EACH has his France; and mine's three feet by two and Bonnard signed it ... who from his attic saw the Gallic anger of that rain that grew to a passionate moment, dwindled, became no more than the washed Paris smell, with a trickle from slate and drain. Wet roofs he saw turn vague with approaching night, and night was a malefactor masked in the rain, footpadding down dark passages. No light had challenged it — till the café lamps in his street rose like a small, companionable sun over motionless cobble-pools. ... And there, down there my painter too would go to-night, would meet Lautrec, Latour. And gold of France would be spun from their talk, in that café, in its smoke-loud air. |