XIV
REMY DE GOURMONT[1]
I
He too is dead. He was the most intelligent man in France, and one of the keenest intellects in the whole world. His brain was an instrument of precision. His thought had the lucidity of distilled alcohol, as clear as the water of a mountain spring, yet drawn from purple clusters, and carrying the inebriation, the vertigo, the wild fancy of a year’s experience compressed into a single hour.
He died several days ago. The Parisian paragraphers said of him, as they would say of the meanest scribbler of a mean Matin, that “les lettres françaises ont perdu un estimable écrivain et un homme de goût.”
His death was little heeded—because of the war, and because he did not die at the front. There was much talk about the death of Péguy, because Péguy was more the man of the hour, was more vivid, of a fresher fame, of more serious
- ↑ Written in 1915.
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