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26 enough; there shall be forty-eight, with notes and an appendix! The whole universe must know of my existence. I will not fail to make my verse tell the pitiful tale of my loneliness, but it shall be done in such a way that the happiest shall envy me. Since Heaven has denied me a mate I will defame most horribly the mates of all my acquaintance; I will demonstrate that all the grapes are green except those that are for my eating. Let the nightingales look out for themselves; I will prove, as sure as two and two make four, that their complainings give rise to heart disease and that their wares are worthless. I must go and find Charpentier. First of all I want to make for myself a strong literary position. I mean to have a court around me, composed not of journalists alone, but of real authors, and even of literary women. I will write a rôle for Mlle. Rachel and, if she declines to act it, I will trumpet it through the land that there are old actresses in the provinces who are her superiors in talent. I will go to Venice, and there, on the banks of the Grand Canal, in the heart of that fairy-like city, I will hire the beautiful Mocenigo Palace that costs four livres and ten sous a day; there I will drink in the inspiration of all the memories that the author of "Lara" must have left there. From the depths of my solitude I will inundate the world with a deluge of terza rima, copied from the verse of Spenser, in which my great soul shall find solace; the grove shall do me reverence, tomtits shall sigh, turtle-doves coo, woodcocks shed bitter tears, and all the old owls shriek enviously. As regards my personal being, however, I will be inexorable and permit no amorous advances, Vainly will the unfortunate