous l’étroit béret basque rabattu sur le front.
La lèvre, d’une minceur extrême, se crispe. Il sourit, m’invite à m’asseoir
devant son absinthe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Il sort du lit. Il
est cinq heures après midi. C’est être, pour lui, matinal.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Il est gentil.
Il me parle de mes vers. In n’en écrit pas, ou, du moins, il ne les produit pas
encore. Nous avons quelque vingt-six ans chacun.”<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In July1892, he made a brief trip to Paris where his school
pal Léon Barthou, (brother of the future minister Louis Barthou, assassinated
in Marseilles in 1934) presented him to Charles Maurras and Toulouse-Lautrec
in his Montmartre studio, of whom he wrote, then or later, <em><span style="color: black;">« Toulouse-Lautrec est contrefait,
trop court de jambes et s’exprime avec haine, entrecoupant son discours d’une
espèce de « hein ? » plaintif et sauvage. »</span></em><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">In 1895 his father
wrote to him, offering him a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>position
managing a tea plantation. Toulet wrote to Jane about this, saying that his
father had argued strongly for his taking the job, and that he could not refuse,
expecting to travel towards the end of the year; but he remarks, tellingly,
that to say that he was excited by the prospect of knowing all there was to
know about tea production would be an exaggeration. Needless to say, he never
returned to Mauritius. </span>Gaston died on 16 March 1922, at his son Guy’s
house at Mon-Loisir-Rouillard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Paul-Jean
later accused him of ruining him - something he was well able to do of his own
accord.<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><em><span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span lang="FR">« Je ne sais trop
de quoi il mourut… Mon enfance le connut peu, mon adolescence à peine
d’avantage. Il était constamment hors de chez lui, occupé d’agriculture, de
politique, d’affaire, de mille choses inutiles et coûteuses. »</span></span></em><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><em><span style="color: black;"><span lang="FR"><br /></span></span></em></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On the 30 October 1897 Toulet settled in Paris. He was now 30. Having used up the bulk of his inheritance he thought that literature might make up the loss, and decided to write adventures or thrillers for money. But of course he is not cut out for this and fails miserably.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><em><span style="color: black;">« Je
regretterai toute ma vie les terres de famille qu’il m’a fallu vendre. </span></em><em><span lang="FR" style="color: black;">Il y avait
des bouquets d’arbres et des familles de serviteurs qui nous appartenaient
depuis des siècles. On ne s’en détache pas sans un peu de mélancolie. »</span></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></em></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When he arrived he almost immediately met Maurice Sailland,
Curnonsky or Curne, who became later the “prince of gourmets.” They became
inseparable over the years, and someone remarked they were like Don Quixote and
Sancho Panza. They were entirely the opposite. Toulet was long and lean as
Curnonsky was short and round. As much as Toulet had a bad character,
complaining incessantly about everybody and everything, Curne was indefatigably
good-humoured; but both of them were epicuriens, loving above all “<i>les belles
filles, la bonne chère, et le bon vin</i>”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br clear="all" style="page-break-before: always;" />
</span></i>
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">XXXI</span></b><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Tandis qu' à l' argile au
flanc vert,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dessus ton front haussée,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Perlait le pleur d' une
eau glacée,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Les dailleurs, à couvert :<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">" Enfant, riait leur
voix lointaine,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Voilà temps que tu bois.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Si Monsieur Paul est dans
le bois,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Avise à la fontaine.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">" Mais avise aussi
de briser<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ta cruche en tournant vite.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Ah, que dirait ta mère.
Évite<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Son bras. Prends le baiser. "<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">... Le temps était
couleur de pêche.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sur le Saleys qui dort<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Un oiseau d' émeraude et
d' or<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Fila comme une flèche.</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">XXXIII<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: right; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">l' ingénue.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">D' une amitié passionnée<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vous me parlez
encor,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Azur, aérien décor,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Montagne
pyrénée,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Où me trompa si tendrement<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cette ardente
ingénue<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Qui mentait, fût-ce toute nue,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sans rougir
seulement.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Au lieu que toi, sublime enceinte,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tu es couleur
du temps :<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Neige en mars ; roses du printemps.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Août, sombre
hyacinthe.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><span lang="FR">XXXVII</span></b><span lang="FR"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">De tout ce gala de province<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Où l'on
donnait Manon,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Je ne revois plus rien sinon<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ta forme
étrange, et mince ;<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Et lorsqu'à ce duo troublant<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tes yeux me
firent signe,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Frissonner le frimas d'un cygne<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sur ton bel
habit blanc ;<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sinon ton frère sur le siège<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Du fiacre
vingt-et-huit<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Où tu avais l'air, dans la nuit<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>D'une image de
neige.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">XL<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">L'immortelle, et l'oeillet de mer<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Qui pousse
dans le sable,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">La pervenche trop périssable,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ou ce fenouil
amer<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Qui craquait sous la dent des chèvres<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ne vous en
souvient-il,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Ni de la brise au sel subtil<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Qui nous
brûlait aux lèvres ?<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<h3>
<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></span></h3>
<h3>
<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></span></h3>
<h3>
<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></span></h3>
<h3>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">XI<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 252.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">C' était longtemps avant la guerre.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sur la banquette en
moleskine<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Du sombre corridor,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Aux flonflons d'
Offenbach s' endort<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Une blanche Arlequine.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">... Zo' qui saute entre
deux<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>MMrs,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Nul falzar ne dérobe<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Le double trésor sous sa
robe<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Qu' ont mûri d' autres cieux.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On soupe... on sort...
Bauby pérore...<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Dans ton regard couvert,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Faustine, rit un matin
vert...<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><span lang="FR">... Amour, divine aurore.</span></i><span lang="FR"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">LVIII<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">C' était sur un chemin crayeux<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trois châtes de Provence<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Qui s' en allaient d' un pas qui
danse<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Le soleil dans les yeux.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Une enseigne, au bord de la
route,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-Azur et jaune d' oeuf, -<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Annonçait : vin de Chateauneuf,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tonnelles, casse-croute.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Et, tandis que les suit trois
fois<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Leur ombre violette,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Noir pastou, sous la gloriette,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Toi, tu t' en fous : tu bois...<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">C' était trois châtes de
Provence,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Des oliviers poudreux,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Et le mistral brûlant aux yeux<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dans un azur immense.<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">NOTES</span></b><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>Henri de LABORDE
DE MONPEZAT (1868-1929)</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 110%; margin-bottom: .15pt; margin-left: .5pt; margin-right: 1.65pt; margin-top: 0cm; text-indent: -.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">In the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dépêche du Midi</i> of 16 October1966, Mme
Claire Verne, niece-in-law of Henri de Laborde de Monpezat’s first wife, said
of him : « C'était un homme extraordinaire. Quelqu'un genre Léon Daudet. Il y
avait en lui du pamphlétaire, du tribun, de l'orateur, avec un rien de
condottiere. Il savait démolir quelqu'un d'un coup de patte. Il se battait
fréquemment en duel. » (My italics). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: -.75pt; margin-right: .85pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">In 1894, aged 26, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>after some years of an existence devoted to
love and gambling, Montpezat decided to buy a position; Toulet generously
provided him with the means. He lent him some money and Monpezat set out for a
life of adventure in Indochina, at first joining the civil service in AnnamTonkin
in April of that year. He resigned in Novembre 1897, thinking that he hadn’t
come so far, to such an exotic location, full of attractions and mysteries, rich
with promise and possibilies, to become a mere pen-pusher. He hunted and
trapped, cleared land, farmed<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"> and
raised horses. He also invested in coal-mining. </span>By the time of his
death, in 1929, Monpezat was a wealthy man. <span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">His landholdings alone, paddy fields and coffee plantations, amounted to
some15,000 hectares. </span>He built a vast mansion on Boulevard Carnot, Hanoï.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: -.75pt; margin-right: .85pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Having become a delegate of
Annam-Tonkin, Monpezat became accustomed to regular trips to France. In Paris,
Henri de Monpezat rediscovered Paul-Jean Toulet, almost famous already, who
introduced him to the world of writers and artists. Daudet in his memoirs (Salons
et journaux (Paris 1920) speaks of Montpezat immersed in his colonial
considerations ... and of Toulet filled with glimpses and acid axioms, like La
Rochefoucauld. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: -.75pt; margin-right: .85pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: -.75pt; margin-right: .85pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">In 1914 Monpezat was very tempted by
a candidacy in some French metropolitan area, in Béarn for example, but finally
decided to present himself in Cochin China which had a representation in the
Chamber of Deputies, like some old colonies such as Reunion, Senegal, Algeria,
etc. His adversary was Ernest Outrey, the battle bitter and dirty. Outrey won
by 1,107 votes to 984. The very next day <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the opponents met on the field, swords drawn.
Monpezat, this time, was the victor: Outrey was wounded on the arm and stomach.
However, in September 1918, another<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>encounter
determined his fate for the next while. Divorced from his first in 1916, he had
remarried in Tonkin in 1917. It happened that that he met his wife’s seducer, a
captain named Joseph Domenach, a member of an economic commission sent to
Indochina three or four months before. A discussion ensued, and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>rapidly became heated. Monpezat took out his
pistol, which he always carrried, and fired at Domenach. Hit in the stomach, Domenach
died of his injuries some hours later. <span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">Monpezat is arrested and imprisoned. </span>He is given a five years suspended
sentence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Monpezat defended himself. In his closing, he said: "I
am determined to live in silence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">and in the shadows ... My springs are broken. A lonely old
age awaits me ... I had a position, a certain popularity. In the shipwreck of
my life, I am just than a wreck. "<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">His signature, little by little, reappeared in the Indochinese
press. In 1924, he returned to his seat on the Higher Council of Colonies. The
same year, he created his own daily newspaper, the Volonté Indochinoise. At the
beginning of the summer of 1929, he was forced to undergo surgery. He died a
few weeks later. « Un homme échappé des romans d'Alexandre Dumas», exclaimed
one of the numerous articles published by the Indochinese press on his death. <span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">Yet another gushed : « C'était
le d’Artagnan de nos assemblées. »<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>John Charles
Moore de Bienville Grant, 9th Baron de Longueuil</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">was born in 1861 at Bath, Somerset. He was the son
of Charles James Irwin Grant and Anne Marie Catherine Trapman. He
succeeded to the title of Baron de Longueuil on 3 August 1931. He
died on 17 October 1935 at Pau, France.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><b>Louis Barthou</b><br />
</span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Deputy for Oloron-Sainte-Marie,
President of the Council and several times Minister for the Third Republic,
including Prime Minister for eight months in 1913. </span><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">As Foreign Minister, Louis Barthou met
King Alexander I of Yugoslavia during his state visit
to Marseille in October 1934. On 9 October, the King and Barthou were
assassinated by Velicko Kerin, a Bulgarian revolutionary wielding a
handgun. A bullet struck Barthou in the arm, passing though and fatally
severing an artery. He died of excessive blood loss less than an hour later. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A ballistic
report on the bullets found in the car was made in 1935, but the results were
not made available to the public until 1974. They revealed that Barthou was hit
by an 8mm Modèle 1892 revolver round commonly used in weapons carried by
French police. Thus it appears that he was killed by police response rather
than by the assassin.</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-9580047610261746632017-01-20T16:14:00.001-08:002017-01-20T16:19:47.403-08:00Contrerime XXXVI<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Comme à ce roi laconien<br /> Près de sa dernière heure,<br />D'une source à l'ombre, et qui pleure,<br /> Fauste, il me souvient ;<br /><br />De la nymphe limpide et noire<br /> Qui frémissait tout bas<br />- Avec mon coeur - quand tu courbas<br /> Tes hanches, pour y boire.</i><br /><br /><br />Like that Laconian king<br /> On his death bed<br />Fauste, I am minded<br /> Of a shady, sobbing spring;<br /><br />Of a nymph limpid and black<br /> That quivered, silent<br />- As my heart - when you bent<br /> Your thirst to slake.</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #333333;">Notes: </span><b><span style="color: #252525;">Agesipolis III</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #252525;"> </span></span><span style="color: #252525;">was the
31st and last of the kings of the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Agiad
dynasty<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>in ancient<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Sparta.</span></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: inherit; margin: 6pt 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #252525;">He was elected king while still a minor, but was soon deposed by
his colleague<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Lycurgus. While Toulet might have read about him in Plutarch, Peter Cogman believes it more likely that</span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">he found the anecdote in the </span><i style="background-color: transparent;">Dictionnaire
historique et critique of</i><span style="background-color: transparent;"> Pierre Bayle, his bedside reader:- </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>“Se souvenant du
temple de Bacchus qu’il avait vu à Aphite, il souhaita de jouir de l’ombre,
& de la fraicheur des eaux claires de cet endroit-là. Il y fut porté en
vie, mais il mourut hors du tempe le 7 jour de sa fièvre.”</i></span></div>
Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-12930308444489753842017-01-20T15:57:00.000-08:002017-01-20T16:22:15.491-08:00Contrerime XXXIII <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i> l' ingénue.</i><br /><br /><i>D’une amitié passionnée</i><br /><i> Vous me parlez encor,</i><br /><i>Azur, aérien décor,</i><br /><i> Montagne pyrénée,</i><br /><br /><i>Où me trompa si tendrement</i><br /><i> Cette ardente ingénue</i><br /><i>Qui mentait, fût-ce toute nue,</i><br /><i> Sans rougir seulement.</i><br /><br /><i>Au lieu que toi, sublime enceinte,</i><br /><i> Tu es couleur du temps :</i><br /><i>Neige en mars ; roses du printemps.</i><br /><i> Août, sombre hyacinthe.</i><br /><br /><br />In the high Pyrénées<br /> I am constantly told<br />By the azure scenery<br /> Of a passion that's old. <br /><br />Where l was cheated and crushed<br /> By an innocent lass<br />Who could lie - while bare-assed -<br /> With no hint of a blush. <br /><br /> While you, noble surrounding,<br /> Wear the seasonal gown: <br />Snow in march; roses in spring...<br /> In August, dark brown.</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 15.6pt;">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Note: <i>hyacinthe </i>in this instance is the mineral, not the flower; also known as Zircon. It is a more appropriate colour for late summer foliage in the mountains.</span></span></div>
Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-49546329741375568002016-12-27T07:00:00.002-08:002020-01-13T04:37:08.412-08:00Parents, childhood, schooldays.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">23 Rue Tran, Pau</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Gaston and his brothers</b><br /><br />The Toulet family were descended from the 16th c. <i>seigneurs </i>of Buros, in the department of Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Aquitaine region. The village of Buros is located in the commune of Morlaàs, part of the district of Pau and a fountain in the village, now destroyed, once bore their name. But some of the family had long since emigrated, in particular to Mauritius, where they became planters. <br /><br />Son of Pierre, advocate, and of Marie-Emeline Catalogne, Bernard-Gaston, Paul-John's father, was born at Pau 20 July 1840. His ancestors were farmers and gentlemen. Pierre Toulet had 3 sons - Gaston, Paul and Adrien, and 2 daughters, Louise and Amanda. <br /><br />Paul, born 18 October 1838, was the eldest, and after a brief sojourn in Mauritius, headed for Madagascar. Family history puts him in intimate relations with queen Ranavalo, but a cursory glance at the history of that dynasty puts paid to that rumour. Not that Paul-Jean was in any way deterred from adopting the legend, (as he did the story of the Bailli de Suffren armchair) – boasting to his school friend Henri Dartiguenave, (and shamelessly conflating father and uncle): <i>“Ce n’est pas pour rien que mon père a été amant de la reine de Madagascar”</i><br /><br />Although the family maintained that Uncle Paul at least had married a pretty Malagasy princess, by whom he had 4 children, the reality is more prosaic. Before he settled in Mauritius, sometime after 1864 (he did not attend Gaston’s wedding) Paul made two trips to Mexico. When he returned to Mauritius he re-joined his brother in La Savanne, where he married Marie Jolivet in October 1869. He was a witness at Gaston’s second wedding in 1877, to Rosette, daughter of Isidore Loustau-Lalanne, older brother of Marie-Emma. Paul’s wife died in 1890 and Paul himself in 1898, aged 59. His death notice states that he had been overseer on the Belle-Vue-Maurel estate, in the Rivière du Rempart District to the north. Before that he had run his own sugar plantation, the Mont d’Or, near Ruisseau Rose, Pamplemousses, at the same time as an aloes spinning mill.<br /><br />Adrien or Edouard, was born 30 March 1842. He ran a ferry service at Tamatave, Madagascar, before marrying Antoinette Agnès of Chazal, Mauritius, and shared his life between France and Mauritius. He was in Pau around 1879 where he looked after Paul-Jean as he attended the lycée. He stopped travelling to settle as a planter at Chemin Grenier, in the south of the island, where he died childless, in 1891 aged 49.<br /><br />Gaston emigrated around 1861-2, still in his early 20s to join his exotic relations. He initially found employment in a small property called La Louisa, attached to Belle-Vue-Harel. Impressed by the fecundity of the land, he decided on becoming a planter on his own account and settled in the south at La Savanne, where he found acquaintances of his father, émigrés from Béarn, already well-established. There he met Marie-Emma Loustau-Lalanne at a dinner and married her 26 September 1864, in La Savanne, and became a planter like his father-in-law. When his wife became pregnant, the Toulets voyaged to France, where Jane was born. They returned with the baby and a nurse they found in Lescar, a small village 5 km from Pau. <br /><br /><b>Marie-Emma</b><br /><br />Marie-Emma Loustau-Lalanne was 13th child of Pierre </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Loustau-Lalanne,</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> also a planter, also from Béarn stock. She was born at La Savanne, Mauritius, 31 March 1841.<br /><br />Jean Loustau, grandfather of Emma, was born 1742. He made his career in the navy, joining the fleet of the <i>Bailli de Suffren</i>, Comte Pierre André de Suffren de Saint-Tropez, in India, then retiring, glorious and triumphant, to Mauritius, where he became secretary of the island council, with the title <i>“greffier notaire”</i>; this function and title he kept until the island passed into British possession in 1810. He died in 1827. He married Jeanne de Corday, a grand-daughter of the dramatist Corneille, and possibly a close relative of Charlotte Corday, Marat’s assassin. Paul-Jean was not slow in adopting this ancestor either. Jeanne and Jean had many children, of whom Jean-Charles (called Jeanny) married Elisabeth de Laborde. Their eldest daughter Auguste-Félicité married Pierre Loustau-Lalanne (1794-1862) whose family originated in Salies-de-Béarn. Pierre had land on the Rivière des Anguilles, where he exploited the plantations. (Pierre’s father had been jailed for embezzlement, and his wife travelled from Ile de France to Versailles to plead his case. She was successful to the extent that not only was he cleared, but he was granted in compensation the lands on the Rivière des Anguilles by the King.) <br /><br />Of their fourteen children Emma was second to last.<br /><br />Although Paul was conceived in Mauritius, his parents wanted him born in France so they came back to Pau to la maison Lapleine, 16 Rue d’Orleans, to his paternal grandparent and former advocate Pierre Toulet. The house was rented by a M. Dabadie, most likely Eugène who married Louise, Gaston’s sister. He was an artillery officer, scion of a military family whose tradition went back to Louis XV. <br />Paul was born June 5th 1867, his birth registered at the Mairie the following day and he was baptised the same day in the parish church of Saint-Jacques.<br /><br />Some of Toulet’s biographers assert that Toulet’s parents were anxious to have him born in Béarn, for sentimental reasons – Béarn being his ancestral home on his father’s side. Solange de la Blanchetai, Toulet’s niece, is of this opinion. (She pointed out that Bernard-Gaston made the return voyage at least seventeen times, as he wished the children of his second marriage to become familiar with their native land.) However, there may have been more pragmatic reasons for undertaking the voyage. Alex Ichas points out that there was an inheritance issue of eighteen years standing, to be resolved, since the death in 1849 at Haget of Pierre-Isidore Loustau, uncle of Emma, Toulet’s mother. Pierre-Isidore Loustau was a bachelor at fifty, himself the recipient of three large bequests, and at his death the inventory of his vast fortune took three months to complete.<br /><br />What’s more, in 1866-1867, a violent malaria epidemic occurred in Mauritius, resulting in 40,000 deaths in a population of 330,000, with 6,000 deaths occurring during just one month in urban Port Louis. After the epidemic, Mauritius was notorious throughout the world for its intense malaria transmission. <br /><br />So clearly there were multifactorial and pressing reasons for Gaston and Emma Toulet to quit the island for Béarn, even with Emma three months pregnant. They embarked at Mauritius on the <i>Emirne</i>, belonging to the <i>Messageries Impériales</i>, 18 January 1867, bringing with them the ten-month-old Jane, together with her French nursemaid. <br /><br />The spring voyage was testing. The Suez Canal had not been built at the time, so passengers on the <i>Messageries Impériales</i>, which served the Indian Ocean, debarked their passengers for Europe at Suez, where they took a train to Alexandria where another ship of the same line was waiting to take them on to Marseilles. The total duration of a voyage from Port Louis to Marseilles took between 26 and 31 days. The passengers who embarked at Port Louis on the <i>Emirne</i> on January 18th arrived at Marseilles on board the <i>Péluz </i>on 15th February. The Toulets took the train to Pau, where they arrived 16th February, some three and a half months before Paul’s birth. Emma’s mother Félicité embarked with them, and died at sea. (Apparently she had been born at sea too.) <br /><br />When his mother died 2 weeks later on June 19, aged 26, Paul-Jean’s father seemed to take little further interest in the children. He entrusted the baby to his sisters, Louise and Amanda, who was only 19 at the time, and his daughter Jane to his sister-in-law Amélie Chaline, née Loustau-Lalanne, before returning to Mauritius to further his interests in the sugar industry. Amanda was soon to marry an officer at the Pau garrison called Jacques Terlé. (Aristide Chaline bought La Rafette ten years later.)<br /><br />Gaston remarried in May 1878, to Rose Loustau-Lalanne, eldest daughter of his brother-in-law Isidore. She was considerably younger than he, born in 1859, and gave birth to seven boys: Adrien, Francis, Stephane, (who died aged four while Paul-Jean was in Mauritius, in April 1886), Guy, Marc, Georges and Philippe. Rose died in 1897 and Gaston remained a widower for the rest of his life. He sold his estate, Surinam, when business was poor, and passed the remainder of his days living in familiar surroundings with one or other of his sons. He died on 16 March 1922, at Guy’s house at Mon-Loisir-Rouillard. Paul-Jean later accused him of ruining him - something he was well able to do of his own accord.<br /><br />So Paul-Jean was brought up by his grandfather Pierre, aunt Amanda and uncle Jacques Terlé, who lived at Billères in a suburb of Pau in the villa Mauricia built by grandfather Pierre some years previously and so-called in memory of Mauritius.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> (When Pierre sold the house it was re-named <i>Inisfail</i>;
census records list the Wright family from America as living there in 1906;
they apparently purchased the house from an Irish family named Gillis! Though
badly damaged in a 2012 fire it has since been restored.) </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">His grandmother, Marie-Émeline Catalogne, gets a sole mention in a quote from Paul, in a memory that is Proustian in its sentiment: <br /><i>“C’est dans le passé qu’est tout notre bonheur; et le mien me torture de sa grâce évanouie. Parfois au moment que le sommeil vient enfin, on s’imagine être encore l’enfant d’autrefois, avec un cœur d’enfant parmi les fleurs…Mais les fleurs de jadis étaient belles et pliantes et parfumées; il en est qu’on revoit avec une netteté surprenante. Ainsi à Bilhère, contre une des fenêtres de ma grand’mère, et presque sous le dallet, il y avait une giroflée, de celles qu’on appelle je crois violier, je l’aimais beaucoup.”</i><br />(“It is in the past where all our happiness resides; mine torments me with its faded grace. Sometimes, at the moment of dozing off, I imagine I am still that child of long ago, with a child’s heart among the flowers… But the flowers of yesteryear were beautiful and pliant and scented; I can still see them with amazing clarity. At Bilhère, against one of my grandmother’s window, almost under the sill, there was a gillyflower, one of those called wallflowers I think, that I really liked.”)<br /><br />In one of those curious post-cards that he wrote to himself years later, in April 1904, Paul-Jean remembers further : "At about six years of age, my dear friend, I was living in a small villa at Bilhère, and from there every morning during the fine season I went to the Dominican school in Pau, brought by my uncle as he was reporting to Headquarters. It was still early in the morning, a mist hung between us and the mountains. On the wallflowers in the hollow of the walls, on the red flowers by the side of the lawns, the dew had left beautiful teardrops; and my uncle plucked for me, among the large leaves, a bunch of chill grapes. Sometimes a trumpet call rose from the barracks. Sensuous even then, already nostalgic, with the cold grapes in my mouth and all round me that intoxicating metallic voice which spoke of distant things, and the wet grass which I stroked as I stroke a fur today; and the incomparable purple of the peonies – was I happy? I don’t know. But that was living, even then. What an organ is the soul of a child, until the first woman plays on it and puts it out of tune! But remember the light blue of the Pyrenees and the morning that kissed your pale cheeks.”<br /><br />Paul started his schooling with the Dominicans at 23 rue Tran, Pau. A large courtyard was set between the school and the house of the state executioner, Jean-Baptiste Ferrou, “dernier executeur des hautes oeuvres de la ville”. Ferrou was a wealthy property-owner, and something of an idealist who created a homeless shelter in his house in rue du Hédas – he owned most of the rather insalubrious area. He died without issue, aged 85, in 1886 or 1895 depending on your source, bequeathing his properties to the municipality.”<br />At the Dominicans, a nun taught Paul-Jean the rudiments of German. He made some lasting friendships there too, notably with Léopold Bauby, seven days his junior, who features in the Contrerimes, and who remembered 50 years later “a child with fair hair crossing the Haute-Plante, a servant bringing him to school”. Paul-Jean would traverse the public park where the shadows were so green that he later remarked that “one had the impression of entering an emerald.”<br />A statue of Diana in the courtyard made a lasting impression on him. And not only on Paul-Jean. For the poet Francis Jammes, the Diana of rue Tran was “the longest, the most graceful that he knew”. In point of fact, this Diana was one of several copies made of a fourth-century marble in the Louvre. The Pau copy was cast in the 1840s by the Fonderie du Val d’Osne. Toulet used his poetic licence to transform her from cast-iron into plaster, and to amputate a limb: <br /><br /><i>Au détour de la rue étroite<br /> S’ouvre l’ombre et la cour<br />Où Diane en plâtre, et qui court<br /> N’a que la jambe droite.</i><br />
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<br />The portion of his childhood not spent at Billères or Pau, was spent at Carresse, which he inherited from his mother. Carresse had belonged to his grand-uncle Pierre-Isidore Loustau, one of the sons of Jean-Charles (Jeanny) Loustau. He had lived there until his death in 1849 when it passed to his sister Auguste-Félicité, who left it in turn to her daughter Emma. <br /><br />At Carresse the property was called <i>Le Haget,</i> a little outside the village, itself six kilometres from Salies-de-Béarn. The painter Labrouche, who was a friend of Paul-Jean, described it as a “quiet old-style house buried in greenery…an old wall, iron railings separate it from the road that turns at that point and descends towards the Gave. In front of the steps, a pretty little leafy garden, filled with trees, elms, magnolias. And silence.” Toulet remarked on the beautiful, pendant magnolia blossoms, so white in the evening shade,<i> “les belles et pendantes fleurs du magnolier si blanches dans l’ombre du soir”.</i> When he eventually had to sell the property, he expressed his regret : <br /><i>« Je regretterai toute ma vie les terres de famille qu’il m’a fallu vendre…Il y avait là des bouquets d’arbes et des familles de serviteurs qui nous appartenaient depuis des siècles. On ne s’en détache pas sans un peu de mélancolie. »</i><br /><br />Memories of Carresse inform some of his novels. A description by a character in <i>Les Tendres Ménages </i>can only be of Le Haget: <i>"C’est ici que j’ai eu le premier sens de la vie un peu profound pour la gourmandise avec les plats sucrés qu’on nous servait dans la vaiselle Emoire où il y avait des vues de places bien pavées, ou d ‘Agrigente, sur ses assiettes jaunes."</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Especially when one reads in Coples LXLI:</span><br /><br /><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Je songe aux plats sucrés de ma vieille Detzine <br />Et du service Empire en son jaune marli…</i><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">If Paul-Jean remembers Detzine, the other servants remembered him, too. Toulet’s biographer, Martineau, recall interviewing the family’s old retainer Louise, years after the death of Paul-Jean:</span><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“She was very young at the time, but she can see like it was yesterday - the lovely blond child, so delicate, that she often had to mind, look after, and to whose chest she applied mustard poultices. All around the place, on the walls or on pieces of paper, he would write in pencil: </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Ici repose Emma Toulet, morte peu de jours après la naissance du petit Paul.</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> And while I would chat to her about the child she knew, she would wring her hands and keep repeating “the poor child, the poor child!”</span><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Léontine, the laundress, remarked on the sadness and the sort of haunted air that would possess the child whenever he remembered his mother.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Paul-Jean spent almost all his holidays at Carresse with the Adrien Toulets, the Dabadies and the Terlés in turn. His grandfather Pierre died there in 1892. He followed a course of education there as irregular and spasmodic as at Pau. His aunt Louise Dabadie would teach him, and Jane, and her own children, some current affairs when she came on holidays. Even the principles of algebra! The Abbé Puyoo, curé of Carresse, started him off in Latin. At age 11 he wrote to his father complaining of the spasmodic nature of his education, which he blamed on his health, or on his teachers, one or the other of whom being frequently absent. He also complained of his eyes, often red and sore.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Paul-Jean’s fragile health delayed sending him to college. In the autumn 1878 he entered the lycée at Pau in fifth class, not as a boarder but as a “demi-pensionaire”. His uncle and aunt Adrien Toulet took him in their apartment at the Arrieu building, rue de la Préfecture, nowadays rue du Maréchal Foch. After some months Adrien and wife left for Mauritius and Paul-Jean became a full-time boarder. (French college classes are numbered in inverse order, in contrast to most other education systems. Pupils begin their secondary education in the </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">sixième</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> - sixth class, aged 11-12, continuing through grades </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">cinquième, quatrième, troisième,</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> and </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">seconde </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">to </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">terminale</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">. Until 1959 the term </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">lycée </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">designated a secondary school with a full curriculum - the present </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">collége</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, plus lycée. Older lycées may till include a collége section, so a pupil attending a lycée may actually be a </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">collégien</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">. At the final year of schooling. Most students take the </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">baccalaurét </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">diploma, or </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">bac</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">.) </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Once uncle Adrien had departed, Paul-Jean was to sample the delights of boarding school. At eleven years of age, cosseted and cherished, he was in for a rude awakening. Henri Dartiguenave relates an incident that occurred shortly after Paul-Jean had started, when a group of boys were attracted to a pedlar selling pocket knives in the market square. Paul wished to buy one but had no money. He asked to borrow a franc from Dartiguenave, who was likewise penniless. Paul-Jean noticed that a fellow pupil, an English lad, who had just made a purchase, still had change in his hand, and asked him for the money. He received a curt and insulting refusal, to Paul-Jean’s astonished hurt. He turned to Dartiguenave, saying, “Did you see that? Can you believe it? He refused me a franc. Why would he refuse me twenty sous?” He was incredulous and disappointed, so much so Dartiguenave had difficulty in dragging him back to school. Well before Sartre, it was realised that hell is other people. And for sensitive souls, boarding school is one of its seven circles. At Pau, Paul-Jean stood out from his fellow students, different, individual. So of course they tormented him. Catala tells the story that they called him “</span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">mulâtre</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">” and when, furious, he charged into battle, they made the excuse that</span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"> “créole ou mulâtre, c’est la même chose.”</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> It is certain that these experiences inspired the passage in </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Monsieur du Paur</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, in which the title character describes boarding school:</span><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"Imagine, sir, a child brought up by women, neat and clean, sincere, politeness itself. Imagine a horrible college, comrades who don’t wash, who lie to avoid punishment, who swear out of bravado and make a virtue out of being scruffy and rude. Imagine the supervisors who they deserve, or rather whom they don’t deserve, failures who have done well, who wouldn’t find work as a bailiff’s clerk or a dishwasher in a greasy spoon, to whom one entrusts the souls of children, I believe to wipe their feet on. Add to that the unctuous principal, food that would turn your stomach, the airless dormitory, etc., etc., etc., Isn’t that enough to turn a good lad into something else entirely, a ruffian, for example?”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It is also unquestionable that his experiences inspired Contrerime XIX:</span><br /><br /><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Rêves d' enfant, voix de la neige,<br /> Et vous, murs où la nuit<br />Tournait avec mon jeune ennui...<br /> Collège, noir manège.</i><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Paul-Jean only returned to being a “demi-pensionaire” during third class. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As a scholar, his fellow students recall him as being very bright, taking first place in French composition but also obtaining distinctions in Greek and Latin. He enjoyed his lessons, and he was already a voracious, if omnivorous, reader. At the end of the 1879-1880 school year he only came second in classical recitation and in German, but he had been ill in the beginning of that year. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In October 1880 he entered fourth. His father was still in France but had to return to Mauritius in the early summer of 1881, together with his new wife, two children, and Jane, now fifteen. At the end of the fourth, Paul-Jean obtained firsts in French composition, history, geography and German; second prizes in Latin and Natural History, grammar and distinctions in maths, religion and Greek. He read fluently in German and English. Years after his </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">bac</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, before quitting Paris for Béarn, he would amuse himself translating Greek verse into French – something he returned to later again.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Dartiguenave, whose father was an art teacher at the lycée, recalls a composition by Paul-Jean on the subject of fox-hunting being read aloud by his teacher, M. Artaud, as a model composition, certain passages being favourably compared to Daudet! </span><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It seems an unlikely subject matter for a class of French teenagers. But fox-hunting had been established as a country pursuit in the region since 1847. In 1875 the Pau Foxhunting Society consisted of nine members, seven of them British, meeting every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from mid-November to mid-March. Distinguished guests included the Prince of Wales, and the Duke of Westminster. The hunt frequently departed from Billère, affording Paul-Jean many opportunities to observe the riders in red coats and white pants, with their horses and hounds. The essay was no chore, as he revelled in the descriptions of the landscape of Pont-Long, the autumn dew, the dark green ferns and the broom, trampled by a troop of horsemen red-jacketed like giant poppies. And thus it continued, each week during the school year – at least until his abrupt departure at the end of January 1882.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">After the fourth, at about 15 years of age, Paul-Jean had changed, mutating into an unruly rascal, to the extent that he was eventually expelled for having played </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">“un tour pendable”</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> on a teacher. Dartiguenave describes a certain invigilator, a M. Pujo, bald, solemn, with the profile of a bird, who revelled in doling out detentions. Pujo affected to speak Latin to both pupils and masters. Only his favourites might address him freely. Words were often exchanged between him and Paul-Jean in a Latin and French together. Harassed beyond endurance, Paul-Jean concealed an ink-pot in his hatband, which doused him when he turned it over to put it on. Pujo had him thrown out.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Another version had him expelled for an incident involving insolence at morning prayers. But whatever the reason, Paul-Jean was soon looking for another school. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Before he left, he wrote in a letter to Jane that the only teacher he found to his liking was he who taught French, Latin and Greek. The history teacher had started to be a cross-patch, the German teacher was already there, and the PT instructor was refining the art of boring him. Paul-Jean’s enthusiasm, so evident in the fourth, had started to wane. And M. Artaud had been given the transfer he had requested.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">After his expulsion from Pau, his uncle, commandant Eugène Dabadie, who had recently been transferred to Bayonne, decided the simplest solution would be to have him finish his year there. Paul-Jean arrived without delay, but he had adopted such habits of indiscipline that they could not be concealed. Bayonne consulted Pau as to the reasons for his expulsion. The answer came - insubordination – “but nothing in his moral conduct would prevent his admission to another establishment.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The letter was dated 7.2 1882. Only a couple of days elapsed from this date to that on which the Principal of Bayonne addressed to Eugène Dabadie: “Sir, first impressions of your pupil the young Toulet are so bad, in just a few days he showed himself so rebellious to all advice and gave such example of insubordination that I cannot accept him as a student in the lycée of Bayonne. Please come and fetch him immediately…”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On May 1st he entered the </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Institut Charlemagne</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, still in Bayonne, and run by a M. Burguières. He entered as a boarder, although he got out regularly. At M. Burguières he made the acquaintance of a Basque lad from Labourd, robust and wealthy – sufficiently so for Paul-Jean to see him later on whenever he returned to Bayonne. He is transmogrified into M. Bordaguibus in his verse, and the character Etchepalao in </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">La Jeune Fille Verte</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">. –and he turned up in the chapter on his friends in </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">les Impostures</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It might be the case that at the </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Institut Charlemagne </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">the regime was less strict, the pupils fewer in number, and Paul-Jean, though he hadn’t completed his third, was admitted straight away to follow the bac course. He applied himself to such an extent that M. Burguières sought a dispensation to have him take the first part at the end of that year - a request that was denied. So he had to wait another year. He wrote to his sister from Carresse in August that he had almost gone down in Greek and Latin – his French and German got him through.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">He was in Bordeaux in December 1883 in the </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Institution Courdurier</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, effectively a crammer, to prepare for the second part of the </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">bac</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">. In a letter to Jane dated 10 March 1884 he announced that he had been yet again sent home, apparently for scorning a college dinner and choosing to dine elsewhere. Courdurier was incensed. Mme Courdurier, the other students, and Uncle Eugène all appealed Courdurier until he agreed to accept Paul-Jean back after Lent. He was still there in November - he should have passed the </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">bac </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">in July. In was not until 26 July 1885 that he finally graduated. He had quit the </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Institution Courdurier</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, and come to live with Uncle Terlé in Saintes, where he was stationed after Pau. Toulet recalled his time in Saintes with affection more than thirty years later, referring to the college at Saintes as the only one from which he was not expelled. Mind you, he admits he only turned up five or six times. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">His approaching exams did not prevent him from holidaying in the Basque country at Easter, a region that was new to him.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="FR">He visited Saint-Palais, Ostabat, Larceveau,
Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, Arnéguy, Valcarlos and Arradoy. </span><span lang="EN-IE">Apart for some brief comments on the
landscape, he notices the <i>“très jolis filles”</i> of Saint-Palais, and also at
Valcarlos, one especially, “<i>gracile, à un lavoir.</i>” At the end of July he
returned to Pau, and explored the valley of Ossau, land of his forefathers
(“<i>une Espagnole très blanche et très belle</i>” was noted at Eaux-Bonnes). He spent
three weeks at Cauterets, dividing his time between the theatre and the casino.
He notes in his diary that he had lost some money at roulette - it seems he
hadn’t yet discovered the siren call of baccarat. He left there on September 6<sup>th</sup>,
returning briefly to Carresse before
spending a month a La Rafette. He
records a day of Perpetual Adoration at Carresse, the children of Mary, white
in their muslin veils, the black dress of the
old folk, black kerchiefs, peasants dressed also in black – and like flowers among the buckwheat,
the kerchiefs of the girls, whom he
names – Marion, Cadette, Jeanneton. He spend one afternoon reading the complete
4<sup>th</sup> volume of Houssiaux’s edition of Balzac.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">He was now
18 years of age, and not long from quitting Carresse for the scented shores of
Mauritius, where he had been summoned by his father. Haget was becoming too much of a strait jacket. A clue to his activities might be gleaned from those with which he endows M. de Paur, in the substituted place name Bressuire, where “you kissed the servants in the corridors and the harvesters in the hayloft, or where you chased after Aline among the hazels, while her red stockings laughed in the long grass.” </span><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Contrerime XXXI </b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">records these summer days: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Si Monsieur Paul est dans le bois<br /> Avise à la fontaine.<br /><br />Mais avise aussi the briser<br /> Ta cruche en tournant vite.<br />Ah, que dirait ta mère. Évite<br /> Son bras. Prends le baiser.</i><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Paul-Jean was gaining a reputation as a bit of a rake. Many years later Jacques Dyssord notes that he was remembered in the locality as a young man who was too knowing and forward to leave a young lady alone in his company. Dyssord heard it at the château de Cassaber, birthplace of his grand-aunt. </span><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Paul-Jean’s family knew it was not in his best interests to let him to his own devices in Carresse. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Secondary school over, Paul-Jean dreamed of studying law in order to enter the diplomatic service and become an ambassador – or just a consul on Mauritius. But the old family doctor, Doctor Foix, of Salies, thought his health too delicate for Paris or the Pyrenées. Paul-Jean had written to Jane about the possibility of visiting Mauritius the following year. While waiting for a decision from his father, he was sent to stay with his Aunt Amélie, his mother’s younger sister, and her husband Aristide Chaline, in Saint-Loubès in the Gironde, where they had bought the château of La Rafette in 1877. La Rafette continued to be an important refuge for Paul-Jean for the remainder of his life, and for Jane, who eventually inherited it.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So “petit Paul” as the family knew him, had to leave behind the shady plane trees of Carresse and the accommodating benches of Beaumont park in Pau for the balmy sands of Savanne and the plaintive song of the casuarina trees, like silk rubbing on silk.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Urruty investigated the why and the when Paul became Paul-Jean. Both his birth and baptismal certificate record only the single name Paul, and during his childhood he was always called either Paul or Petit-Paul (sometimes Monsieur Paul) - never Paul-Jean. In her unpublished memoirs, Paul’s niece Solange (Jane’s daughter) traces the metamorphosis to the period 1884-1885, when Paul would have been 17 or 18. Solange found the earliest letter that was signed Paul-Jean was dated 4.5.1885. But he signed variously Paul or Paul-Jean even after 1885. However, it was certainly before he set out for Mauritius that he introduced the change.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The reason for the change hinges on the French pronunciation of his initials P. T. Solange de Fougiéres wrote: <i>Pour l’euphonie de ses initiales il n’a pas voulu s’appeler Paul Toulet car cela le choquait fort de voir broder ses mouchoirs ou marquer son linge de ses deux lettres fort incongrues qui lui donnaient des nausées – P.T.</i></span><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So, the bawds of euphony were cheated by the simple expedient of adding Jean. Paul-Jean no longer had to suffer the coincidence – or co-assonance – of having his initials sound like the verb <i>peter</i>. Clearly a sensitive teenager with aspirations to make a noise in the world, be it in law or in literature, might not care to be known to his contemporaries, or indeed to posterity, by the nickname “<i>Fart</i>.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>NOTE</b>: Léopold Bauby, 1867-1933, was one of Toulet’s best friends (and of Jammes, who wrote of him: “un délicieux vieux garçon, aimable autant que savant et artiste”) and curator of the museum at Pau. He was the nephew of the <span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">provençal </span>writer Adrien Planté, mayor of Orthez, and possessed a library famous for its size and quality. His memoire of Toulet is on p.1377, note 10. He is mentioned in CR XI</span><br /><br /><i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Tel s’enivrait, a son phébus,<br /> D’un chocolat d’Espagne,<br />Chez Guillot, le feutre en campage,<br /> Monsieur Bordaguibus</span></i><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> </span></div>
Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-49127747915565452462016-10-02T16:06:00.000-07:002018-02-06T09:32:13.769-08:00Poems from or inspired by Mauritius<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Toulet wrote little while in Mauritius. Martineau remarked that the young man “is too lucid not to see the void of his existence.” Toulet admits as much - the halo slipped into the mud. With even a note of rancour which says much about his dissatisfaction, he complains about not working, and adds:<br /><i>"Je me rappelle à moi-même ce poète des Petits Poèmes en prose qui avait perdu son auréole dans la boue. Voilà près de cinq ans que la mienne a glissé, et il me semble que je n’ai qu’à étendre la main pour la ramasser. N’était-ce pas hier ? Le temps passe si vite en mauvaise compagnie, et pour moi la crapule est toujours nouvelle."</i><br />(This is a reference to Baudelaire’s Spleen de Paris, or Petits Poèmes en prose, Poème XLVI, <i>Perte d’Auréole</i>.)<br /><br />He wasn’t too lazy however to neglect his reading. He maintained an assiduous account of books read. Over a period of some month this encompassed Port-Royal by Saint-Beuve; Taine’s <i>la Philosophie de l’art,</i> among others of his works; Pascal; Spinoza; Froissart; Villon; Jean Bodin; <i>l’Entretien sur les sciences occultes</i> by Bayle, which no doubt predisposed him to his future frequenting of Bayle’s <i>Dictionnaire</i>; Renan; Chamfort; Albert Sorel; Maupassant; Huysmans; Baudelaire of course; Leconte de Lisle; Shakespeare; Schiller. He read de Sade with a sort of horrified fascination, and in particular the cynical Dolmancé* who inspired in him pity and sympathy for <i>“la manière douloureuse dont il parle de l’amour”</i>.</span><br />
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Note: *Character in Sade’s <i>Philosophy in the Bedroom</i>, a 36 year old atheist and bisexual. Sade urges his readers to study the cynical Dolmancé and follow his example of selfishness and consideration for nothing but his own enjoyment.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Three <i>Sonnets Exotiques</i> date from Ile Maurice, 1888 and were published in an Algiers review, so Toulet can’t have been too unhappy with them; but the long-term effect of Mauritius was the inspiration it provided for poems and contrerimes long after the poet had departed for good.<br />The <i>Sonnets Exotiques</i> are found in <i>Vers Inédits</i>, as is this fragment, dating from about 1887:<br /><br /><i>Au pays du sucre et des mangues<br />Les pâles dames créoles<br />S’éventent sous les varangues<br />Au pays du sucre et des mangues<br />Et zézaient de lentes paroles.<br /><br />Dans les grands fauteuils balançoires<br />En sombre bois des îles<br />Elles content de vaines histoires,<br />Dans les grands fauteuils balançoires<br />Qui bercent leurs têtes futiles.<br /><br />Ainsi qu’une odeur de parterre<br />Lointaine et paresseuse,<br />Dans le cœur s’infiltre en mystère<br />Ainsi qu’une odeur de parterre<br />Leur grâce volupteuse.</i></span><br />
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<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Sonnets Exotiques</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>1.<br />Aimes-tu les jours d’or dénués de mystère,<br />Les rayons alourdis desséchant les rameaux,<br />Et sous un morne ciel que jamais rien n’altère<br />La campagne immobile en sa robe d’émaux ?<br /><br />Viens, la sombre varangue embaume et fera taire<br />Dans mon cœur anxieux la voix des anciens maux,<br />Viens, ta bouche est la source où je me désaltère<br />Et tes seins sont pour moi comme deux fruits gémeaux.<br /><br />Aimes-tu mieux la nuit ? Sous les filaos grêles,<br />Où l’ombre a fait tarir le chant des tourterelles,<br />Des rayons filtreraient sur nous comme des pleurs.<br /><br />J’aime à t’entendre dire une vieille berceuse,<br />Et l’heure coulerait comme une eau paresseuse<br />Au parfum des prochains gérofliers en fleurs.<br /><br />2.<br />De l’impassible ciel, toujours, toujours pareil,<br />Les brises, comme les oiseaux, sont envolées ;<br />Et d’inutiles fleurs, d’aucune aile frôlées,<br />Dorment dans l’air pesant leur lumineux sommeil.<br /><br />Il faut avoir connu tes splendeurs désolées,<br />O monotone ciel, ô voûte de vermeil,<br />Et le spleen que déverse un éternel soleil,<br />Pour savoir tout le prix qu’ont les terres voilées.<br /><br />Là-bas où les coteaux ont des formes de seins<br />Et se couvrent au soir de robes transparentes,<br />Des cygnes noirs et blancs nagent dans les bassins.<br /><br />Un ciel pâle s’y mire, et les vapeurs errantes,<br />Et les peupliers longs que septembre a rouillés ;<br />La nuit prochaine endort l’odeur des foins mouillés.<br /><br />3.<br />En vain brillent les eaux, pour qu’il s’y désaltère,<br />Moloch féroce boit les larmes des forêts.<br />L’île chaude sous lui fume comme un cratère,<br />Les oiseaux se sont tus dans les arbres retraits.<br /><br />Mais loin du ciel grisâtre et de la morne terre<br />Les murs gardent encor des repaires discrets<br />Où le sommeil pour l’homme évoque avec mystère<br />L’essaim silencieux des rêves aux doigts frais.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Et déjà vient le soir parmi les aromates.<br />Arrachant sa chair brune à la fraîcheur des nattes,<br />Dans son voile éclatant, comme une longue fleur.<br /><br />Djalia s’est dressée et fait tinter ses bagues,<br />Tandis que les rayons du soleil qui se meurt<br />Allument une flamme à ses prunelles vagues.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Mahé, in the Seychelles, inspired a poem printed in Nouvelles Contrerimes<br /><br /><b>Nouvelles Contrerimes, XVII </b><br /><br /><i>Mahé des Seychelles, le soir : <br /> Zette est sur son dimanche. <br />Et sous la mousseline blanches <br /> Brille son mollet noir. <br /><br />Les cases aux fraîches varangues <br /> Bâillent le long des quais ; <br />Dans les branches d’un noir bosquet <br /> Étincellent les mangues, <br /><br />Tandis qu’en ses jardins fleuris, <br /> Mystérieuse et belle, <br />Rêve une pâle demoiselle <br /> Aux chapeaux de Paris.</i><br /><br />There are a number of Baudelairean echos in this poem – Baudelaire makes use of the word ‘varangues’ (verandas) in <i>Les Projets</i>, from <b>Spleen de Paris</b>, and from the same collection<i> La Belle Dorothée </i>the young lady, who is black, dreams about Paris fashions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Then there was Mauritius: <br /><i>Jardin qu’un dieu sans doute a posé sur les eaux, <br />Maurice, où la mer chante, et dorment les oiseaux</i>.<br />(Coples, XLIV)<br /><br />And here is an attempt at a Contrerime quoted by Martineau that is possibly a lubricious memory of the island:<br /><br /><i>Ils ne sont plus les noirs tilleuls<br /> Ni la profonde allée<br />Où mon père menait…<br /> Ses pas graves et seuls.<br /><br />Ni la balançoire glissante<br /> Où pas dessus tes bas<br />J’ai vu parfois de haut en bas<br /> Ta cuisse éblouissante.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Ten years after Mauritius, Toulet wrote the following in a notebook, the counterpart of a poem in <b>Coples </b>:<br /><i>Je sais un homme qui ne devrait jamais voyager. Il n’est place où il est passé qui ne lui serre le cœur de ne pas revoir, depuis ce flamboyant violet de Maurice, et la jupe jaune clair de Jeanne Saint-R…</i> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Urruty represents her as a friend of his sister Jane, the initials identifiable as that of a family now extinct in the male line in Mauritius, <br /><br />There is a quatrain that Martineau presents in its original state : <br /><br /><i>Dessous le flamboyant qui couvrait l’herbe nue <br />D’un dôme violet, je t’évoque. Soudain <br />Une source murmure à travers le jardin, <br />Jeanne aux yeux ténébreux qu’êtes-vous devenue ? </i><br /><br />This was published as <b>Coples LXIII</b>: <br /><br /><i>Dessous le flamboyant qui couvre l’herbe nue <br />D’un dôme violet , où je vous vois encor <br />Fraîche comme l’eau vive en un brûlant décor, <br />Jeanne aux yeux ténébreux, qu’êtes-vous devenue ?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Coples LXIX: </b><br /><br /><i>Des bordes du canal noir où tu quittas ton linge, <br />Le noir tchocra te guette avec des yeux luisants, <br />Floryse. Au loin blanchit la mer sur les brisants, <br />Parfois sur Chamerel on voit passer un singe.</i><br /><br />(There is a mention in the <b>Journal </b>of a picnic with black servants (tchocras) dressed in white and red.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The influence of Mauritius is to be felt in Toulet's prose too. Floryse, whoever she might have been, attracts the following apostrophe:<br /><br /><i> Vous ne connaissez pas, Floryse, le pays de vos pères, ni cette même île dont on dirait une fleur oubliée aux limites du fleuve Océan. Vous ne connaissez pas la terre de muse, où, sous des rocs qui scellent le mystère de leur nom, confusément, leur sommeil s’enchante à la voix des filaos et de la mer. <br /> Vos pieds jamais n’ont foulé le verger de lumière où mûrissent la mangue et le mangoustan, ni les bords, étroitement, de ce cirque qui fait voir encore les ruines d’un ergastule : c’est là que vos ancêtres, la nuit, enfermaient leurs noirs. <br /> Mais à franchir ce pont, balancé sur les profondeurs d’un courant d’écume, peut-être, comme dans un songe, vous souviendrait-il.<br /> Vous pensierez, Floryse, en amont des âges, reconnaître ce flamboyant, là-bas, dont la fleur violette ressemble à la pourpre de Phénicie.</i><br /><br />Urruty suggests that Floryse is an amalgam of different ladies, variously described throughout Toulet, but her main purpose is to provide an excuse for the author to wax lyrical on the subject of Mauritius. </span><br />
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Note: Ergastule, from the Latin <i>ergastulum</i>, was an enclosure for slaves who worked in the fields. Toulet once again indulges his taste for a rare and exotic vocabulary,</div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The remainder of the Mauritius-inspired poems are from the Contrerimes. Some are evocations of the exotic within a different subject matter; others are frankly descriptive from beginning to end.<br /><br /><b>Contrerime II </b><br /><i>Toi qu' empourprait l' âtre d' hiver <br /> Comme une rouge nue <br />Où déjà te dessinait nue <br /> L' arome de ta chair ; <br /><br />Ni vous, dont l' image ancienne <br /> Captive encor mon coeur, <br />Île voilée, ombres en fleurs, <br /> Nuit océanienne ; <br /><br />Non plus ton parfum, violier <br /> Sous la main qui t' arrose, <br />Ne valent la brûlante rose <br /> Que midi fait plier.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Contrerime </b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>IX Nocturne</b><br /><i>Ô mer, toi qui je sens frémir<br /> À travers la nuit creuse,<br />Comme le sein d’une amoureuse<br /> Qui ne peut pas dormir ;<br /><br />Le vent lourde frappe la falaise…<br /> Quoi ! si le chant moqueur<br />D’une sirène est dans mon cœur – <br /> Ô cœur, divin malaise.<br /><br />Quoi, plus de larmes, ni d’avoir<br /> Personne qui vous plaigne…<br />Tout bas, comme d’un flanc qui saigne,<br /> Il s’est mis à pleuvoir.</i><br /><br /><b>Contrerime XIX</b> <i>Rêves d’enfant</i><br /><i>Circé des bois et d' un rivage<br /> Qu' il me semblait revoir,<br />Dont je me rappelle d' avoir<br /> Bu l' ombre et le breuvage ;<br /><br />Les tambours du Morne Maudit<br /> Battant sous les étoiles<br />Et la flamme où pendaient nos toiles<br /> D' un éternel midi ;<br /><br />Rêves d' enfant, voix de la neige,<br /> Et vous, murs où la nuit<br />Tournait avec mon jeune ennui...<br /> Collège, noir manège.</i><br /><br /><br />This is perhaps a stretch but Urruty identifies </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Les tambours du Morne Maudit</i></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> with Morne Brabant on the island of Mauritius.<br /><br /><b>Contrerime XLV</b><br /><i>Molle rive dont le dessin<br /> Est d’un bras qui se plie,<br />Colline de brume embellie<br /> Comme se voile un sein,<br /><br />Filaos au chantant ramage – <br /> Que je meure et, demain,<br />Vous ne serez plus, si ma main<br /> N’a fixé votre image.</i><br /><br />(Shades of Ronsard in this poem, and later, Yeats).<br /><br /><b>Contrerime XLVI</b><br /><i> Douce plage où naquit mon âme ;<br /> Et toi, savane en fleurs<br />Que l’Océan trempe de pleurs<br /> Et le soleil de flamme ;<br /><br />Douce aux ramiers, douce aux amants,<br /> Toi de qui la ramure<br />Nous charmait d’ombre, et de murmure,<br /> Et de roucoulements ;</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><br />Où j’écoute frémir encore<br /> Un aveu tendre et fier –<br />Tandis qu’au loin riait la mer<br /> Sur le corail sonore.</i><br /><br /><br /><b>Contrerime XLVII</b><br /><i>Nous jetâmes l’ancre, Madame,<br /> Devant l’île Bourbon<br />À l’heure où la nuit sent si bon<br /> Qu’elle vous troublait l’âme.<br /><br />(Ô monts, ô barques balancées<br /> Sur la lueur des eaux,<br />Lointains appels, plaintes d’oiseaux<br /> Étrangement lancées.)<br /><br />… Au retour, je vous vis descendre<br /> L’écumeux barachois,<br />Dans les bras d’un négre de choix :<br /> Virgile, ou Alexandre.</i></span></div>
Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-34623383555651046752016-04-18T05:20:00.001-07:002016-04-18T05:21:19.608-07:00Contrerime LVI<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Au détour de la rue étroite<br /> S' ouvre l' ombre et la cour<br />Ou Diane en plâtre, et qui court<br /> N' a que la jambe droite.<br /><br />Là-bas sur sa flûte de Pan,<br /> Un Ossalois nous lance<br />Ces airs aigus comme une lance<br /> Qui percent le tympan,<br /><br />Ô Faustine, et je vois se tendre<br /> L' arc pur de ton sourcil ;<br />Telle une autre Diane, si<br /> Le trait n' était si tendre.</i><br /><b><br /></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Translation</b><br /><br />Just off the narrow lane <br /> Is the shady cloister<br /> Where a plaster Diana, poised, <br /> Her one leg trains.<br /> <br /> Close at hand on his flute <br /> Airs sharp as a spear <br /> That rinse and wring the ear<br /> Hear an Ossalois toot, <br /> <br /> Faustine, as I see defined<br /> The pure arc of your brow; <br /> Another Diane, were the bow’s<br /> Barb not so kind.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Notes</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ossalois: Inhabitant of the valley of Ossau.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">"plaster Diana": Toulet's whimsical memory of a statue that stood in the courtyard of the Dominicans, rue de Tran, Pau. </span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In his <i>Journal
et voyages, </i> Toulet appears to describe a statue still intact : "Je suivais cette étroite rue tout de guingois, qui porte le nom d'un jurisconsulte oublié....</span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">.</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">C’est
là</span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> que jadis j’avais appris à lire chez les sœurs
Dominicaines, dans une grande maison…dont l’abord herbeux est encore orné,
comme aux jours de mon enfance, d’une Diane aux jambes nobles et nues. C’est près
de là que Faustine avait élu sa nouvelle demeure."<br />Francis
Jammes described this statue as "la plus longue, la plus gracieuse que je
connaisse."</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Henri
Martieau wryly comments *: "Tandis que Toulet assure, par un caprice
singulier, à moins que ce ne soit celui de la rime, qu’il lui reste pour courir
sa seule jambe droite."<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">P.J. Cogman suggests that it is perhaps a tradition in
litterature that in poems of nostalgia statues are broken. <span lang="FR">Cf. Verlaine «"Après
trois ans" (<i>Poèmes saturniens</i>) : "La Velléda, / Dont le
plâtre s’écaille" ; Jammes, "Élégie seconde" (<i>Le
Deuil des primevères</i>), la Vierge "aux deux mains brisées", et
dans l’Élégie quatrième, "Du parc gazonné, au froid soleil mort
d’Octobre, / une Diane cassée montait comme un jet d’eau".<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">*La Famille, l’Enfance, Les Collèges de P.-J.
Toulet. Le Divan, 1957</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="FR" style="color: #339966; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">. </span></span><br />
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Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-9597404658664772402016-03-11T13:36:00.003-08:002018-02-06T09:29:26.931-08:00Toulet in Mauritius<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Toulet in Mauritius - historical notes.</b><br /><br />This entry, though quite long, is incomplete, as it does not address the literary output, or more importantly, the literary influences gained during Toulet's three-year sojourn on the island. I will have to come back to that, and some further amplification is needed within these notes that I will add when my research is further along.<br />I have chosen to translate some passages from the French; others I have left in the original as they are more expressive, and not difficult to understand.<br /><br /><br />On the morning of November 18, 1885, the <i>MM Sydney</i> of the <i>Messageries Maritimes</i> left Marseilles with the eighteen-year-old Paul-Jean Toulet on board. For his first grand adventure Toulet had hoped for something more exciting. He was to be disappointed. This was not a script by Robert Louis Stevenson. “<i>No activity once the anchor was weighed. No sailors hanging from the rigging, no shouts of command.</i>” Once aweigh, the passengers emerged on deck, and promptly began to be sea sick. Toulet realised he was only a piece of baggage to be transported, the only consideration being whether he was 1st, 2nd or 3rd class.<br /><br />On 23rd November they reached Port Saïd; then it was Suez, all yellow and blue, shortly thereafter Mahé (Seychelles) “green and scented”; then Saint-Denis of Bourbon (now Réunion) as exquisite as the pretty mulattos that enliven the streets with their rolling gait (<i>“demarche chaloupée”</i>). <br /><br /><i>Nous jetâmes l' ancre, madame,<br /> Devant l' île Bourbon<br />À l' heure où la nuit sent si bon<br /> Qu' elle vous troublait l' âme. </i>(Contrerime XLVII)<br /><br /><br />Finally, on the morning of December 10th, they made landfall at Port-Louis.<br /><i>“De quelle odeur savoureuse m’ont salué toutes ces îles, Seychelles, Bourbon ou Maurice: un parfum tres sensual, qu’on pense goûter avec le palais, comme une chair vivante, ou des fruits mûrs.”</i> Even if the colonial microcosm is stiff with its traditions, old Europe seems light years away from this luxuriant Eden for this young Béarnais of Créole stock. The tropic-birds and fodies replace the blackbirds and thrushes; the casuarina trees furnish the woods and the cane-fields are the foundation of the family fortune.<br /><br />Mauritius is roughly 36 miles long by 23 miles broad, with a coral reef varying in breadth from half a mile to two or three miles surrounding. It is quite mountainous except for level stretches by the coast; the interior is broken by hills form 500 to 2711 feet at the summit of <i>Piton de la Rivière Noir.</i> The island is famously the only home of the dodo. First sighted by Europeans around 1600, the dodo became extinct less than eighty years later.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">France, which already controlled the neighbouring <i>Île Bourbon</i> (now Réunion) seized Mauritius in 1715 and later renamed it <i>Île de France</i>. Under French rule, the island developed a prosperous economy based on sugar production. In the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) the British set out to gain control of the island. Despite winning the Battle of Grand Port, Napoleon's only naval victory over the British, the French surrendered to a British invasion at Cap Malheureux three months later. They formally surrendered on 3 December 1810, on terms allowing settlers to keep their land and property and religion, and to use the French language and law of France in criminal and civil matters. It was ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Paris (1814). Under British rule, the island's name reverted to the original Mauritius.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />The Créoles of Mauritius generally claim descent from ancient French families, such as that of Toulet, on both sides. They were land-owners and planters, but after the emancipation of the slaves in 1834 they began to ship coolies from India to work the sugar cane, so that by 1867, the year of Toulet’s birth, the immigrant population had reached 246,000. In that year, a violent malaria epidemic occurred in Mauritius, resulting in 40,000 deaths in a population of 330 000, with 6000 deaths occurring during just 1 month in urban Port Louis. <i>Plasmodium falciparum, P. vivax</i> and <i>P. malariae</i> and two of their vectors, <i>Anopheles funestus</i> and <i>A. gambiae sensu lato</i>, had been imported into Mauritius in the mid-1800s, and, after the 1866-1867 epidemic that literally decimated the population (121 deaths per 1000), the disease became hyperendemic on the island. When Toulet arrived in 1886 the Indians still outnumbered the rest of the population by a factor of two to one.<br /><br />Toulet remarks in his journal that he embarked at Marseilles on the <i>Calédonien</i> of the <i>Messageries Maritimes</i> and arrived in Mauritius on the morning of 9 December 1885. He also states that he arrived at Port-Saïd on November 22. However, he also claims to be in Réunion on December 15, and on December 16 he describes the island and also his impressions of Mahé in the Seychelles were he stayed “for a few days”. Toulet is mistaken, both with the dates and the ship. Clearly he can’t have been in Mauritius on December 9th and in Réunion on December 15th. <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Back Up"> Urruty </a> (<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=93067202824662615#Footnote1">Footnote 1</a>) searched the records of the <i>Messageries Maritime</i> and discovered that the <i>Calédonien </i>left Marseilles on the 23rd September, arrived in Port-Louis on the 17th October, sailed the next day for Australia, left Nouméa on the 26th November and arrived back at Port-Louis on December 23rd. So the <i>Calédonien</i> left France before Toulet did, and arrived back in Mauritius only when Toulet had already arrived. However, the <i>Sydney</i>, belonging to the same company, left Marseilles on November 18th, was at Port-Saïd on November 23 (Toulet records the 22nd), and at Mauritius on December 10th (Toulet says the 9th). Although Toulet carried a notebook from which he transcribed into his Journal all he wished to retain, nevertheless the Journal is not a precisely dated record of events – some are grouped under a date that clearly could not refer to all items thereunder. Urruty believes the records of the <i>Messageries </i>to be the more reliable, and the evidence certainly points in that direction.<br /><br />At Mauritius Toulet lived on his father’s plantation of Surinam. Surinam is separated by the Savanne river on the east from Souillac, a town close to the southernmost point of the island. It is the capital of Savanne district. (The town was named after the Vicomte de Souillac, the island's governor from 1779-1787.)<br />Paul-Jean found himself somewhat constrained by Surinam’s limited attractions - canefields, and straw huts.He liked to take the train from Souillac train station, heading for Curepipe, Port Louis or farther afield. He enjoyed train travel, observing the countryside without, his fellow passengers within. He wasn’t comprehensive in his explorations, visiting chiefly Savanne, (which extended from the Baie du Cap to Gris-Gris), Curepípe and Rose-Hill, Port Louis (centre, and Pailles) and the village of Pamplemousse in the north, Grand-Baie and Jouvence. He enjoyed the local fêtes, races, parties of sega and ghoons, smoked gandia, chased girls (including travelling players) and fell asleep in the shade of the casuarinas and in the sound of the waves.<br /><br />Toulet also liked to participate in duels. While no mention is made of this species of activity in his Journal, Matineau states that his account was informed by the Journal which Toulet wrote up in a clean copy, but also by various notebooks, loose leaves, and a “cahier de voyage” that Toulet jotted hastily from day to day. Thus Toulet attended a duel between two of his friends where pistols were the weapon of choice. He was also a second in a duel between a certain M. Morel who fought Charles Mortimer on the <i>champ de Lort</i> at Port Louis (subsequently a rifle range!). We have no information on the outcome of these battles. <br />While in Algiers, on April 16th, 1889, Toulet quarrelled with one Alfred Coste, the brother of Gaston Coste, the director of the <i>théâtre des Nouveautés</i>. Toulet went as far as to strike him, hoping thereby to provoke a duel. But, as he related,<i> “Cet ignoble capon ne veut rien savoir de duel”</i>.) In 1896 Toulet duelled over a girl with one Emile Thore on the steps of the Loustau mansion at Carresse. Jean Thore was a second and witness to the encounter. It was said that at the sight of the first blood the young man nearly passed out. This duel has a historical precedent in that Emile Thore married the god-daughter of the Comte d’Echauz, whose ancestor was challenged by Toulet’s uncle, Pierre-Isidore Loustau, fifty years previously. (The aging comte scorned the challenge). Some years later, at Pau, Francis Jammes met Toulet, when they were both about twenty-six years of age. Jammes make reference in his memoir to at least two further occasions where Toulet was either directly involved in, or tried to provoke, a duel. At Salies, he challenged a rival on the pretext of who could drink more without being incapacitated. The duel was ended by the seconds after Toulet inflicted a flesh wound with his foil.<br /><br />From April 1886 he began to record events. On 13 April he buried his half-brother Stéphane. – the only reference he makes to his family in the 35 months he spent in Mauritius, renewing relations with his father and sister Jane, whom he hadn’t seen for 4 ½ years! A few days later, he goes to <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Curepipe"> Curepipe </a> (<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=93067202824662615#Footnote2">Footnote 2</a>), “that elegant city”. (One can easily mistake this city for an English academic town, as it is home to many schools and tertiary institutions.) On the 22nd he is back in Savanne, then Souillac. <br /><br />On May 8 after Mass in Saint-Jacques, Souillac, he visited to the establishment of a <i>“débitant monopoliste”</i> ( a retail dealer) of the area and bought his first lot of gandia, (the local term for cannabis) recording the effect as <i>“un peu de lourdeur au corps et de tendresse dans l’esprit”</i>. <br />Toulet returned to Curepípe and settled into the Hotel Salaffa for a month, where he encountered some English (friendly enough, if one can get past their superiority), some French of course, a pretentious Creole who affected to speak French with an English accent, a gesticulating Italian and a neurotic pianist from Alsace. <br /><br />On June 18 1886 Toulet attended a sega party. The sega is a local folklore music with it roots in African culture. In the past, the sega music was made only with traditional percussion instruments like goat-skin drums called <i>ravanne</i>, and metal triangles.<br />The songs usually describe the miseries of slavery, and have been adapted nowadays as social satires to express inequalities as felt by the blacks. Men are usually at the instruments while women perform an accompanying dance which is more often erotic.<br />Toulet describes the drums being warmed up, the bottle of rum passing around, the dances accompanied by doleful créole songs whose subject matter varied wildly and included anti-English sentiment. He described the dance as a mating ritual :<i> “Ils dansent à deux dont une femme, ou un homme imitant la femme, avec un trémoussement des jambes et du torse, tournant sur eux-mêmes ou selon un cercle, et les pieds suivant assez librement la mesure à deux temps. Parfois l’homme se cambre ou bien se tord, le buste en avant, pour laisser saillir la croupe qui s’agite circulairement….Le sega est une espèce d’image de l’amour : l’homme implore la femme, l’enveloppe de gestes lascifs. Parfois l’un ou l’autre écarte les bras, et quand le moment du plaisir est censé venu, imite par des onomatopées un jaillissement que l’on devine.”</i><br /><br />The French fête national was of course still celebrated in the once-French possession, so July 14 found Toulet in Port Louis listening to speeches at the consulate, then he went exploring in Chinatown among the opium eaters. He was not impressed:<br /><i>“Allé en ville pour la fête française. Je cherche, vainement, des bibelots dans la rue Royale très longue et toute bordée de boutiques généralement chinoises. Je garde comme une impression de cauchemar de cette repetition de faces glabres, de corps malingers perçus dans l’encombrement des échoppes. Les uns écrivent avec de petits pinceaux: d’autres semblent des araignées, embusqués qu’ils sont derrière une barrière concave où est annoncée la vente de l’opium”.</i><br />Toulet stayed in Port Louis for some time, taking in the horse racing at the Champ de Mars - the oldest race course (1812) in the Indian Ocean and the second oldest in the southern Hemisphere. He was more interested in the colourful company:<i> “Le coup d’oeil de Champ de Mars est assez beau, envahi par des milliers d’Indous vêtus de blanc et de rouge. Cette harmonie du blanc et du rouge est rompue par d’autres tons plus rares, des jaunes, des bleu-noir, et fait un immense papillotement.”</i> The Europeans, on the other hand, left him decidedly unimpressed:<i> “Les toilettes de la société blanche sont généralement banales. Pour les jeunes filles, du rose et du bleu-clair comme a bal.”</i><br /><br />On 27th September , at Chamouny, a small village perched high over the Chemin Grenier, Toulet attended a Yamsé festival, which he described as a Hindu festival – it is in fact Muslim, but Toulet was partially correct, in that the Yamsé festival in Mauritius can trace its roots to <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="India"> India </a> (<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=93067202824662615#Footnote3">Footnote 3</a>). And of course the population was predominantly Indian.<br />Toulet wrote a number of times on the the colourful get-up of Indian girls, whom he saw in the street, or at a Yamsé festival, which clearly was not confined to Muslims:<br /><i>"Elles étaient vêtues et de couleurs mates et chaudes, deux ou trois violets magnifiques, du rouge. Elles passent à côté de nous, un peu comme des fleurs qui marchent et je me retourne pour admirer encore ce mariage de nuances qui s’aiment….Elles sont charmantes, avec leur façon un peu athénienne de se draper, parfois de se poser et de se grouper.”</i><br />The Yamsé festival has been described by Alexandre <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Dumas"> Dumas</a> père in his short novel Georges, set in Mauritius, (and scorned by Toulet.) His description is to be found in the notes to this chapter (<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=93067202824662615#Footnote4">Footnote 4</a>).<br />The festival known as the Yamsé or ‘<i>Ghoon</i>’ was first celebrated by the Muslim sailors known as ‘Lascars’ who had settled in the Ile de France, as Mauritius was known during the time of the French administration. It was the first public celebration held by non-Whites in Mauritius and was an occasion of great pomp and festivity.<br />In the past, the ‘ghoons’ were held in villages all over the island and were popularly celebrated by both Hindus and Muslims. The ‘<i>lever</i>’ and the ‘<i>casser des ghounes</i>’ were the two most important processions. Large crowds from all over the island converged on Plaine Verte to participate, or just watch. The ghoons were made of light wood or bamboo bound very strongly together and covered with gold and silver tinsel, many-coloured papers, glossy stuffs, stars and crescents; and decked all over with little lights, candles or even electric bulbs.<br />On the night of the <i>‘lever des ghounes’</i>, the ghoons or ‘<i>tazias</i>’ were taken out. Each ghoon consisted of three to four onion-shaped domes each of which seemed to rise from the interior of the others, the one at the base being the largest. They represented the tombs of the martyrs of Kerbala. The smaller ghoons were carried on the shoulders; the larger ghoons were carried on trolleys. They were often more than thirty feet high and towered above the roofs of the houses. The ‘casser des ghounes’ (the breaking of the ghoons) ceremony was held the next day, and it marked the end of the festival. The procession was similar to the one held the previous night except that no lights and lanterns were carried, as it took place during the day.<br />This is Toulet description of a ghoon: <i>“une tour en carton ajouré, dentelé, de couleurs éclatantes, avec des vitres de mousseline éclairées à l’intérieur. Au sommet une espèce de tambour à festoons, qui tourne au vent. Ce monument, fait d’étages en retrait, est posé sur une charrette.”</i><br /><br />The following day, or the day after, he visited the beach at Gris-Gris, where he claimed to have experienced a bout of vertigo half-way up a modest cliff, which didn’t affect him when he was swinging forty metres over the river in a cargo net at Souillac. (This was a net that carried the bales of sugar across to the transport barges that brought them to Port-Louis.) At the Savannah sugar factory, it was the view of the sea from a veranda that attracted his attention, inspiring the comparison to a Chinese plate: <i>“De la varangue de Savannah, d’où le paysage dévale jusqu’à l’océan, on voit des parterres aux vives nuances, puis des cannes et des filaos d’un vert intense qui se violace au loin, et la mer d’un bleu noir, et le ciel de saphir. Cette mosaïque de tons fait songer à une assiette de Chine.”</i><br />(Gris-Gris is well known for its sea cliff. This part of the island is not surrounded by coral reefs, so that the waves break directly on the cliffs. The most spectacular part of Gris-gris is the <i>"Roche Qui Pleure"</i> where the constant crashing of waves against the flanks of the cliff is said to give the impression that the cliff is crying. )<br /><br />On December 13th Toulet describes once more the effect that smoking gandia has on him: <i>“A strong gandia cigarette, taken at four o’clock, when I never sleep, put me into a gentle doze, bright in the beginning. Bizarre imaginings came, stopped suddenly, were forgotten, then replaced by others. I rarely dream, and I don’t know from one moment to the next where to attribute the pleasure I feel. From the red carpet where I lay, I retain images of purple. Hearing is keener; but sounds lose their “perspective”. One would think they come from afar, and that one is immediately surrounded by silence.”</i><br /><br />The journal entries for 1887 amount to a mere two notes; the 1888 entries begin as late as starts 11th May. This section of Toulet’s journal is more cerebral and less frequently descriptive of the countryside. In point of fact, he was less inclined to wander and explore, and spent more time reading and moralising. (Some examples:<i> "Les femmes m’amusent et ne m’intéressent pas, les hommes réciproquement."<br />"Il est des gens qui ont la susceptibilité de l’huitre ; on ne peut les toucher sans qu’ils se contractent."</i>) <br /><br />The intermediate period hasn’t been recovered even by the assiduous Martineau. One of the 1888 notes refers to a hunting party at Grand-Baie, undated, which Urruty believes contributed to a later poem. Dawn found Toulet in a coppice: <i>“L’aube était teinte de couleurs opposées et profondes, C’était une atmosphère factice, très douce, transparente.”</i><br /><br />The last three lines of Chanson XIII read:<br /><i>L’aube a mis sa rosée aux toiles d’araignée,<br />Et l’arme du chasseur, avec un faible son,<br />Perce la brume, au loin, de soleil imprégnée.</i><br /><br />On July 6th1888 Toulet was attracted to Port-Louis by the presence there of a troupe of actors newly arrived from France, the Claudius players. And for almost two months, up to September 12th, life was, in his own words, one continuous exhausting party:<br /><i>“Spent two months in Port Louis from July 6th to September 12th. I intended to do some work, but the girls came and upset things, and thanks to our acquaintance with the theatrical troupe we did nothing for a month and a half but party continuously, exhaustingly, and played some baccarat. With the Mauritius climate, I think myself happy to get out of it only dazed.”</i><br />He frequented the Casino, gambled, lurked backstage, watched all the shows from his box. He escorted the ladies of the troupe on picnics to a quiet spot he called for some inscrutable reason the Cascades, as there was no waterfall nearby.<i> “Un petit quartier presque desert, où il y a de l’ombre, de l’eau, un luisant feuillage, tout le décor du plus galant déjeuner sur l’herbe.”</i><br /><br />From a precocious beginning, Toulet was ever a womaniser. Given his looks and his wealth, girls were such easy conquests that when he was cheated on in Algiers by Marguerite, he took it very badly. Francis Jammes remarked of him:<i>"C’est la femme qui, toujours, est le centre de sa vision."</i><br />And again : <i>"Il aima les femmes de tout son corps, de toute sa fantaisie, de tout son dédain, même de toute sa reconnaissance, mais point de tout son cœur qu’il réserva pour la noblesse de l’homme."</i><br />It’s interesting that Jammes mentions "<i>dédain</i>" as it bears out what Toulet himself wrote to Tristan Derème regarding the young women of Pau: <i>"c’est que les filles y ont de la politesse et de la vassalité."</i> <br /><br />Here then are some further Journal entries for Mauritius that describe his feelings and attitude from his arrival to his departure:<br /><br />Journal 8 august 1886<br /><i>Deux soeurs charmantes, non sans une point d’originalité, et dont je ne sais laquelle j’aime mieux. Mais peut-être que leur charme diminuerait si on les séparait – s’il n’y avait plus à côté de l’ainée, assez grande, un peu virile, la cadette toute menue, avec sa grâce sensuelle, son éternal sourire, ses yeux espagnols et sa chair olivâtre.</i><br /><br />He seems to have been quite happy to chase the girls around his fathers estate estate. On one occasion a long-time servant of the house warned him to stay away from a young girl, as they were related: <i>"Ne touchez pas cette enfante, elle est votre sœur." </i><br />Toulet transferred his attention in turn to some other prey, to be rebuffed each time with the same warning. Exasperated, he exclaimed :<i> "Mon père en avait donc beaucoup planté."</i><br /><br />He later wrote of this easy morality in CHANSONS XII:<br /><br /><i>…je sais, brûlé d’autres cieux,<br /> Un village sous les goyaves,<br />Peuplé des fils par mes aïeux<br /> Qu’ils avaient faits à leurs esclaves.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In another version:</span><br />
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<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Et j’ai connu sous d’autres ceux<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Un village dans ma jeunesse<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><span lang="FR">Peuplé des fils que</span></i><span lang="FR"> <i>mes aïeux<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Avaient conçus de leurs
négresses.</span></span></i><span lang="FR"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />This local setback did nothing to dampen his ardour:<br /><br />Journal juin 1888 <br /><i>C’est toujours le même problème irritant. Je ne sais si j’aime l’une des deux ou toutes les deux. L’une est plus hautaine, l’autre plus voluptueuse, aucune n’est jolie, toutes deux charmante : vaincre l’une, et avoir l’autre.</i><br /><br />Journal 26 septembre 1888<br /><i>J’ai été l’autre jour au célèbre Pamplemousses-garden. Le jardin ni français, ni hollandais, ni anglais, ni exotique m’a agacé, ouï tout le bien qu’on en dit. Et il est couvert d’écriteaux et plein de gardes. Je préfère la forêt vierge vert-de-gris, avec ses arbres morts tout blancs, et ses troncs guillochés d’argent, et je préfère mes forêts béarnaises d’automne, où je cherchais des champignons avec la petite chose aux yeux de pervenche.<br />Comme vous avez eu raison de vous faire grue, petite chose. Ou, vous auriez épousé un lourdaud,et vous auriez des rides et de têtasses maintenant. Je sais bien où vous tomberez,si vous n’y êtes déjà. Mais qu’importe ; je n’y suis pour rien que pour un peu de dépravation morale. D’ailleurs on y est relativement bien, et même j’y ai rencontré les deux seins les plus exquis que j’ai vus (pour ne pas me citer) :<br /> ……double merveille<br />Deux seins la pointe en l’air et pas encor pâteux.</i><br /><br />He expanded his journal account in Behanzigue. <br /><i>A beautiful garden, much more than a hundred years old, which you enter by gilded gates and broad winding walks. It is the Paul and Virginie quarter. When, at a turn, you expect to meet Mme de la Tour in white muslin, you stumble over a mound covering some fictitious remains. It is Virginie’s tomb.<br />We had taken with us some actresses attached to a travelling company; my modest tastes paired me with a chorus girl of seventeen or eighteen years, Parisian of Montmartre by race and idiom/accent, with long eye-lashes and tea-rose complexion. The air, which was impregnated with an odour of tuberoses, intoxicated her a little and it was sweet to kiss her lips under the thick foliage of a bodamnian (badamier). And I kissed her too under an orange-flowered flamboyant: these are my favourites.<br />In the long run this garden irritates me, it is so well kept. And besides, it is full of signs forbidding you to do something, for example to interfere with the century-old eels in the pool, which are, it appears, very naïve in spite of their age. Because of her age my girl is naïve, and since no sign forbids it I kiss her lips, Montmartre and red, a third time.<br />It is something to put a pretty girl into harmony with the landscape. Rather than this well-raked garden, I would prefer to see her in a verdigris virgin forest with its dead trees like white skeletons, the trunks pencilled with silver and its giant ferns in the form of chandeliers, or rather the French forest in the autumn, here I used to look for mushrooms with the little creature with periwinkle eyes.</i><br /><br />This passage first appeated in <i>Voyage du Tendresse</i>, in <i>La Vie Parisienne</i> in 26 August, 1905, and was included in the second edition of <i>Behanzigue </i>in 1921.<br />It is likely that this lucky lass was no other than the actress described in his Journal: <i>"Il y a dans ces choristes une petite Oranaise de dix-sept ans…alourdie aux pieds et mains, incarnation du voyou, des fossettes, les yeux petits mais embroussaillés de longs cils et une chair qui épuiserait toutes comparaisons: quelque chose de la rose thé." </i><br /><br />On September 12th he returned to Curepipe for a farewell dinner given by his friends, (Toulet specifically mentions a H. Elton) as he had made up his mind to leave Mauritius; but on the 26th he announced a delay of a month, without quite stating the obvious – he was sailing in the <i><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Pei-Ho"> Pei-Ho</a></i> (<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=93067202824662615#Footnote5">Footnote 5</a>) of the Messageries Maritimes. He didn’t specify the reason for the delay; but in fact the theatrical company, who were now playing in Réunion, were taking the <i>Pei-Ho</i> from there back to France.<br /><br />Toulet finally left Mauritius on 23rd October, 1888, embarking at Port-Louis, and arriving at the Pointe des Galets on the north coast of Réunion on the morning of the 24th. He went immediately by train to Saint-Denis, met the Claudius players, and embarked that afternoon in their company, to which, according to his own expression, he morally belonged. <br /><br />Before leaving, he recorded some final impressions, none too flattering, of Mauritius and its inhabitants. The girls he found somewhat backward, with little conversation, and putting on weight after marriage! The youth he thought superficial, narrow-minded, full of themselves and their country, poorly educated, and too material in their outlook. Their saving grace was their hospitality and friendliness. The Mauritian section of his journal concludes with the wry advice: <i>“Surtout pour connaître l’île Maurice, ne conseiller ni <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Paul et Virginie"> Paul et Virginie </a></i>(<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=93067202824662615#Footnote6">Footnote 6</a>), <i> ni <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Georges">Georges</a> </i>(<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=93067202824662615#Footnote7">Footnote 7</a>)</span></div>
<i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;" verdana=""><br /><br /><b> Homeward Bound</b></span></i>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />Even on the voyage home, Toulet managed to indulge in amorous adventures. First there was the blonde mademoiselle de Fontanges, actress, part of the troupe, and all of seventeen. Her voice enchanted Toulet; it had, he said, the savour taste of wild sorrel nibbled on the fringes of a meadow. <i>"Ah, quelle voix elle avait; on eût dit de ces oseilles sauvages, dont on mâche en passant au bord d’un pré."</i> The voyage took on the aspect of a cruise, the ship stopping at a number of ports of call – Tamatave (<i>des négresses assez belles</i>) on the 26th, Sainte-Marie (<i>les femmes y sont jolies</i>) on the 27th, Diego Suarez on the 28th, then leaving Nossi-Bé on the 30th it made landfall at Zanzibar on November 3rd. His entry on Zanzibar was more extensive, taking in the buildings, flotillas, cages of lions and other cats on the quay, natives of all hues, prisoners in chains. The harem, he says, is especially a piece of “local colour.” He gets a little sentimental about the French flag, flying above the consulate, <i>“loque presque banale sous le ciel de France, don’t on ne sait tout le prix qu’à l’étranger."</i> In the evening, having smoked gandia on deck, he reports a more fantastic Zanzibar, of interlacing snowy palaces rising one above the other.<br />Aden was stifling, without nuances or perspective, the sky dotted with heavy vultures; and everywhere nothing but the three colours plaster, indigo and beige. Obock was as desolate as Aden, only meaner. They didn’t go ashore.<br />At Suez, Toulet and company took the train for Alexandria, where the company left him for a booking in Constantinople. Alexandria made a poor impression – it was full, he claimed, of flashy foreigners, snobs and interlopers.<br /><br />Many years later, when his sister Jane and her husband were called to Egypt to take care of a relative, Toulet, alone at La Raffette, reminisced in a letter to Madame Bulteau: <br /><i>“Suez, as I recall it, was a biblical country composed of sand, ennui, and blue houses. We were very uncomfortable. At the time I was morally attached to a company of strolling players. Among them was a very young actress who played the part of Cupid in Orphée aux Enfers. Some time before, she had made a baker’s apprentice leave Marseilles and dodge military service. He was a jealous brute, and he became jealous of me and swore he would do for me in some corner, which would have been easy for him. When he got to know me, he changed, and became devoted to me. He carried my bags and showed me such friendship that I was embarrassed as to how I could return the favour. On the boatdeck, the light of the Southern Cross illuminated his first assertions, and he struck the rail with his fist, which calmed him down. <br />…There was also a young leading lady in the troupe who stirred me when she played Carmen…<br />All these people left me at Alexandria where I met a Greek cabaret artist called Katina, perfectly beautiful. She barely had time to demonstrate any affection when she died of a pernicious attack.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On excursion to Cairo, he started for the Pyramid of Cheops at six in the morning, wrapped up in an overcoat as if it were Siberia (it was only eight degrees).<br />He visited the tombs of the Caliphs, and the mosque of Muhammed Ali, inside the Citadel of Saladin, and the Boulak museum, where he compared a statue of Sésostris to an old, stubborn Gascon with yellow hair. (In 1891, the collections were moved to a former royal palace, in the Giza district of Cairo. They remained there until 1902 when they were moved, for the last time, to the current museum in Tahrir Square.)<br />He returned to Alexandria and a Katina fatally affected by an acute <i>Plasmodium falciparum</i> infestation, resulting in a form of cerebral malaria. Frédéric Martinez is dubious – he thinks Toulet might well have been spinning a yarn – he was well capable - but it was not unlike him to put a careless gloss on a tragic event.<br /><br />On the 22nd, having smoked and drunk too much the previous evening, in a bar where the waiter was Russian, the owner German and the brasserie French, he slept through the day, had no appetite, and that evening, feeling very low, decided to eat some opium that he had purchased at Zanzibar. As a result he suffered a night of insomnia interspersed with bad dreams that made the night seem like a century, with acute insufferable sensations of sight and hearing. Only sensations of touch or feeling were tolerable. He decided to hate this “<i>most banal Alexandria</i>” with as much loathing as Baudelaire expressed for Belgium, or Stendhal for Lyon.<br />(Urruty states defensively that there’s no record by Toulet of using opium in Mauritius, whereas he has no shame in mentioning all his other debaucheries. If anything he seems put off by the Chinese in Rue Royale. But he buys it on the way home - and eats it!)<br /><br />On November 24, 1888 Toulet embarked from Alexandria on the <i>Djemnah</i>, intending to go to Algiers, but ending up in Toulon for two days to recover money loaned to an officer he met on board. (He did manage to visit the Marseilles museum first, where he remarked on a Millet, Breughel and Ruysdael among others.) In the mess at Toulon he mingled both with officers returning from Madagascar and Grand Bassam, Ivory Coast, and those en route to Sudan and Tonkin. The French colonies stretched far and wide at the period.<br /><br />But on December 1st he was back in Marseilles, and boarding the <i>Languedoc</i> for the short two-day sailing to Algiers.</span><br />
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NOTES</b></span><br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Footnote1">Footnote 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">In</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">1852, the shipping company was incorporated in Paris as the Compagnie des Services Maritimes des Messageries Nationales, renamed in 1853 Compagnie des Messageries Impériales. The company bought the shipyard of La Ciotat, where most of its ships were built. The company efficiently transported French troops during the Crimean War (1854-55). As a reward, it was granted the postal lines to Algeria, Tunisia, and the Black Sea, and to South America (1857). The line Bordeaux-Brazil was the first French line served by steamships. Between 1862 and 1865, lines were set up to Far-East and Japan. A secondary line served the Indian Ocean via Réunion and Mauritius. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">On 17 November 1869, the Messageries Impériales liner <i>Péluse </i>inaugurated the Suez Canal, sailing just behind the Imperial vessel. The canal dramatically reduced the travel durations and increased the commercial exchanges, triggering the shipping business. On 1 August 1871, the company took the name of Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes. By 1872 it had a fleet of 64 ships.)<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=93067202824662615#Back Up">Back Up</a><br />
<br /><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Footnote2">Footnote 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Curepipe is centrally situated in Mauritius, second in size and importance only to Port Louis, Its name originates from the practice of settlers coming to the town to refill, or "cure" their pipes. Lying on the central plateau, 1800 feet above sea-level, Curepipe has a temperate climate with cool winters and rainy, humid summers. The French founded the settlement at the very beginning of the French colonisation of the island, with the climate reminding them of their native France. </span><br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=93067202824662615#Curepipe">Back Up</a></span><br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Footnote3">Footnote 3</a></div>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">According to Ahmad Ramtally, writing in the Mauricien, 16th November, 2013, the most striking aspect about the observances of the month of Muharram is that it is celebrated in various parts of India not only by Muslims but by Hindus also. In several towns and villages, Hindus join Muslims in lamenting the death of Hussein (grandson of the Prophet) by sponsoring or taking part in tazia processions. (</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ta%27zieh" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ta%27zieh</a><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Footnote4">Footnote 4</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">"Alors, entre deux haies de spectateurs, les Lascars s'avancent, les uns à moitié cachés sous des espèces de petites pagodes pointues, faites comme le grand gouhn, et qu'ils appellent aïdorés ; les autres, armés de bâtons et de sabres émoussés ; d'autres, enfin, à moitié nus, sous des vêtements déchirés. Puis, à un certain signe, tous s'élancent ; ceux qui portent les aïdorés se mettent à tourner sur eux-mêmes en dansant ; ceux qui portent les sabres et les bâtons commencent à combattre en voltigeant les uns autour des autres, portant et parant les coups avec une adresse, merveilleuse ; enfin, les derniers se frappent la poitrine et se roulent à terre avec l'apparence du désespoir, tous criant à la fois ou tour à tour : « Yamsé ! Yamli ! O Hoseïn ! O Ali ! »</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Pendant qu'ils se livrent à cette gymnastique religieuse, quelques-uns d'entre eux s'en vont offrant à tout venant du riz bouilli et des plantes aromatiques. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Cette promenade dure jusqu'à minuit ; puis, à minuit, ils rentrent au camp malabar dans le même ordre qu'ils en sont sortis, pour n'en plus sortir que le lendemain à la même heure. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Mais, le lendemain, la scène changea et s'agrandit. Après avoir fait dans la ville la même promenade que la veille, les Lascars, à la nuit venue, rentrèrent au camp, mais pour aller chercher le gouhn, résultat de la réunion des deux bandes. Il était cette année plus grand et plus splendide que tous les précédents. Couvert des papiers les plus riches, les plus éclatants et les plus disparates, éclairé au dedans par de grandes masses de feu, au dehors par des lanternes de papier de toutes couleurs, suspendues à tous les angles et à toutes les anfractuosités, qui faisaient ruisseler sur ses vastes flancs des torrents de lumière changeante, il s'avança porté par un grand nombre d'hommes, les uns placés dans l'intérieur, les autres à l'extérieur, et qui, tous, chantaient une sorte de psalmodie monotone et lugubre ; devant le gouhn marchaient des éclaireurs, balançant au bout d'une perche d'une dizaine de pieds des lanternes, des torches, des soleils et d'autres pièces d'artifice. Alors, la danse des aïdorés et les combats corps à corps reprirent de plus belle. Les dévots aux robes déchirées recommencèrent à se frapper la poitrine en poussant des cris de douleur, auxquels toute la masse répondait par les cris alternés de : « Yamsé ! Yamli ! O Hoseïn ! O Ali ! » cris encore plus prolongés et plus déchirants que ces mêmes cris poussés la veille. "</span><br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Footnote5">Footnote 5</a>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The Pei-Ho was the last of a series of 5 mailboats constructed at La Ciotat , three-masted twin-funnelled barques. It was fitted out in Marseilles in May 1870 for the Far Eastern route which it maintained until 1885 when it went back to La Ciotat for major modification of engines. It served the Levant, then Madagascar. It suffered se</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif;">vere damage in a cyclone in February 1892 (at Port-Louis). Became part of a fleet of eight vessels that transported 8000 men and 1000 horses and mules and 12,000 cubic metres of cargo to China in 1900, it was finally broken up in Marseilles in 1902.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Footnote6">Footnote 6</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Paul et Virginie, a sentimental idyll of lovers brought up as siblings, set in Mauritius, by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. (1737–1814) </span><br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Footnote7">Footnote 7</a><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">In 1843 Dumas he wrote a short novel, Georges, that addressed some of the issues of race and the effects of colonialism. Despite Dumas' aristocratic background and personal success, he had to deal with discrimination related to his mixed-race ancestry. His response to a man who insulted him about his African ancestry has become famous. Dumas said: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>"Mon père était un mulâtre, mon grand-père était un nègre et mon arrière grand-père un singe. Vous voyez, Monsieur: ma famille commence où la vôtre finit."</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">(My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends.)</span><br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=93067202824662615#Georges">Back Up</a>Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-25845566218384152732015-11-15T14:06:00.004-08:002015-11-17T12:57:33.363-08:00Contrerime XLI<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>- "Bayonne ! Un pas sous les arceaux, <br /> Que faut-il davantage <br />Pour y mettre son héritage <br /> Ou son coeur en morceaux ? <br /><br />Où sont-ils, tout remplis d' alarmes, <br /> Vos yeux dans la noirceur, <br />Et votre insupportable soeur, <br /> Hélas ; et puis vos larmes ? " <br /><br />Tel s' enivrait, à son phébus, <br /> D' un chocolat d' Espagne, <br />Chez Guillot, le feutre en campagne, <br /> Monsieur Bordaguibus.</i></span><br />
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<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Translation</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />“Bayonne! Just to stand in the arcades, <br /> What more is necessary <br />To comprehend his legacy, <br /> Or his heart in shreds? <br /><br />Where are they, wide with fear, <br /> Your eyes in the pitch, <br />And that unspeakable bitch<br /> Your sister</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">; and then your tears?” </span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />And Bordaguibus’ pompous flattery, <br /> And his posh city hat, <br />Getting tipsy on Spanish chocolate. <br /> in Guillot’s chocolaterie.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Notes:</span></div>
Guillot was a famous chocolatier at Bayonne, famous for his cinnamon-flavoured product.<br />
Bordaguibus may be based on a pharmacist at Salies-de-Béarn called in reality Stanislas Bordaguibel. He was born in 1847 and died in 1957 at the grand age of 90. However, Toulet may just have borrowed his name, and his characteristics may well belong to another. Peter Cogman notes the following:-<br />
Un collectionneur qui connut H. Martineau a dit que l’inspirateur était le pére de Jean Borotra. Jean Robert Borotra est un joueur de tennis et homme politique français, né le 13 août 1898 à Biarritz de Henri Borotra et de Revet Julienne Margueritte Laurence Suzanne, décédé le 17 juillet 1994 à Arbonne. Surnommé le Basque bondissant, il y mit en œuvre une technique particulière, jouant alternativement de la main droite ou de la main gauche selon le côté où il recevait la ball (Adolescent, il pratiquait la pelote basque) Il était l'un des « Quatre Mousquetaires » qui s'illustrèrent notamment avec l'équipe de France en Coupe Davis dans les années 1920 et 1930.<br />
<div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<b><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</div>
<i><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Diseur de phébus. </span></i><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Écrivain ou orateur au langage obscur et
alambiqué. <i>C'est un esprit des plus confus, alambiqué, ce que nos pères
appelaient un diseur de phébus et qui rend encore plus déplaisantes, par sa
façon de les énoncer, les choses qu'il dit</i> (</span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">PROUST</span></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">, <i>Jeunes filles en fleurs</i>,)</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<div>
<i>le feutre en campagne</i> : le chapeau de feutre cherchant à faire des conquetes.</div>
</div>
</div>
Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-28278123318361224132015-11-15T13:52:00.003-08:002015-11-15T14:49:06.218-08:00Contrerime XL<i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">L'immortelle, et l'oeillet de mer</i><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i> Qui pousse dans le sable,<br />La pervenche trop périssable,<br /> Ou ce fenouil amer<br /><br />Qui craquait sous la dent des chèvres<br /> Ne vous en souvient-il,<br />Ni de la brise au sel subtil<br /> Qui nous brûlait aux lèvres ?</i></span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Translation</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />The sea-pink and the immortelle <br /> Pushing through the shingle, <br />The delicate periwinkle, <br /> Or this bitter fennel <br /><br />That the goats' teeth nips - <br /> Remember these?<br />And the subtle salt breeze <br /> That burned our lips?</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Notes:</span></div>
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Urruty tries to claim this one
for Mauritius (Well, check the botany – and anyway Toulet published it in
“Comme une fantaisie” under the title “Le Pays basque”) <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR">ARANJO
p. 167: Tel poème littoral, et son immortelle littorale et son œillet de mer,
nous ne devrons plus savoir qu’il était d’abord, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">par son titre initial,</span> emprunté
au Pays basque ; ce bouquet littoral n’en demeure que plus littoral, et
cet œillet de mer, que plus marin, n’étant plus de cette mer plutot que de
cette autre ……<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-59021883872420632015-02-04T14:25:00.001-08:002015-02-08T07:25:43.761-08:00Contrerime XXX<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This contrerime first appeared in <i>Les Marges</i> in 1912 under the title <i>La Cigale</i>.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Contrerime XXX</b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Quand nous fûmes hors des chemins<br /> Où la poussière est rose,<br />Aline, qui riait sans cause<br /> En me touchant les mains ; -<br /><br />L' écho du bois riait. La terre<br /> Sonna creux au talon.<br />Aline se tut : le vallon<br /> Était plein de mystère...<br /><br />Mais toi, sans lymphe ni sommeil,<br /> Cigale en haut posée,<br />Tu jetais, ivre de rosée,<br /> Ton cri triste et vermeil.</i></span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Translation</b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> the roads left
behind</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;">
</span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Where the dust is
rose,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14.6666669845581px;">Aline laughed without cause</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> As our hands </span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;">intertwined.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The woods echoed.
The ground</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Rang with a hollow
sound.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Aline hushed; the
valley<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Was full of
mystery…<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Careless of sloth
and rest, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Cicada perched on
high,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tipsy with dew, you
test<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Your sad and strident cry.</span></span><span lang="EN-IE"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Note:</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In this poem each verse in the translation has a different rhyme scheme. (ABBA; AABB; ABAB) Inelegant, but unavoidable!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<span lang="EN-US"><b>Lymph</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<span lang="EN-US">According to Hippocrates' theory of humours, a lymphatic (or phlegmatic) temperament is cold, and associated with winter.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR">I translate <i>lymphatique </i>as<i> </i>lethargic, or sluggish. In the comic novel Clochemerle by Gabriel Chevalier, the term appears thus:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR">« il y avait dans ce grand corps trop le lymphe et pas assez d’esprit » p 165<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<span lang="EN-US"></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<span lang="EN-US"></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<span lang="FR">« C’est une lymphatique, une inerte » p</span><span lang="EN-US">. 214</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<span lang="EN-US"><b>Vermeil</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<span lang="EN-US">The online French dictionary <a href="http://atilf.atilf.fr/tlf.htm" target="_blank">ATILF </a>(Analyse et traitment informatique de la langue Fran</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">çaise) gives the following definition of <i>vermeil </i>in the above context: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<span lang="EN-US"><b style="text-align: justify;">a) </b><i style="text-align: justify;">Rire, sourire vermeil</i><span style="text-align: justify;">. Rire, sourire éclatant, radieux. </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Chacun de son côté, malice ou maladresse, M'applique son sabot sur mon plus frêle orteil, Sans cesser de me rire un gros rire vermeil</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> (</span><span style="text-align: justify;">SAINTE</span><span style="text-align: justify;">-</span><span style="text-align: justify;">BEUVE</span><span style="text-align: justify;">, </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Livre d'am</i><span style="text-align: justify;">., 1843, p. 139). </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Je coulais doucement ma jeunesse éternelle; Les sourires vermeils sur mes lèvres flottaient</i><span style="text-align: justify;">(</span><span style="text-align: justify;">LECONTE DE</span><span style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">LISLE</span><span style="text-align: justify;">, </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Poèmes ant.</i><span style="text-align: justify;">, 1852, p. 19).</span><br style="text-align: justify;" /><b style="text-align: justify;">b) </b><span style="text-align: justify;">[En parlant d'un bruit, d'un son] Éclatant, cristallin, vif. </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Se peut-il que j'évoque avec des cris vermeils Autant que des arbouses, La splendeur des matins, la chaleur des soleils, La gaîté des pelouses?</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> (</span><span style="text-align: justify;">NOAILLES</span><span style="text-align: justify;">, </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Éblouiss.</i><span style="text-align: justify;">, 1907, p. 27). </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Et je dis que</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> </span><img src="http://atilf.atilf.fr/dendien/ima/tlfiv4/tiret.gif" style="text-align: justify;" /><span style="text-align: justify;"> </span><i style="text-align: justify;">n'est-ce pas, Soleil? Le seul devoir d'un coq est d'être un cri vermeil!</i><span style="text-align: justify;">(</span><span style="text-align: justify;">ROSTAND</span><span style="text-align: justify;">, </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Chantecler</i><span style="text-align: justify;">, 1910, </span><span style="text-align: justify;">III</span><span style="text-align: justify;">, 4, p. 169).</span></span></div>
</div>
Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-78209457487585393852015-02-04T13:52:00.001-08:002015-02-04T13:53:05.586-08:00Contrerime XXVIII<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background: white;">Apropos nothing at all, it is interesting to note that in
the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="background: white;">Middle Ages, it was
believed that the sound of a bell could disperse thunder.</span><span style="background: white;"> </span><span style="background: white;">A large number of
bell-ringers were electrocuted as a result. In France between the years 1753
and 1786, 103 bell-ringers were killed during thunderstorms as a result of
holding on to wet bell ropes. The<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="background: white;">Parlement of Paris<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>enforced an edict in 1786 to forbid the practice. </span><span style="background: white;">Deaths probably continued
into the 19th century, until the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="background: white;">lightning rod<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>came into
general use.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Contrerime XXVIII</b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Le sonneur se suspend, s' élance,<br /> Perd pied contre le mur,<br />Et monte : on dirait un fruit mûr<br /> Que la branche balance.<br /><br />Une fille passe. Elle rit<br /> De tout son frais visage :<br />L' hiver de ce noir paysage<br /> A-t-il soudain fleuri ?<br /><br />Je vois briller encor sa face,<br /> Quand elle prend le coin.<br />L' Angélus et sa jupe, au loin,<br /> L' un et l' autre, s' efface.</i></span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Translation</b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The bellringer on the rope gangles,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Pulls, slides against the wall,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And ascends: a fruit primed to fall<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> From the branch dangles.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A girl passes by. Her laughter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Lights her fresh face:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Did winter in this gloomy place<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Bloom thereafter?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I can still see her shining face, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> As she rounds the bend.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Angelus, and her dress, blend<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Into the evening, erase.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-19907498579649470062015-01-25T10:47:00.003-08:002015-01-25T12:02:50.099-08:00Contrerime XXXIV<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Who was Faustine?</b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="FR">It remains an enigma. Although Marie Vergon, the woman who was to marry Toulet, is sometimes identified with that name,</span> according to Jacques Dyssord <i>Faustine </i>is called Rose P., and is said to have worked at the <i>Auberge Lesquerré </i>at Jurançon.<br /> Dyssord leaves this description:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> "<i>Elle était brune,
bien en chair et un sang généreux empourprait ses lèvres sensuelles dont in
léger duvet ombragait la supérieure</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>."</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Apparently she married a wealthy hotelier and after a somewhat unsettled life she died in 1914, at the Saint-Luc Asylum, at Pau. Toulet saw her there in 1909, not far from the Dominican convent where he went to school. She spotted him from her open window, despite the dusk of an autumn evening:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i><span lang="FR">"De sa fenêtre ouverte, elle m'a reconnut malgré le crépuscule, et, quelque souvenir frivole lui montant à la tête, elle laissa soudain s'égrener jusqu'</span>à moi la perle mélodieuse de son roucoulement."</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Clearly Rose P. existed. But there were other candidates for <i>Faustine</i>, including the aforementioned Marie Vergon, a certain Marie-Louise B, and other, unidentified. <i>Faustine </i>may very well be a conflation.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR"><span lang="FR" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Lesquerré</b></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="FR">He kept an inn in
the Béarn, and was perhaps the husband of Faustina. According to Dyssord, "<i>the kitchen of gleaming copper pots, the spit like a Toledo blade turning
under the broad mantle of the high chimney, before a fire of great oak logs,
would not have failed to attract, had he been lost in this
vicinity, the good Father Jerome Coignard, a character of </i></span><i>Anatole France his novel La Rotisserie de la Reine Pédauque."</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Contrerime XXXIV</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /><i>Ce fut par un soir de l'automne<br /> A sa dernière fleur<br />Que l'on nous prit pour Mgr<br /> L'Evêque de Bayonne,<br /><br />Sur la route de Jurançon.<br /> J'étais en poste, avecque<br />Faustine, et l'émoi d'être évêque<br /> Lui sécha sa chanson.<br /><br />Cependant cloches, patenôtres,<br /> Volaient autour de nous.<br />Tout un peuple était à genoux :<br /> Nous mêlions les nôtres,<br /><br />Ô Vénus, et ton char doré,<br /> Glissant parmi la nue,<br />Nous annonçait la bienvenue<br /> Chez Monsieur Lesquerré.</i></span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Translation</b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One
evening with autumn <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> On
its very last flower <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We
were taken for Monseigneur <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The
Bishop of Bayonne, </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On
the road to Jurançon. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I
was in the mail coach<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With
Faustine, when her promotion<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Stifled
her song.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Meanwhile
bells, pater nosters, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Were
flying around. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A
parish kneeling on the ground: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Add
two imposters.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ô
Venus, with your gilded ferry, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Slipping
deftly ahead,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It
was you who warmed the bed<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> At
M. Lesquerré’s</span>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. </span></div>
</div>
Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-66698674116092300242015-01-25T09:08:00.002-08:002017-01-20T14:34:42.228-08:00Contrerime XXXV<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I have been remiss - no posts to this blog for more than a year. And now I am skipping ten poems to go to XXXV. I will go back, but this one is the most recent to have been translated and versified. So here it is.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Contrerime XXXV</span></b><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Un Jurançon 93<br /> Aux couleurs du maïs,<br />Et ma mie, et l'air du pays :<br /> Que mon coeur était aise.<br /><br />Ah, les vignes de Jurançon,<br /> Se sont-elles fanées,<br />Comme ont fait mes belles années,<br /> Et mon bel échanson ?</span></i><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Dessous les tonnelles fleuries<br /> Ne reviendrez-vous point<br />A l'heure où Pau blanchit au loin<br /> Par-delà les prairies ?</i><br /></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Translation</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Jurançon 93 <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> The colour of corn, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And my girl, and the country morn - <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> How my heart was free! <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Is the Jurançon atrophied<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Perished with drought, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Just like my gilded youth, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> And my fair Ganymede? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">‘neath the flowering shadows <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Will you not come again<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">At the hour when Pau grows faint <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"> Far beyond the meadows?</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>A note on the wine</b></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="FR">The vine is
cultivated in Jurançon and in the nearby hills, on extremely steep slopes at
the foot of the Pyrenees. The quantity of wine produced is limited. </span><span lang="EN-US">It is white, a golden colour, sweet with a hint of Madeira. According to
legend, the grandfather of Henry IV rubbed the lips of his grand-son with a
clove of garlic and had him swallow a few drops of Jurançon a few moments after
birth. When the baby did not protest too much, he exclaimed: "You will
be a true Béarnais! "</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br /></div>
Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93067202824662615.post-27782204381073204872013-04-06T11:41:00.001-07:002013-04-06T11:41:37.900-07:00Contrerime XXV<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This poem has a play on words in the last two lines that depend on the fact that French adverbs, like French adjectives, may possess a masculine and feminine form. Since this situation does not exist in English, the translator must work around it and express the sense in as near a manner as possible. What lends piquancy to Toulet's "feminisation" of <i>Enfin </i>to <i>Enfine</i>, is that there is no feminine version of <i>enfin</i>. So I required that there would be a sense of women's vulnerability being equal to men's; plus a little dark humour to go with the helplessness of the opium addict - a state with which Toulet was unfortunately all too familiar. I have also deliberately used the words "smack" and "crack" for their value as puns in the context of the poem. To "crack" is to joke, for my non-English readers; there is also the added association of "cracked ribs" together with the reference to the story </span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">of Eve's creation</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> in Genesis .</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Contrerime XXV<br /></b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">O poète,
à quoi bon chercher<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">des mots
pour son délire ?<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Il n' y
a qu' au bois de ta lyre<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">que tu
l' as su toucher.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Plus
haut que toi, dans sa morphine,<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">chante
un noir séraphin.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ma
nourrice disait qu' Enfin<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">est le
mari d' Enfine.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Translation</b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">O poet, in her drug-induced gyre<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Mere words cannot leech
her.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You have only been able
reach her</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">with a smack of your lyre.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tougher than you,
in her opiate crib<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">hums a dark demon.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My nurse liked to
crack that woman<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">is but man’s spare rib.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
Oldenbrokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11236081021728213825noreply@blogger.com0