He would say, "How funny it will all seem, all you've gone through, when I'm not here anymore, when you no longer feel my arms around your shoulders, nor my heart beneath you, nor this mouth on your eyes, because I will have to go away some day, far away..." And in that instant I could feel myself with him gone, dizzy with fear, sinking down into the most horrible blackness: into death.

"
Rimbaud and Verlaine began a short and torrid affair. The post-operative diagnosis was cancer. Until this time his reading was confined almost entirely to the Bible but he also enjoyed fairy tales and stories of adventure such as the novels of James Fenimore Cooper and Gustave Aimard.

Rimbaud was known to have been a libertine and restless soul travelling extensively on three continents before his death from cancer just after his 37th birthday. For other people named Rimbaud see Rimbaud (surname). Born in Charleville Ardennes he produced his works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and gave up creative writing before the age of 20.