Tribulat Bonhomet (which he himself defined as bouffonnerie énorme et sombre, couleur du siècle) was to come, in its final form, and the superb poem in prose Akëdysséril; and then, more and more indifferent collections of stories, in which Villiers, already dying, is but the shadow of himself: L'Amour Suprême (1886), Histoires Insolites (1888), Nouveaux Contes Cruels (1888). He was correcting the proofs of Axël when he died; the volume was published in 1890, followed by Propos d'au-delà, and a series of articles, Chez les Passants. Once dead, the fame which had avoided him all his life began to follow him; he had une belle presse at his funeral.
Meanwhile, he had been preparing the spiritual atmosphere of the new generation. Living among believers in the material world, he had been declaring, not in vain, his belief in the world of the spirit; living among Realists and Parnassians, he had been creating a new form of art, the art of the Symbolist drama, and of Symbolism in fiction. He had been lonely all his life, for he had been living in his own lifetime, the life of the next generation. There was but one man among his con-
