His double followed him: tatters and stick And back and eye and beard, all were the same; Out of the same Hell, indistinguishable, These centenarian twins, these spectres odd, Trod the same pace toward some end unknown. To what fell complot was I then exposed! Humiliated by what evil chance? For as the minutes one by one went by Seven times I saw this sinister old man Repeat his image there before my eyes!
Let him who smiles at my inquietude, Who never trembled at a fear like mine, Know that in their decrepitude's despite These seven old hideous monsters had the mien Of beings immortal. Then, I thought, must I, Undying, contemplate the awful eighth; Inexorable, fatal, and ironic double; Disgusting Phoenix, father of himself And his own son! In terror then I turned My back upon the infernal band, and fled To my own place, and closed my door; distraught And like a drunkard who sees all things twice, With feverish troubled spirit, chilly and sick, Wounded by mystery and absurdity!
In vain my reason tried to cross the bar, The whirling storm but drove her back again; And my soul tossed, and tossed, an outworn wreck, Mastless, upon a monstrous, shoreless sea.
Deep in the tortuous folds of ancient towns, Where all, even horror, to enchantment turns, I watch, obedient to my fatal mood, For the decrepit, strange and charming beings, The dislocated monsters that of old Were lovely women--Laïs or Eponine! Hunchbacked and broken, crooked though they be, Let us still love them, for they still have souls. They creep along wrapped in their chilly rags, Beneath the whipping of the wicked wind, They tremble when an omnibus rolls by, And at their sides, a relic of the past, A little flower-embroidered satchel hangs. They trot about, most like to marionettes; They drag themselves, as does a wounded beast; Or dance unwillingly as a clapping bell Where hangs and swings a demon without pity. Though they be broken they have piercing eyes, That shine like pools where water sleeps at night; The astonished and divine eyes of a child Who laughs at all that glitters in the world.
Have you not seen that most old women's shrouds Are little like the shroud of a dead child? Wise Death, in token of his happy whim, Wraps old and young in one enfolding sheet. And when I see a phantom, frail and wan, Traverse the swarming picture that is Paris, It ever seems as though the delicate thing Trod with soft steps towards a cradle new. And then I wonder, seeing the twisted form, How many times must workmen change the shape Of boxes where at length such limbs are laid? These eyes are wells brimmed with a million tears; Crucibles where the cooling metal pales-- Mysterious eyes that are strong charms to him Whose life-long nurse has been austere Disaster.