ABSTRACT
The red waistcoat! It is more than forty years since I wore it, yet people still speak of it, and will go on speaking of it in days to come, so deep did that flash of colour penetrate the public's eye. If the name of Théophile Gautier happens to be spoken in the presence of a Philistine, even of one who has never read a line of prose or verse of mine, he knows me at least by the red waistcoat I wore at the first performance of Hernani, and he says, with the self-satisfied look of the man who knows what he is talking about: “Oh, yes. You mean the young fellow with the red waistcoat and the long hair.” And that is the way I shall go down to posterity. My books, my verse, my articles, my travels will be forgotten, but men will remember my red waistcoat. That spark will go on shining when everything else of mine will long since have been lost in night, and it will set me apart from those of my contemporaries whose works were no better than mine, but who wore dark-coloured waistcoats. Nor am I sorry to leave this impression behind me; it has a certain grim haughtiness about it, and in spite of some youthful lack of taste, exhibits a not unpleasant contempt for public opinion and ridicule.
