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I remember, too, a few stray snatches of thy extraordinary music, "music that might be considered by Wagner as a little too advanced, but which Liszt would not fail to understand"; also thy settings of sonnets where the melody was continued uninterruptedly from the first line to the last; and that still more marvellous feat, thy setting, likewise with unbroken melody, of Villon's ballade "Les Dames du Temps Jadis"; and that Out-Cabanering of Cabaner, the putting to music of Cros's "Hareng Saur."
Dear, dear Cabaner, how well I can see thee with thy goat-like beard, and the ape in the tree interrupting thee; he was not like Liszt, he chattered all night. Poor ape, he broke his chain earlier in the evening, and it was found impossible to persuade him to come down. The brute seemed somehow determined that we should not hear Cabaner.
But, Cabaner, thou didst not labour in vain; thy destiny, though obscure, was a valiant and fruitful one; and, as in life, thou didst live for others so now in death thou dost live in others.
The women still sit, circlewise, as if enchanted, the night inspires him, and he improvises trifle after trifle. One remembers fragments. Some time afterwards Cabaner was singing the song of "The Salt Herring." "He came along holding in his hands dirty, dirty, dirty, A big nail pointed, pointed, pointed, And a hammer heavy, heavy, heavy.
Here is a poem that Cabaner admired; he liked it in the French prose translation which I made for him one night in the Nouvelle Athènes: But I realised before I was thirty that minor poetry is not sufficient occupation for a life-time I realised that fact suddenly I remember the very place at the corner of Wellington Street in the Strand; and these poems were the last efforts of my muse.
How pathetic he looks with his goat-like beard." "That is the celebrated Cabaner. He will tell you, if you speak to him, that his father was a man like Napoleon, only more so. He is the author of many aphorisms; 'that three military bands would be necessary to give the impression of silence in music' is one.
But, Cabaner, thou didst not labour in vain; thy destiny, though obscure, was a valiant and fruitful one; and, as in life, thou didst live for others so now in death thou dost live in others, Thou wast in an hour of wonder and strange splendour when the last tints and lovelinesses of romance lingered in the deepening west; when out of the clear east rose with a mighty effulgence of colour and lawless light Realism; when showing aloft in the dead pallor of the zenith, like a white flag fluttering faintly, Symbolists and Decadents appeared.
Cabaner! since the beginning there have been, till the end of time there shall be Cabaners; and they shall live miserably and they shall die miserable, and shall be forgotten; and there shall never arise a novelist great enough to make live in art that eternal spirit of devotion, disinterestedness, and aspiration, which in each generation incarnates itself in one heroic soul.
Cabaner! since the beginning there have been, till the end of time there shall be Cabaners; and they shall live miserably and they shall die miserable, and shall be forgotten; and there shall never arise a novelist great enough to make live in art that eternal spirit of devotion, disinterestedness, and aspiration, which in each generation incarnates itself in one heroic soul.
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