ABSENT-MINDED GAUTIER.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1581, 26 October 1912, Page 9

ABSENT-MINDED GAUTIER.

Theophile Gautier composed much of lis best.work while riding on the tops of 'buses, awl.so thoroughly did his brain do.its work in these strange places that oncoming home he would sit down and write.as steadily as if tho words were being dictated to.him. His faculty of concentration was so-'gTeat that while composing a "novel on a 'bus, his subconscious self was sot free to listen to remarks mado to him, and to answer them without disturbing tho real current of his thoughts. In his own house, too. he would give even more rcmarkablo demonstrations of this somnambulism. In the middle of Bhowinz a guest the pictures that lined his walls a dreaminess would come into his voice and eyes, and his words would como slojver and slower. Then, with the dull, heavy movement of a somnambulist, he turned his back on his guest, and noiselessly, just like a somnambulist again,' went to tho door and opened and Bhut it behind him so auiotly that not

even the cats asleep on the armchairs wero awakened.

. Up the little wooden stadrcaso went the dull, heavy, clump, clump, clump of his slippers, vanishing up above. Down below the visitor waited, wondering what he should do. If he scented an adventuro ho "stood by," as Captain Cuttle would say, in tho salon waiting for something to turn up. Otherwise ho would remain gaping-in astonishment.

After tho lapse of soni» minutes, sometimes a great many minites, the clump, clump, the dull, heavy chimp of the soles of his slippevs was heard at the lop of the staircase. It came nearer, until it ■mingled with the sound of tho openiug door, and then Gautier walked in, still , a • somnambulist, and stood in front of his guest, whoso astonishment was heightened whan his host, with.tho most natural tone in tho world, went on with the sentence ho had broken off short when ho went upstairs. He had not the least notion of having left his guest. His expedition had been made to a room on the second floor, where he sat down on tho shelf of a large oak cupboard. What did ho do up there? Nothing whatever. Ho simply stared at the walls. He wasn't conscious of being there. But when, an hour later, he clambered on the top of a 'bus, his brain already contained somo bits > of a chef d'oeuvrc. They had taken shape there while his guest down below was wondering what he was doing. Rarely, if ever, has a man had such a gift for getting out of himself. He would enlarge <in liis magnificent golden tea aud breakfast service, when the most humdrum china lined his shelves. And though his servants were all treated in the most fatherly way, Gautier would fell you that he never permitted them to utter a word in his presence, that he only employed negroes. "I give my orders by signs. If they understand my signs, well and good. .If they don't, I kick them into the Bosphorus." And there is no doubt that he actually heard the wave closing over the head of a. black slave.-; 'He actually meant what he said. The street outsido was - actually for him the Bosphorus.—"St. James's Gazette."