This song is the fifth in a collection of seven French songs for solo voice and piano, entitled Les chansons grises (link in french).The text is a poem by Paul Verlaine from the collection La bonne chanson, published in 1870. In 1894, when Hahn himself was performing Les chansons grises in a Parisian salon, he met Marcel Proust. They became lovers for two years and remained friends until Proust's death in 1922.