Chapter 31 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM

"In life," said Barbey d'Aurevilly, "we are strangled between two doors, of which the one is labelled Too Soon and the other Too Late." The brilliant Beau Brummel of French literature who uttered this fatidical speech was a contemporary of the unhappy, impulsive man of genius, poet, mystic, and dramatist, who set Paris agog with his novels, short s