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performance of this and other playlets for the benefit of Paul Verlaine and the painter, Paul Gauguin.

      In the second play of the 1890 volume, The Sightless, which was first acted on the 7th December, 1891, at the Théâtre d'Art, we have again the mystery of death; but the main theme would seem to be the mystery of human life – "this earthly existence is conceived as a deep, impenetrable night of ignorance and uncertainty."50 The fable is this:

      In a very ancient forest in the north, under a sky profoundly starred, is sitting a very agèd priest, wrapped in an ample black cloak. He is leaning his head and the upper part of his body against the bole of a huge, cavernous oak. His motionless face has the lividity of wax; his lips are violet and half open. His eyes seem bleeding under a multitude of immemorial griefs and tears. His white hair falls in rigid and scanty locks over a face more illumined and more weary than all that surrounds him in the attentive silence of the desolate forest. His emaciated hands are rigidly joined on his thighs. To the right of him six blind old men are sitting on stones, stumps of trees, and dead leaves. To the left, separated from them by an unrooted tree and split boulders, six women who are likewise blind sit facing the old men. Three of these women are praying and moaning uninterruptedly. A fourth is extremely old; the fifth, in an attitude of speechless madness, holds a sleeping baby on her knees. The sixth is young and radiantly beautiful, and her hair floods her whole being. Most of them sit waiting, with their elbows on their knees, and their faces in their hands. Great funereal trees, yews, weeping willows, cypresses, cover them with faithful shadows. A cluster of tall and sickly asphodel are in blossom near the priest. The darkness is extraordinary, in spite of the moonlight which, here and there, glints through the darkness of the foliage.

      The blind people are waiting for their priest to return. He is getting too old, the men murmur; they suspect that he has not been blest with the Best of sight himself of late. They are sure he has lost his way and is looking for it. They have walked a long time; they must be far from the asylum. He only talks to the women now; they ask them where he has gone to. The women do not know. He had told them he wanted to see the island for the last time before the sunless winter. He was uneasy because the storms had flooded the river, and because all the dikes seemed ready to burst. He has gone in the direction of the sea, which is so near that when they are silent they can hear it thudding on the rocks. Where are they? None of them know. When did they come to the island? They do not know, they were all blind when they came. They were not born here, they came from beyond the sea. They hear the asylum clock strike twelve; they do not know whether it is noon or midnight. They are frightened at noises which they cannot understand. Suddenly the wind rises in the forest, and the sea is heard bellowing against the cliffs. The sea seems very near; they are afraid it will reach them. They are about to rise and try to go away when they hear a noise of hasty feet in the dead leaves. It is the dog of the asylum. It puts its muzzle on the knees of one of the blind men. Feeling it pull, he rises, and it leads him to the motionless priest. He touches the priest's cold face … and they know that their guide is dead. The dog will not move away from the corpse. A squall whirls the dead leaves round. It begins to snow. They think they hear footsteps … The footsteps seem to stop in their midst…

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      1

      Gérard Harry, Maeterlinck, p. 18.

      2

      "Monsieur Maeterlinck being as all the world knows, hermetically mute." – (Grégoire Le Roy), Le Masque (Brussels), Série ii, No. 5 (1912).

      3

      "La Vie des Abeilles brought us from the tiptoe of expectance to a more r

1

Gérard Harry, Maeterlinck, p. 18.

2

"Monsieur Maeterlinck being as all the world knows, hermetically mute." – (Grégoire Le Roy), Le Masque (Brussels), Série ii, No. 5 (1912).

3

"La Vie des Abeilles brought us from the tiptoe of expectance to a more reasonable attitude, and Monna Vanna and the translation of Macbeth keyed our hopes still lower; but at length in Le Trésor des Humbles Maeterlinck returned to his early inspiration." —Academy, 15th June, 1912.

4

The Flemish pronunciation is Màh-ter-lee-nk; but Frenchmen pronounce it as though it were a French name.

5

It was by this canal, no doubt, that Maeterlinck as a young man would skate "into Holland." See Huret's Enquête. And it inspired the scenery of The Seven Princesses.

6

Mme Georgette Leblanc, Morceaux choisis, Introduction.

7

Anselma Heine, Maeterlinck, pp. 7-8.

8

Serres Chaudes, "Hôpital."

9

"The literary history of modern Belgium, by the freaks of chance, was born in one single house. In Ghent, the favourite city of the Emperor Charles V., in the old Flemish city heavy with fortifications, rises remote, far from noisy streets, Sainte-Barbe, the grey-walled Jesuit monastery. Its thick, defensive walls, its silent corridors and refectories, remind one somewhat of Oxford's beautiful colleges; here, however, there is no ivy softening the walls, there are no flowers to lay their variegated carpet over the green courts." – Stefan Zweig, Emile Verhaeren (Mercure de France, 1910), pp. 39-40.

10

Mme Georgette Leblanc, Morceaux choisis, Introduction.

11

Anselma Heine, Maeterlinck, p. 9. But cf. Léon Bazalgette, Emile Verhaeren, p. 14.

12

Gérard Harry, Maeterlinck, p. 9, note.

13

Gérard Harry, Maeterlinck, p. 26; Heine, Maeterlinck, p. 9.

14

Cf., for instance, Barbey's "Réfléchir sur son bonheur n'est-ce pas le doubler?" with the opening chapters of Sagesse et Destinée.

15

The review of the same name which was published at Brussels, by Lacomblez, beginning three years later, and in which Maeterlinck's criticism of Iwan Gilkin's Damnation de l'Artiste appeared, was a third-rate periodical.

16

The Massacre of the Innocents and other Tales by Belgian Writers.

17

Verhaeren's first vers libres appeared in book form in January, 1891 (printed in December, 1890) in Les Flambeaux noirs. But in May, 1890, he had published, in La Wallonie, a poem in vers libres; and this is dated 1889.

18

Poèmes

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