149th Anniversary of Jules Laforgue's Birth

On the occasion of the 149th anniversary of his birth, here's a nice translation of an unpublished Laforgue sketch of Baden-Baden from David Arkell's Looking for Laforgue:

"These stifling evenings at Baden-Baden with the room full of moving flowers, the windows open to all the noises of the valley: a distant dog, distant fireworks, that stupid band in the Kurzgarten, the perpetually renewed fountain in the courtyard, a villa gate being shut. Lights dotted here and there on the twin mountains disappear one by one. A breeze from the windows makes all the candles run on the same side. Flashes of summer lightning—silent, bluish, darting."