Verlaine’s life is enveloped in mystery, but it is known, from his own avowals, that he passed two years in prison. In the poem _Écrit en_ 1875[123] he narrates in detail, not only without the least shame, but with gay unconcern, nay, even with boasting, that he was a true professional criminal:
‘J’ai naguère habité le meilleur des châteaux Dans le plus fin pays d’eau vive et de coteaux: Quatre tours s’élevaient sur le front d’autant d’ailes, Et j’ai longtemps, longtemps habité l’une d’elles... Une chambre bien close, une table, une chaise, Un lit strict où l’on pût dormir juste à son aise,... Tel fut mon lot durant les longs mois là passés... ...J’étais heureux avec ma vie, Reconnaissant de biens que nul, certes, n’envie.’
...’ce grand pécheur eut des conduites Folles à ce point d’en devenir trop maladroites, Si bien que les tribunaux s’en mirent--et les suites! Et le voyez-vous dans la plus étroite des boîtes?
Cellules! prison humanitaires! Il faut taire Votre horreur fadasse et ce progrès d’hypocrisie’...
It is now known that a crime of a peculiarly revolting character led to his punishment; and this is not surprising, since the special characteristic of his degeneration is a madly inordinate eroticism. He is perpetually thinking of lewdness, and lascivious images fill his mind continually. I have no wish to quote passages in which this unhappy slave of his morbidly excited senses has expressed the loathsome condition of his mind, but the reader who wishes to become acquainted with them may be referred to the poems _Les Coquillages_, _Fille_, and _Auburn_.[124] Sexual license is not his only vice. He is also a dipsomaniac, and (as may be expected in a degenerate subject) a paroxysmal dipsomaniac, who, awakened from his debauch, is seized with deep disgust of the alcoholic poison and of himself, and speaks of ‘les breuvages exécrés’ (_La Bonne Chanson_), but succumbs to the temptation at the next opportunity.
Moral insanity, however, is not present in Verlaine. He sins through irresistible impulse. He is an Impulsivist. The difference between these two forms of degeneration lies in the fact that the morally insane does not look upon his crimes as bad, but commits them with the same unconcern as a sane man would perform any ordinary or virtuous act, and after his misdeed is quite contented with himself; whereas the Impulsivist retains a full consciousness of the baseness of his deeds, hopelessly fights against his impulse until he can no longer resist it, and after the performance[125] suffers the most terrible remorse and despair. It is only an Impulsivist who speaks in execration of himself as a reprobate (‘Un seul Pervers,’ in _Sagesse_), or strikes the dejected note which Verlaine touches in the first four sonnets of _Sagesse_: