Paris of to-day : an intimate account of its people, its home life, and its places of interest . es LesFaucheurs, because their distinguishingcharacteristic was to carry their walkingsticks in a listless fashion with the handledown, as reapers hold their scythes. Theyused to meet in a room in the Cafe Americain,on the Boulevard. Disgust for these inanitiesfinally made a satirist out of M. Lavedan; but,as he says himself, it took his talent a longtime to wake up. With a hatred of the mondechic, there awoke in him pity and tendernessfor the simple and humble. There are twoLavedans in me, he is f
Paris of to-day : an intimate account of its people, its home life, and its places of interest . es LesFaucheurs, because their distinguishingcharacteristic was to carry their walkingsticks in a listless fashion with the handledown, as reapers hold their scythes. Theyused to meet in a room in the Cafe Americain,on the Boulevard. Disgust for these inanitiesfinally made a satirist out of M. Lavedan; but,as he says himself, it took his talent a longtime to wake up. With a hatred of the mondechic, there awoke in him pity and tendernessfor the simple and humble. There are twoLavedans in me, he is fond of saying; thisone and that one; and he points to his headand his heart. M. Maurice Donnay, who made his debutas a poet of the Chat Noir, is the most bril-liant of the young French dramatists, authorof Les Amants and V Amour discs, broughtout at the Gymnase, and Lc Torrent, given atthe Francais. In passing, I might speak of awhole school of humorists and poets bornfrom that quaint Bohemian cafe on Mont-martre, le Chat Noir—Alphonse Allais, Au-riol, Tristan Bernard, Willy, Franc-Nohain,. oq 2 a h kj ?s THE MEN OF LETTERS. 99 Pierre Weber. They nearly all owe theirsuccess, especially Allais, Auriol and TristanBernard, to their imitation of Americanhumorists. Among what would be called the greatFrench poets of to-day, Francois Coppee isthe last who can be said to belong to theNaturalist school. His enemies, and he hasa good many since he went into politics inthe anti-Dreyfus party, will tell you that he isin poetry what George Ohnet is in prose, andit is certain that his genius is most unequaland that some of his verses have laid them-selves open to the most absurd parodies. Youcould not say that his poem, The Accident,a story of the heroism of a railway employe,beginning:Montfort was a stoker on the Northern Line,was of a very high order of poetry. It hasbeen arranged for the benefit of all the greatrailway companies:Montfort was a stoker on the Western Line,Montfort was a
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