Book Description

Excerpt from Recollections of a Literary Life, Vol. 2 To find myself again in the society of Louis de Cormenin was a compensation for the regret I felt at having come to the end of my travels. He had gone to live in Venice in 1850 with Theophile Gautier during part of the time I had spent galloping over Syria and Ph nicia. They were both men of gentle, careless, dreamy mould, lovers of art, able to lose themselves in the contemplation of a strip of blue sky seen through the arched openings of a campanile, or to find their amusement in watching the pigeons of Saint Mark pick up grains of Indian corn upon the Square. Happiness for them was attainable among the pearly effects of Venetian scenes, before the warm-toned Titians and the spiritualized Virgins of John Bellini. They did not need very material delights, were satisfied with frutti di mare at a fishermen's inn, drank water from outdoor fountains, floated upon the Lido, where they could, "Dormir la tete a l'ombre et les pieds au soleil," wandered out into the night to watch the stars reflected in the Lagoon as they stood upon the Schiavoni, and slept through the morning hours after being out till daybreak. Their natures were alike in simplicity and in a certain singularity; they seemed formed for one another. Gautier's account of their journey to Italy is a chef-d' uvre. Who does not know his "Italia?" For four months they lived together free and happy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."