There are, Monsieur, the man with the singular eyes said to me, ill-intentioned people who look at me with an impertinent pity and claim that I am mad. They will tell you that, but do not believe them; I have pronounced that word in order to destroy in you immediately the striking impression that it produces. Those people are wicked; they were my friends once, but now they spy on me and say perfidious things about me, because they are jealous. And I shall tell you with what reason: they are jealous of not having understood their soul as well as me. There are people who cannot see and who wish ill on others because of that; but not everyone can sense things in the same way, can they, Monsieur? One must be reasonable.
Camille Mauclair's
Les Clefs d'or
, originally published in 1897, is one of the most significant Symbolist prose collections of the fin de siècle. The present volume,
The Frail Soul and Other Stories
, contains eleven pieces from this masterwork, brilliantly translated into English for the first time by Brian Stableford.