_For you are a true poet and I will declare it freely, not concerningmyself more with the legends Parisians have the habit of weaving aboutevery celebrity. They admire Gauguin and Verlaine, not so much for theiroriginality, as for their eccentricities. And so it happens that certainpersons, unacquainted with the nameless sentiment, the order and purity,the thousand interior virtues which guide you, persist in saying thatyou wear your hair short and that Willy is bald._

_Must I then--living at 0rthez--tell_ Tout-Paris _who you are, presentyou to all who know you--I who have never seen you_?

* * * * *

_I will say then, that Madame Colette Willy never had short hair, thatshe does not wear masculine attire; that her feline does not accompany herwhen she goes to a concert, that her friend's dog does not drink from atumbler. It is inexact to say that Mme. Colette Willy works in asquirrel's cage, or performs upon trapeze and flying rings, and canreach with her toe the nape of her neck. Madame Colette Willy has neverceased to be the_ plain woman _par excellence, who rises at dawn to giveoats to the mule, maize to the chickens, cabbage to the rabbits,groundsel to the canaries, snails to the ducks and bran-water to thepigs. At eight o'clock, summer and winter, she prepares the cafe au laitfor her maid--and herself. Scarcely a day passes that she does notmeditate upon this admirable book_: