gerated the extravagant behaviour of the poet, are questions hard to determine, and perhaps not worth determining. M. Champfleury, who was a friend, admits the lack of discretion in all of Baudelaire's fancies. They began prettily, soon grew burdensome, and ended too often in the grotesque. "Many a time," he writes, "when he and I have been walking together, have we stopped at the door of a laundry to look at a cat, curled luxuriously on a pile of snow-white linen, and revelling in the fragrant softness of the newly-ironed fabrics. Into what moods of contemplation have we fallen, while the coquettish laundresses struck pretty attitudes at their ironing-boards, under the delusion that we were admiring them. If a cat appeared in a doorway, or crossed the street, Baudelaire would coax it softly, take it in his arms, and stroke its fur,—sometimes the wrong way. Although I may seem to confirm the stories that were circulated when the poet was attacked by hopeless paralysis, I must admit that his enthusiasm had in it something startling and excessive. This made him a charming companion for an hour or so, after which he became fatiguing, from the extreme excitability which all who knew him recognized as characteristic."
The foolish tales current at the time may easily be discarded. It is not probable that the poet,
