Page:Ballads of a Bohemian.djvu/90

88 We smoked our pipes and wondered when she might be coming home, And then we learned the luck had turned, the things were going ill. Her health had failed, her beauty paled, her lovers fled away; And some one saw her in Peru, a common drab at last. So years went by, and faces changed; our beards were sadly gray, And Marie Toro’s name became an echo of the past.

You know that old and withered man, that derelict of art, Who for a paltry franc will make a crayon sketch of you? In slouching hat and shabby cloak he looks and is the part, A sodden old Bohemian, without a single sou. A boon companion of the days of Rimbaud and Verlaine, He broods and broods, and chews the cud of bitter souvenirs; Beneath his mop of grizzled hair his cheeks are gouged with pain, The saffron sockets of his eyes are hollowed out with tears. Well, one night in the D’Harcourt’s din I saw him in his place, When suddenly the door was swung, a woman halted there;