(_By J-mes Hun-k-r._)
There was a wedding under way. From the bright-lit mansion came the
evocations of a loud bassoon. Ulick Guffle, in whom the thought of
matrimony always produced a bitter nausea, glowered upon the house and
spat acridly upon the pave. "Imbeciles! Humbugs! Romantic rot!" he
raged.
Three young men drew toward the scene. Ulick barred their way, but two
of the trio slipped by him and escaped. The third was nailed by Guffle's
glittering eye. Ulick laid an ineluctable hand upon the stranger's arm.
"Listen!" he commanded. "Matrimony and Art are sworn and natural foes.
Ingeborg Bunck was right; there are no illegitimate children; all
children are valid. Sounds like Lope de Vega, doesn't it? But it isn't.
It is Bunck. Whitman, too, divined the truth. Love is a germ; sunlight
kills it. It needs l'obscurite and a high temperature. As Baudelaire
said--or was it Maurice Barres?--dans la nuit tous les chats sont gris.
Remy de Gourmont..."
The wedding guest beat his shirtfront; he could hear the bassoon
doubling the cello. But Ulick continued ineluctably. "Woman is a sink of
iniquity. Only Gounod is more loathsome. That Ave Maria--Grand Dieu! But
Frederic Chopin, nuance, cadence, appoggiatura--there you have it. En
amour, les vieux fous sont plus fous que les jeunes. Listen to
Rochefoucauld! And Montaigne has said, C'est le jouir et non le posseder
qui rend heureux. And Pascal has added, Les affaires sont les affaires.
As for Stendhal, Flaubert, Nietzsche, Edgar Saltus, Balzac, Gautier,
Dostoievsky, Rabelais, Maupassant, Anatole France, Bourget, Turgenev,
Verlaine, Renan, Walter Pater, Landor, Cardinal Newman and the Brothers
Goncourt..."
Ulick seized his head with both hands, and the wedding guest seized the
opportunity to beat it, as the saying is. "Swine!" Ulick flung after
him. "Swine, before whom I have cast a hatful of pearls!" He spat even
more acridly upon the pave and turned away. "After all," he growled,
"Stendhal was right. Or was it Huysmans? No, it was neither. It was
Cambronne."
* * *
Though there has been little enough to encourage it, the world is
growing kinder; at least friendliness is increasing. Every other day we
read of some woman living pleasantly in a well appointed apartment,
supplied with fine raiment and an automobile, the fruit of Platonism.
"No," she testifies, "there was nothing between us. He was merely a
friend."
* * *
What heaven hath cleansed let no man put asunder. Emma Durdy and Raymond
Bathe, of Nokomis, have been j. in the h. b. of w.
* * *