TO M. EUGÈNE FROMENTIN
Apropos an Importuner
self-styled his friend

He tells me that he was quite rich,

But that he feared the cholera;

—That with gold he was no soft touch,

But he relished the Opera;

—That he was all keen on nature,

Because he knew Monsieur Corot;

—That he had no carriage as yet,

But that that would come soon enow;

—That he loved both brick and marble,

Wood that’s dark and also gilded;

—That he had in his own workshop

Foremen three in wartime medaled;

—That he’d brought, not counting the rest,

Countless actions against the Nord;

—That he’d found, for a bit of zest,

Frames all crafted by Oppenord;

—That he’d give (were it to Luzarches!)

In bric-à-brac up to his ears,

At the Marché des Patriarches

He had more than once made good deals;

—That he loved his wife not so well,

His mother too; —but he would say

There’s life eternal in the soul,

And he’d also read Niboyet!

—That he leaned toward love physical,

And that at Rome, a boring spot,

A woman, even phthsical,

For love of him alive was not.

For three whole hours and a half,

This chatterbox, come from Tournai,

Prattled to me about his life;

Filling my brain up with dismay.

If I had to tell my torture,

There wouldn’t be an end of it;

I thought, keeping down my hatred:

“At least, if I could sleep a bit!”

Like one who is not at his ease,

And who doesn’t dare take a hike,

I rubbed my chairseat with my ass,

Dreaming his head upon a pike.

This monster had for name Bastogne;

He departed before the scourge.

Myself, I fled unto Gascogne,

To jump in water I’d the urge,

If in that Paris, which he dreads,

When each of us returns that way,

I find again upon my roads

This scourge, a native of Tournai.

Charles Baudelaire