"Is it not possible" he asks, "that the enjoyment of art for its own sake, the calm and full satisfaction we are plunged into by the contemplation of a beautiful statue or of a perfect monument, things that do not belong to us and that we shall never see again, which excite no sensual desire, which can profit us nothing--is it not possible that this satisfaction may be the pale gleam of a different consciousness filtering through a fissure of that consciousness of ours which is built up of memories?"[7]
_Death_ appeared almost simultaneously with the news that Maeterlinck had been awarded the Nobel prize for literature. The occasion was celebrated by a public banquet offered to the poet by the City of Brussels; official Belgium had at last awakened to the fact that its poets were more honoured in the world than its rulers. As to the one hundred and ninety thousand francs, he had no need of the money for himself, and it was announced that his intention was to found a "Maeterlinck prize with it," to be given every two years to the writer of the most remarkable book published in that period in the French language.
[1] He does not mention the soft mouth of the old English sheep-dog.
[2] The Abbé Dimnet, in an article in _The Nineteenth Century_ for January, 1912, charges Maeterlinck with indelicacy for having occupied the abbey so soon after its confiscation! The abbé does not mention the chemical project.
[MAGDALENE _leaves the column against which she is leaning and takes four or five steps towards_ LAZARUS _as though walking in her sleep_.]
MAGDALENE: He fixed his eyes for but a moment on mine; and that will be enough for the rest of my life.
[4] I have re-translated from the French in which Mr de Sélincourt's article was reproduced in _Le Thyrse_ for January, 1912.
[5] "L'Immortalité" (in _L'Intelligence des Fleurs_) p. 282.
I have reported little of the gossip concerning Maeterlinck. Everybody knows that he smokes denicotinised tobacco; that he resides in the summer at Saint Wandrille and in the winter at his house "Villa des Abeilles" at Nice (having now left his villa aux Quatre Chemins, near Grasse in the south of France); and so forth. One little picture I would like to contribute; I have it from a friend and admirer of his, and it concerns a visit to the Villa Dupont, the house in the Rue Pergolèse where Maeterlinck lived when he first settled in Paris: