Free The Green Muse by Jessie Prichard Hunter

attended the opera; he and his lover fought in the streets, parted and came together, fought again; Verlaine shot Rimbaud in a jealous rage.
    But that was all long over. Rimbaud, not seriously wounded, left Verlaine and France, traveling to Africa to become an adventurer. He died before he reached his thirty-­seventh birthday. Verlaine was only fifty-­one years old now, but he could have been seventy.
    Slumped before me in this grotto bar, his bald pate catching the candlelight with pathetic comedy, his gray hair sticking straight out on the sides, he looked as though he had neither eaten nor truly slept in a long time. I do not know why he did not evoke any horror in me. He had done monstrous things.
    â€œExcuse me, Monsieur,” I said again.
    He did not speak, but his eyes opened and his head lurched up and he was staring at me in a half-­mad dream.
    â€œIt is all right,” I said, leaning forward to touch his arm. “There is nothing here to harm you.” He stared straight at me but did not see me; he whipped his head about, this way and that, as though dodging quick-­striking beasts; he looked down. The sight of the absinthe glass and spoon seemed to calm him. He breathed deeply and shook himself. He looked up at me and seemed, quite suddenly, to be perfectly all right.
    â€œGood evening, Monsieur,” he said clearly. “Would you care to sit with me?
    â€œI would be delighted,” I said. “I am having the bartender bring you something to drink.”
    â€œAh. And what would that something be, young man?”
    â€œMy personal vice is absinthe,” I said, “and so I thought that perhaps—­” I paused delicately, giving him a moment to abnegate his responsibility.
    â€œAh,” he said again. “If that is what you prefer.” He shrugged, ignoring the detritus in the glass in front of him, the knowledge of all Paris that he was a hopeless slave to the Green Muse. As we waited in silence,I had a chance to examine him further. It was said that for the price of a drink he would recite his own poetry for you. That he drank his way down the boulevards during the day and dozed in less reputable haunts at night. That sometimes he even spent his nights on the street.
    But his eyes had a hard glint. He did not seem so far gone as I had heard. His poetry had stirred in me such passions! For romance, for danger, for passion itself. He wrote of suffering with the lyric intensity of one who has been purified by pain. He seemed created to suffer, this man before me now, once so noble and now so humbled. His love, although base, had been beautiful, and the world had seen its beauty. His suffering, although ignoble, had been graced with a purity of feeling that transcended its origins. I could not despise him; I could not even pity him. To have lived such a life as he had lived! To have drunk both the nectar and the poison of the soul and drained the cup! What did it matter if his ending was vile?
    A waiter came, carrying an Oriental tray that glittered with a miniature city of glass. I saw the Absinthe Terminus label, the long neck of the bottle and the red oval seal at the curve of the neck. I felt a charge of longing almost erotic in its intensity; Verlaine’s eyes were hungry; V’s face, as she came and sat with us, was quite calm. She smiled at the waiter and I saw that she gave her smile to anyone, like a whore or a little child.
    Verlaine had leaned forward in his seat. I mentally checked my bearing and was relieved that I had not done the same. I almost laughed. I caught V’s eye, and she smiled. Was it a different smile for me? I was not sure; I was distracted by the light refracting off the glass.
    V picked up the bottle and began to extract the cork. She waved away my gentle protestations; actually I wanted to see her do this, to watch her hands move. They had the hard, smooth allure of the hands of a storefront mannequin. There was nothing