'
Yes; I'll be a poet even though you do scratch my wrist with your
hind claws, Polyphemus."
There! Empty your milk-jug and I will empty my bottle. The wine
smells of hyacinth. It is a revelation. Her hair smells of
violets, but it is the delicate odour of hyacinth that came from
her bare young arms when she clasped them round my neck; _et sa
peau, on dirait du satin_. Carlotta is in the wine, Carlotta
with her sorcery and her laughter and her youth, and I drink
Carlotta.
_"Quo me rapis Bacche pienum tui?"_
To such a land of dreams, my one-eyed friend, as never before
have I visited. You yawn? You are bored? I shoot the dregs of
my glass into his distended jaws. He springs away spitting and
coughing, and I lie back in my chair convulsed with
inextinguishable laughter.
October 2d.
I have suffered all day from a racking headache, having awakened
at six o'clock and crept shivering to bed. I realise that
Pommery and Greno are not demi-gods at all, but mere commercial
purveyors of a form of alcohol, a quart of which it is
injudicious to imbibe, with a one-eyed tom-cat as boon companion,
at two o'clock in the morning:
But I am unrepentant.
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