Motion Picture Classic (1923, 1924, 1926)

of gold at the rainbow end of my heated imagination. "You recall how I took an attic near Montmartre as many a better poet has done before me. and how I literally drank the midnight oil composing sonnets to a Lesbia that never lived. "But did you know that I knew Pauline in those days? Vraimcnt. Pauline was the daughter of Madame and Monsieur Gaudin in whose attic I finally took up my abode when the life of the Quarter, unexacting as it was, became too much for even my ambitious strivings. "Madame Gaudin alone did not storm in upon me when the week's rent was due . . . and was not forthcoming, as it was, h e I a s , so m any times not. And If Paulyou me ! had not seen her here tonight, still the m i nistering angel, still mild and magnificent, beautiful and ben ef icent. then I should be called upon to explain her to you in dithyramb and madrigal. in canzonet and monody, in strophe and antistrophe. Therefore. I may leave Pauline to speak for herself. For none can do it better. "Ah. back in those days, how kind she was to me ! She brought me food, secretly and sweetly, so that none, not even I might see her and be ashamed. She kept my poor, bare room spotless and with her own hands and even placed flowers here and there that it might not be so bare a shrine of poverty. Words cannot tell you the thousand and one ways in which Pauline sought to make my thorny path a flowery one. And I. I never saw it! I seem to recall that I did not even see her. altho, now in the late light of my great love, I cannot believe that the eyes I am pleased to call a poet's, that the heart I am charmed to believe is sensitive and lyric-strung, could have been so blind. "You see, I was enamored of Fedora. "To go into that would be to go into the cheap and claptrap folly of many another misguided young man, no better than he might be. "I had lived long within my secret soul. I had. I had really fasted on Parnassus. I had thrown off the warm, hot touch of hands and the absorption of lips. "Thus it was when I met Rastignac and the gay, dear soulless idler took me to the Salon of the Countess Fedora, in the benevolent hope that she might advance my prestige The poor penniless poet gives up everything CLASSIC as a poet, I cared nothing for the advancement and everything for the hope of an amour. "Fedora! Gay and gaudy, fated and frivolous! But she was a glittering snare and a delirious delusion to me. The scent of her hair, the shimmer of her arms, the scornful red trap of her mouth, these things remained with me by day and made painful my slumbers at night. "She cared nothing for me other than to exploit me. Which she did, in her fitful fashion. She herself read my poems aloud at one of her soirees and it might have done me some little good had I not been more enthralled with the texture of her mouth than I was with the technique of my own verses. ' ' I made the mistake of so expressing myself. A mistake because the most influential man there that night in my direction was also enamored of Fedora, and was not disposed to lookkindly upon a young man likewise affected. "Fedora played with me. As such women have played with such young men since the mad world first went mad. "She made appointments with me only to break them if it pleased her caprices. She took her hot red roses I starved to buy for her only to watch me bleed upon the thorns. Ah. it was a cruel time ! "And as I grew poorer and poorer, more and more bereft of hope, less and less desirous of prolonging a life made up only of hungers, of one sort or another, Pauline grew more silently solicitous, Fedora more openly derisive. "The day came when I walked toward the Seine, with that look in my eyes and that stride to my tired feet, that have so many times before wooed the Seine in the same manner. "I was about to throw myself over when . a poor wretch of the streets deterred me. "Her hand, all emaciated and blunted, held fast to my sleeve. "The ruined beauty of her face, ruined so long ago, God knows, besought me. ; " 'No woman is worth dying for,' she said, and I paused, arrested that she should have guessed my guilty, secret motive. I looked at her again. She was a woman, too. Doubtless, from the broken contours of her face, (Fifty-six) in despair, and his creditors take that he has