Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, April 11, 1891

Excerpt

CHAPTER I.

I was asleep and dreaming—dreaming dreadful, horrible, soul-shattering dreams—dreams that flung me head-first out of bed, and then flung me back into bed off the uncarpeted floor of my chamber. But I did not wake—why should I?—it was unnecessary—I wanted to dream—I had to dream and therefore I dreamt. I was walking home from a cheap restaurant in one of the poorer quarters of Paris. "Poorer quarters" is a nice vague term. There are many poorer quarters in a large city. This was one of them. Let that suffice to the critical pedants who clamour for accuracy and local colour. Accuracy! pah! Shall the soaring soul of a three-volumer be restrained by the debasing fetters of a grovelling exactitude? Never! I will tell you what. If I choose, I who speak to you, moi qui vous parle, the Seine shall run red with the blood of murdered priests, and there shall be a tide in it where no tide ever was before, close to Paris itself, the home of the Marrons Glacés, and into the river I shall plunge a corpse with upturned face and glassy, staring, haunting, dreadful eyes, and the tide shall turn, the tide that never was on earth, or sky, or sea, it shall turn in my second volume for one night only, and carry the corpse of my victim back, back, back under bridges innumerable, back into the heart of Paris. Dreadful, isn't it? Allons, mon ami. Qu'est-ce-qu'il-y-a. Je ne sais quoi. Mon Dieu! There's idiomatic French for you, all sprinkled out of a cayenne pepper-pot to make the local colour hot and strong. Bah! let us return to our muttons!

CHAPTER II.

What was that? Something yellow, and spotted—something sinuous and lithe, with crawling, catlike motion. No, no! Yes, yes!! A leopard of the forest had issued from a side-street, a cul de sac, as the frivolous sons of Paris, the Queen of Vice, call it. It was moving with me, stopping when I stopped, galloping when I galloped, turning somersaults when I turned them. And then it spoke to me—spoke, yes, spoke, this thing of the desert—this wild phantasm of a brain distraught by over-indulgence in marrons glacés, the curse of ma patrie, and its speech was as the scent of scarlet poppies, plucked from the grave of a discarded mistress.

"Thou shalt write," it said, "for it is thine to reform the world." I shuddered. The conversational "thou" is fearful at all times; but, ah, how true to nature, even the nature of a leopard of the forest. The beast continued—"But thou shalt write in English."

"Spare me!" I ventured to interpose.

"In English," it went on, inexorably—"in hysterical, sad, mad, bad English. And the tale shall be of France—France, where the ladies always leave the dinner-table before the men. Note this, and use it at page ninety of thy first volume. And thy French shall be worse than thy English, for thou shalt speak of a frissonement, and thy friends shall say, "Nous blaguons le chose."

"Stop!" I cried, in despair, "stop, fiend!—this is too much!" I sprang at the monster, and seized it by the throat....