I did not have them, and told him so.
"Do you live far from here?" asked Alejandro, in his lofty style.
"No, near by."
"Very well then, you can go home and bring me the money."
He issued this command with such an air of authority that I went home
and brought him the money. He came to the door of the wine-shop, took it
from me, and then said:
"You may go now."
This was the way in which insignificant bourgeois admirers were treated
in the school of Baudelaire and Verlaine.
Later again, when I brought out _Sombre Lives_, I sometimes saw
Sawa in the small hours of the morning, his long locks flowing, and
followed by his dog. He always gripped my hand with such force that it
did me some hurt, and then he would say to me, in a tragic tone:
"Be proud! You have written _Sombre Lives_."
I took it as a joke.
One day Alejandro wrote me to come to his house. He was living on the
Cuesta de Santo Domingo. I betook myself there, and he made me a
proposition which was obviously preposterous. He handed me five or six
articles, written by him, which had already been published, together
with some notes, saying that if I would add certain material, we should
then be able to make up a book of "Parisian Impressions," which could
appear under the names of us both.
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