beautiful at all: it can be hideous, never ineffective. He is a genuine visionary: he paints what he sees, and he sees through a window which looks out upon a night without stars. His imagination voyages in worlds not realised, voyages scarcely conscious of its direction. He sees chaos, which peoples its gulfs before him. The abyss swarms—toutes sortes d'effroyable bêtes surgtssent—animal and vegetable life, the germs of things, a creation of the uncreated. The world and men become spectral under his gaze, become transformed into symbols, into apparitions, for which he can give no account often enough. Cest une apparition—voila tout! He paints the soul and its dreams, especially its bad dreams. He has dedicated some of his albums to Flaubert, to Poe, to Baudelaire; but their work is to him scarcely so much as a starting-point. His imagination seizes on a word, a chance phrase, and transforms it into a picture which goes far beyond and away from the author's intention—as in the design which has for legend the casual words of Poe: "L'œil, comme un ballon bizarre, se dirige
