and more reassuring features—and because Péguy was killed by a Prussian bullet in the defense of the fields and the rights of France.
There was much talk even about Fabre, the friend of Mistral and of insects, who died, full of days and honors, at almost the same time. But an observer of insects is nearer the level of our journalists than an observer of men. Especially if the observer of men is a poet as well, and does not live on the ideas of Monsieur Delarue. It was Remy de Gourmont who uttered these profound and bitter words: “Il faut flatter les imbéciles et les flatter dans leurs facultés les moins nocives. C’est peut-être un instinct de conservation qui pousse la société à conférer provisoirement la gloire à tant de médiocres esprits.” Provisionally. Let us hope for the ultimate revision.
II
Remy de Gourmont died too soon. He was only fifty-seven years of age, and he had never swung incense before any fool. Modest and alone in a great dark house full of books—how well I remember a luminous morning in November, 1906, in the Rue des Saints Pères!—he read books, read men and women, read the ancients and the moderns and les jeunes, and sought truth, clear French truth, pitiless contemporary
