There is such an air of gentle peace about these souls and these obscure things that I do not ask whether they have any reason for being other than this very peace, nor whether I read a special charm into their humility.

The God of the poor watches over them, the simple God in whom I believe. It is He who makes an ear of grain grow from a seed; it is He who separates water from earth, earth from air, air from fire, fire from night; it is He who blows the breath of life into the body; it is He who fashions the leaves one by one. We do not know how this is done, but we have faith in it as in the work of a perfect workman.

I contemplate without desiring to understand, and thus God reveals Himself to me. In the house of this cobbler my eyes open as simply as those of his dog. Then I see, I see in truth that which few can see—the essence of things, as, for example, the devotion of the smoky flame without which the hammer of the workman could not be a bread-winner.

Most of the time we regard things in a heedless fashion. But they are like us, sorrowful or happy. When I notice a diseased ear of wheat among healthy ears, and see the livid stain on its grains I have a quick intuitive understanding of the suffering of this particular thing. Within myself I feel the pain of those plant-cells; I realize their agony in growing in this infected spot without crushing one another. I am filled with a desire to tear up my handkerchief, and bandage this ear of wheat. But I feel that there is no remedy for a single ear of wheat, and that humanly it would be an act of folly to attempt this cure. Such things are not done, yet no one pays any special attention if I take care of a bird or a grasshopper. Nevertheless I am certain that these grains suffer, because I feel their suffering.

A beautiful rose on the other hand imparts to me its joy in life. One feels that it is perfectly happy swaying on its stem, for does not everybody say simply, "It is a pity to cut it," and thus affirm and preserve the happiness of this flower?

* * * * *

I recall very distinctly the time when it was first revealed to me that things suffered. It happened when I was three years old. In my native hamlet a little boy, while playing, fell on a piece of broken glass, and died of the wound.

A few days later I went to the child's home. His mother was crying in the kitchen. On the mantelpiece stood a poor little toy. I recall perfectly that it was a small tin or leaden horse, attached to a little tin barrel on wheels.

His mother said to me: "That is my poor little Louis's wagon. He is dead. Would you like to have it?"

Then a flood of tenderness filled my heart. I felt that this thing had lost its friend, its master, and that it was suffering. I accepted the plaything, and overcome with pity I sobbed as I carried it home. I recall very well that I was too young to realize either the death of the little boy or the sorrow of his mother. I pitied only that leaden animal which seemed heart-broken to me as it stood on the mantelpiece forever idle and bereaved of the master it loved. I remember all this as if it had happened yesterday, and I am sure that I had no desire to possess this toy for my own amusement. This is absolutely true, for when I came home, with my eyes full of tears, I confided the little horse and barrel to my mother. She has forgotten the whole incident.

The belief that things are endowed with life exists among children, animals, and simple people.

I have seen children attribute the characteristics of a living being to a piece of rough wood or to a stone. They brought it handfuls of grass, and were absolutely sure that the wood or stone had eaten it when, as a matter of fact, I had carried it off without their noticing it.

Animals do not differentiate the quality of an action. I have seen cats scratch at something too hot for them for a long time. In this act on the part of the animal there is an idea of fighting something which can yield or perhaps die.

I think it is only an education, born of false vanity, that has robbed man of such beliefs. I myself see no essential difference between the thought of a child who gives food to a piece of wood and the meaning of some of the libations in primitive religions. Do we not attribute to trees an attachment to us stronger than life itself when we believe that one planted on the birthday of a child that sickens and dies will wither and dry up at the same time?

I have known things in pain. I have known some which are dead. The sad clothes of our departed wear out quickly. They are often impregnated with the same disease as those who wore them. They are one with them.

I have often considered objects which were wasting away. Their disintegration is identical with our own. They have their decay, their ruptures, their tumors, their madnesses. A piece of furniture gnawed by worms, a gun with a broken trigger, a warped drawer, or the soul of a violin suddenly out of tune, such are the ills which move me.

When we become attached to things why do we believe that love is in us alone, and afterwards regard it as something external to us? Who can prove that things are incapable of affection, or who can demonstrate their unconsciousness? Was not that sculptor right who was buried holding in his hand a lump of the same clay that had obeyed his dream? Did it not have the devotion of a faithful servant; did it not have a quality which we should admire all the more, because it had the virtue of devoting itself in silence, without selfish interest, and with the passiveness of faith?

Is there not something sublime and radiant in the thing that acts toward man, even as man acts toward God? Does the poet know any more what impulse he obeys, than does the clay? From the moment when they have both proved their inspiration, I believe equally in their consciousness, and I love both with the same love.

The sadness which disengages from things that have fallen into disuse is infinite. In the attic of this house whose inhabitants I did not know, a little girl's dress and her doll lie desolate. And here is an iron-pointed staff which once bit into the earth of the green hills, and a sunbonnet now barely visible in the dim light from the garret-window. They have been abandoned since many years, and I am wholly certain that they would be happy again to enjoy, the one the freshness of the moss, and the other the summer sky.

Things tenderly cared for show their gratitude to us, and are ever ready to offer us their soul when once we have refreshed it. They are like those roses of the desert which expand infinitely when a little water brings back to their memory the azure of lost wells.

In my modest drawing-room there is a child's chair. My father played with it during his passage from Guadeloupe to France when he was seven years old. He remembered distinctly that he sat on it in the ship's saloon, and looked at pictures which the captain lent him. The island wood of which it was made must have been stout for it withstood the games of a little boy. The piece of furniture had drifted into my home, and slept there almost forgotten. Its soul too had been asleep for many long years, because the child who had cherished it was no more, and no other children had come to perch upon it like birds.

But recently the house was made merry by my little niece who was just seven. On my work-table she had found an old book with plates of flowers. When I entered the room I found her sitting on the little chair in the lamplight, looking at the charming pictures, just as once a long time ago her grandfather had done. And I was deeply touched. And I said to myself that this little girl alone had been able to make live again the soul of the chair, and that the gentle soul of the chair had bewitched the candor of the child. There was between her and this object a mysterious affinity. The one could not help but go to the other, and it could be awakened by her alone.

Things are gentle. They never do harm voluntarily. They are the sisters of the spirits. They protect us, and we let our thoughts rest upon them. Our thoughts need them for resting-places as perfumes need the flowers.

The prisoner, whom no human soul can any longer console, must feel tenderly toward his pallet and his earthen jug. When everything has been refused him by his fellows his obscure bed gives him sleep and his jug quenches his thirst. And even if it separates him from all the world without, the very barrenness of his walls stands between him and his executioners. The child who has been punished loves the pillow on which he cries; for when every one of an evening has hurt and scolded him, he finds consolation in the soul of the silent down. It is like a friend who remains silent in order to calm a friend.

But it is not only out of the silence of things that is born their sympathy for us. They have secret harmonies. Sometimes they weep in the forest which Rene fills with his tempestuous soul; and sometimes they sing on the lake where another poet dreams.

* * * * *

There are hours and seasons when certain of these accords are most to the fore, when one hears best the thousand voices of things. Two or three times in my life I have been present at the awakening of this mysterious world. At the end of August toward midnight, when the day has been hot, an indistinct murmur rises about the kneeling villages. It is neither the sound of rivers, nor of springs, nor of the wind, nor of animals cropping the grass, nor of cattle rubbing their chains against the cribs, nor of uneasy watchdogs, nor of birds, nor of the falling of the looms of the weavers. The chords are as sweet to the ear, as the glow of dawn is sweet to the eye. There is stirring a boundless and peaceful world in which the blades of grass lean toward one another till morning, and the dew rustles imperceptibly, and the seeds at each moment's beat raise the whole surface of the plain. It is the soul alone which can apprehend these other souls, this flower-dust joy of the corollas, these calls, and these silences that create the divine Unknown. It is as if one were suddenly transported to a strange country where one is enchanted by langorous words, even though one does not understand very clearly their meaning.

Nevertheless I penetrate more deeply into the meaning whispered by these things than into that hidden in an idiom with which I am unfamiliar. I feel that I understand and that it would not require a very great effort to translate the thought of these obscure souls, and to note in a concrete fashion some of their manifestations. Perhaps poetry sometimes actually does this. It has happened that mentally I have answered this indistinct murmur, just as I have succeeded by my silence in answering distinctly a sweetheart's questions.

But this language of things is not wholly auditory. It is made up of other symbols also, which are faintly traced on our souls. The impression is still too faint, but, perhaps, it will be stronger when we are better prepared to receive God.

It is objects which have been my consolation in the grievous events of my life. At such moments some thing will catch my eye particularly. I who know not how to make my soul bow before men have prostrated it before things. A radiance emanates from them which may be outside the memories that I attach to them, and it is like a thrill of love. I have felt them. I feel them now living around me. They are part of my obscure realm. I feel a responsibility toward them like that of an elder brother. At this instant while I am writing I feel the souls of these divine sisters leaning upon me with love and trust. This chair, this chest of drawers, this pen exist as I do. They touch me, and I feel prostrated before them. I have their faith ... I have their faith, which is beyond all systems, beyond all explanations, beyond all intelligence. They give me a conviction such as no genius could give me. Every system is vain, every explanation erroneous, the moment I feel living in my heart the knowledge of these souls.

When I entered this cobbler's home I knew at once that I was welcome. Without a word I sat down before the hearth near the children and the dog and I opened my soul to the thousand shadowy voices of things.

In this communion the falling of a half charred twig, the grating of the poker with which the fire was stirred, the blow of the hammer, the flickering of the candle, the creak of the dog's collar, the round bulging spot of blackness which was the sleeping blackbird, the singing of the cover of the pot, all combined to form a sacred language easier for me to understand than the speech of most men. These noises and these colors are only the gestures and expressions of objects, just as the voice or the glance are among our means of expression and gesture.

I felt that a brotherhood united me to these humble things, and I knew it was childish to classify the kingdoms of nature when there is but one kingdom of God.

* * * * *

Can we say that things never exhibit to us manifestations of their sympathy? The tool grows rusty when it no longer serves the hand of the workman, even as the workman when he abandons the tool.

I knew an old smith. He was gay in the time of his strength, and the sky entered his dark smithy through the radiant noondays. The joyous anvil answered the hammer. And the hammer was the heart of the anvil beating with the heart of the craftsman. When night fell the smithy was lighted by its single light, the glance of the eyes of the burning coal which flamed under the leather bellows. A divine love united the soul of this man to the soul of these things. And when on the Lord's days the smith retired into pious contemplation, the forge which had been cleaned the night before prayed also in silence.

The smith was my friend. At his dim threshold I often questioned him, and the whole smithy always answered me. The sparks laughed in the coal, and syllables of metal fashioned a mysterious and profound language which moved me like the words of duty. And I experienced there almost the same feelings as in the home of the humble cobbler.

One day the smith fell ill. His breath grew short, and I noticed that now when he pulled the chain of the bellows, formerly so powerful, it also gasped and gradually caught the sickness of its master. The man's heart beat with sudden jumps, and I heard plainly that the hammer struck the iron irregularly as he brandished it above the anvil. And in the same degree as the light in the eyes of the man faded, the flame of the hearth grew dim. In the evenings it wavered more and more, and there were long intervals when the light vanished on the walls and ceiling.

One day while at work the man felt his extremities turn to ice. In the evening he died. I entered the smithy. It was cold as a body deprived of life. One small ember glowed alone under the chimney, humble and watching, like the praying women that I found later beside the death-bed.

Three months later I went into the abandoned workshop to help evaluate his small amount of property. Everything was damp and black as in a vault. The leather of the bellows was filled with holes where it had rotted. When we tried to pull the chain it came loose from the wood. And the simple people who were making the appraisal with me declared:

"This forge and these hammers are worn out. They ended their life with the master."

Then I was moved, because I understood the mysterious meaning of these words.



TO STONES

Brilliant sisters of the torrents that I find on the shore of the Alpine lake: you are the stones loved by the rainbow and the azure cold, on you falls the white salt which is licked up by the lambs, you are mirrors whose light is iridescent as the pigeon's breast, you have more eyes than the peacock, you are crystallized by fire and your veins of snow have become eternal, you have been the companions of primordial cataclysms, you were washed by the sea and then rocked by it until the dove from the ark cooed with love at sight of you....

The gleaming grain of your flesh at times has the blue-veined whiteness of a child's wrist, at times it has the golden coppery hue of the thigh of a heavy and beautiful woman, sometimes it is silvered with mica like a cheek in the sunlight, sometimes it is brown like the complexion of those in whom the dead blondness of tobacco is blended with the gold of the mandarin orange.

You are stones that have been broken by the heart of the torrent, you have been dashed against each other and have been tossed about amid the daphnes of the ravine, you have been whipped by hailstorms and tempest, buried under the avalanche, uncovered by the sun, loosened by the feet of the chamois, you are cold and beautiful but above all else you are pure.

I know little of your sisters of the Indies: either of her whose transparency rivals water gushing from marble, or of her who makes me dream of the clear meadows of my native valley, or of her who is a drop of frozen blood, or of her who resembles the solid sun.

I prefer you to them, even though you are less precious. Sometimes you support the beams of thatched roofs while you gaze at the star-dotted sky, sometimes it is on you that the sheep-dog stretches himself as he mournfully guards his flock.

At the heart of the ether where you rest upon the summits may you continue to receive the nourishment with which your peaceful kingdom is endowed, may the light bathe your cells which are still unrecognized, may buoyant flakes and curves steep them, may they resound to the vibration of the winds, may they receive at last that harmonious manna which stilled the hunger of Mary Magdalene in the grotto.

Around you will bloom your sweethearts, the purest flowers of the world, but they are already less chaste than you for they have a perfume of snow.

* * * * *

Poor gray sisters of the brook that I find on the plain, you are tarnished stones, on you falls the shower of rain that the sparrow may drink, you are struck by the foot of the she-ass, you are the guardians that form the inclosures of miserable gardens, it is you who are the concave threshold and the stone at the edge of the well worn smooth by the chain of the bucket, you are servants, poor things become shiny like the blades of implements of husbandry, you are heated in the hearth of the poor to warm the feet of old women, you are hollowed out for mean needs and become the humble table for the dog and the sow, you are pierced so that the singing harvest may be ground beneath the millstone, you are cut, you are taken, you are tossed aside, on you the wanderer will sleep, Oh, you under whom I shall sleep....

You have not guarded your independence like your alpine companions. But, Oh my friends, I do not despise you for that. You are beautiful like the things which are in the shadow.



NOTES

Then, behold me on my return to this old parlor where I look upon the least object with tenderness. This shawl belonged to my paternal grandmother whom I never knew and who rests amid flowers in a humble cemetery of the Antilles. May the humming-birds glitter and cry above her deserted grave, and the tobacco-plants with their rosy bells delight her memory ... I have never seen the portrait which represents her. But I know she had a reputation for goodness and beauty. I have read admirable letters that she wrote from there to my father when he was a child. He had been brought back to France to be educated here, and had remained here.

How often have I dreamed of reviving this past. How beautiful it would be if God gave us, once a year, the festival of seeing our dear departed return. I love to imagine it as occurring on Twelfth Night during a season of snow. The modest dining-room would be opened at the stroke of eight, and seated about the enlarged table, adorned with Christmas roses, I would find all those for whom my soul mourns beneath the cheery light of the lamps.

It seems to me that this meeting would be entirely natural with little of the uncanny, and not at all like a fairy tale. My paternal grandfather, the doctor of medicine who died at Guadeloupe, would occupy the place of honor, and about his shoulders would be a little traveling cloak on which grains of frost were shining. His steely blue eyes behind the enormous gold-rimmed spectacles, which he wore and which my mother uses to-day, would make him appear as he was, at the same time severe and good. In a grave and melodious voice he would speak of the Great Crossing, of the wind of the Eternal Ocean, of earthquakes in unexplored countries, of shipwrecked men whom he had saved.

And all would listen; and, death being eternal, it would be wonderful to see each one again at the particular age which we with singular obstinacy always attribute to our dear departed.

The cousins from Saint-Pierre-de-la-Martinique, there were four of them I believe, would not be more than eighteen years old, and would be dressed in white muslin gowns. They would laugh at some cake that had not come out right. And my great aunts who were Huguenots, rigid but happy, with long chains of gold about their necks, would interpret the revelations of the Prophets to one another. And five and seventy years would quaver in each of their cracked voices. And my maternal grandsire at nineteen, with the green coat of a romantic student, all....

But the dream fades and the wind weeps.

* * * * *

In moss full of sunshine and transparent as an alga or an emerald, I have covered the roots of these first daisies of January. They and the rare periwinkles and the furze are the only flowers of this season. It is too much love doubtless which fills them. They must be born in spite of the ice. The white little bands of their flower-heads are tinged with violet at the ends, and surround the flowers which are greenish yellow like the under side of an old mushroom. The muddy roots feel the plowed fields. I have been so cruel as to pluck these flowers and now they are wretched; they are as wounded as animals could be; and see how, slowly as if they were moved by a terrible fear, the petals of the flowers curve in to cover and protect the sheathes of the minute corollas that I can no longer see. Tenderly I try to raise these petals, but they resist me and I only succeed in murdering the plant. Fool! Why could I not let these flowers live on the edge of their ditch? There they would have felt the fresh shrivelling of drinking in the sun, a bird would have touched them lightly, the proboscis of the mosquitoes would have sucked up their pollen, and they would have died gently by the side of their friends.

* * * * *

The stars of winter are beautiful when they are dusted on the slate-colored sky, and when in the hazy blue depth they light up the shreds of clouds. I passed through the little town at six o'clock, when the candles behind the window-panes make square shadows move within the shops and shine upon the reddish mud of the pavements. A dog trots by sniffing under the doorways. A wagon whose oxen have slipped makes a grating noise. A lantern flickers, a voice is heard. The angles of the roofs are clear-cut. The rest is consumed by the darkness. Here and there, still, at great distances, a window of smoky rose, and I am at the top of the slope.

At the left an enormous star trembles. It seems to breathe and its rays alternately elongate and withdraw again. Its white fire appears to flow. I look upon the constellations, behind which there are other spaces of constellations, which hide still more constellations, until the glance is lost in luminous embers like those of a hearth.

I am in no wise troubled by these stars. I do not see in them worlds infinitely great or small according to the one with which we compare them. They are in my thoughts, such as I see them: the largest like hummingbirds the smallest like wasps. The space which separates them one from another does not seem any greater than the pace with which I measure the road. It is simply the sky of January above a little town.

* * * * *

A peasant-woman has sold me some mushrooms. They are very rare nowadays. Their odor captures me, and I dream of the edges of the meadows, of the elves who, according to Shakespeare, make the mushrooms grow beneath the spell of the moon. They have been moistened by the melting frost, and fine and long grasses have become attached to their humidity. They bear within them the quivering mist of the nights. The first, they came forth from the earth under their umbels of ivory to find out whether the feet of the hedge were still surrounded by moss. They must have been deceived. They could not have seen the periwinkles or the violets, but only the irritating and fine gray rain in the gray sky.

* * * * *

Often I have visualized Heaven for myself. That of my childhood was the hut an old man had built at the top of a climbing road. This hut was called Paradise. My father brought me there at the hour when the dark mist of the hills became gilded like a church. I expected, at the end of each walk, to find God seated in the sun which seemed to sleep at the summit of the stony pathway. Was I mistaken?

It is less easy for me to imagine the Catholic Paradise: the harps of azure, the rosy snow of legions in the pure rainbows. I still cling to my first vision, but since I have known love I have added to the divine kingdom a warm, sloping lawn in front of the old man's hut. On it a young girl gathers herbs.

* * * * *

I have simultaneously the soul of a faun and the soul of an adolescent. And the emotion which I feel on looking upon a woman is quite contrary to that which I feel on gazing at a young girl. If one could make one's self understood by the aid of fruits and flowers, I would offer to the first burning peaches, the rosy blossoms of the belladonna, heavy roses; to the second, cherries, raspberries, the blossoms of the wild quince, eglantine, and honeysuckle. I find it difficult to have any feeling which is not accompanied by the image of a flower or a fruit. When I think of Martha, I dream of gentians. With Lucy I associate the white anemones of Japan, and with Marie the lilies of Solomon; with another a citron which should be transparent.

To the first meeting that a sweetheart has granted me, I have brought a spray of gladiolus whose throats have the rosy hue of an apricot. We placed them on the window during the night when I forgot them to remember only my love. To-day I would forget my loved one, to recall only the gladiolus.

My memory is therefore, if I may so express it, vegetal. Trees as well as flowers and fruits symbolize for me beings and emotions. Plants as well as animals and stones filled my childhood with a mysterious charm. When I was four years old I remained rapt in contemplation of the broken stones of the mountain, lying in heaps along the roads. When struck they gave forth fire in the twilight. When rubbed against one another they felt the burning heat. I gathered pieces of marble from among them which seemed heavy with a water they had concealed within themselves. The mica of the granite held my curiosity in a way which nothing could satisfy. I felt that there was something that no one could tell me—the life of the stones.

At the same age I was scolded because I carried away the artificial beetles from a hat of my mother. I had the passion of collecting animals, I felt toward them so great a love that I wept if I thought them unhappy. And I still endure a deep anguish when I remember the little nightingales which some one gave me and which pined away in the dining-room. Still at the same age, in order to make me go to sleep, they had to place not far from me a bottle containing a tree-frog. I knew that here was a faithful friend who would protect me against robbers. The first time that I saw a stag-beetle, I was so overcome by the beauty of its horns that the longing to possess one became an actual torment.

The passion for plants did not develop until later, about the age of nine years, and I did not really begin to understand their life until about the age of fifteen. I remember the circumstances under which it happened. It was in summer, one Thursday, on a scorching afternoon. I was passing through the botanical garden of a great city with my mother. A white sun, dense blue shadows, and perfumes so heavy that one could almost feel them cling, made of this half desert spot a kingdom whose portal I crossed at last.

In the tepid and reddish-brown water of the ponds plants vegetated; some were leathery and gray, and others long, soft, and transparent. But from the very heart of these poor and sad algae there rose into the very blue of the sky itself, green lance-like stalks whose rose and white umbels challenged the ardent day with their grace; water-lilies slept on their leaves as in a trustful afternoon sleep.

To the plants of the water, the plants of the earth answered. I recall an alley where students, a handkerchief about the neck, were as if buried beneath the beauty of the leaves. It was the alley of the umbelliferae. The fennel and the ferula raised their crowns upon their stems with glistening sheaths. The perfumes spoke to each other in the silence. And one felt that a silent understanding went from plant to plant, and that over this isolated realm there hovered something like resignation.

Since then I have understood the flowers and that their families belonged together and have a natural affinity, and are not merely divided into classes as an aid to our slow memories. Toward what solution do these geometries in action, which are plants, progress? I do not know. But there is a fascinating mystery in considering that even as species correspond to certain geological periods and thus group their sympathies, even so to-day they group themselves according to the seasons. What correspondence is there between the character of the shivering and snowy liliaceous plants of winter and the purple solanaceous plants of autumn? And then there are still other delightful dispositions which are due far less to the artifice of man than to the consent of certain species to regard others as their friends and not to pine away beside them. How sweet is the village garden where the gleaming lily, like those gods who often visit the humble, lives amid the cabbages, the blue leek, and the scallions, which boil in the black pot of the poor! How I love the peasant gardens at noonday when the mournful blue shadow of the vegetables sleeps in the white squares of granular earth, when the cock calls the silence, and when the buzzard, slanting and wheeling, makes the scuttling hen cluck! There are the flowers of simple loves, the flowers of the young wife who will dry the blue lavender to scent her coarse sheets. And in this garden grows also the flower of the rondel—the humble gilliflower with its simple perfume. There is also the faithful box, each leaf of which is a small mirror of azure, and the hollyhock in which the sweet and pure flame of melancholy corollas burns; they are the flowers of religion vowed to silence and austerity.

And I love also the flora of the meadows: the meadow-sweet swayed by the breezes, rocked by the murmur of the brook. Its perfumed crown is adorned like the water-beetles, more iridescent than the throats of humming-birds.

It is the beloved of the greensward, the bride of the grassy borders.

But it is in the deep recesses of old deserted parks that the plants are most mysterious. There dwell those which we call old flowers, such as the ground-lilac, the belladonna-amaryllis, the crown-imperial. Elsewhere they would die. Here they persist, guarded by the favor of the age-old trees, strange trees, the names of which have disappeared. And these affected and distinguished blossoms raise their swaying heads only when, murmuring across the liquadambars and the maples, the wind moans like Chateaubriand.

* * * * *

The very mournfulness of the little town is pleasing to me; I love its streets of dark shops, the worn thresholds, and the gardens. In the fine season they seem to float against a background of blue mist which is a confusion of hollyhocks, glycins, trellises; or again they seem patchy as the skin of asses, with drying rags above the hedges of battered boxwood. The tanner's brook drifts by with the pale mother-of-pearl of the sky, and reflects sharply the rooftops amid the slimy plants; the mountain torrent, which hollows the rocks, gleams, twines and flows away.

The little place is charming when the grasshopper shrills in the summer's elms and the autumn wind scours it, or when the rains streak it. There is a little public garden that Bernardin de Saint Pierre would have loved; in May the night there is dense, blue, and soft in the chestnut-trees.

For years I have lived here, whence my grandfather and a great uncle departed toward the flower-covered Antilles. They listened to the roaring of the sea; robes of muslin glided upon the verandas, and they died perhaps looking back with regret on these streets, these shops, these thresholds, these gardens, this brook, and this mountain torrent.

When I go to my little farm I say to myself that this is where they once were. They brought their luncheon in a little basket, and one of them carried a guitar. And young girls surely followed swiftly. Song stirred among the damp hedgerows. An unutterable love frightened the birds, the mulberries were green. They kept time as they walked. A young girl's cry stirred the air, a big hat turned the corner of the road, a clear laugh rose from the rain-torn eglantines; then hearts beat when, in the bright dog-days, the black barns softened the clucking of the hens under the scarlet sky of the south.

...This guitar or another I heard in the courtyard of my Huguenot great-aunts, one summer's evening when I was four years old. The courtyard slept in the white twilight, the roofs shed an unimaginable tenderness upon the climbing rosebushes and the bright paving-stones. Some one sitting on a beam was making merry at the expense of my childhood and my white apron. My great uncle sang some melody from the capital. I can see him again, standing upright with his head thrown back. The air trembled softly. At the end of a roulade he made an exaggerated and charming bow.

I bless you, oh humble town where I am not understood, where I shelter my pride, my suffering, and my joy, where I have hardly any other distraction than that of listening to the barking of my old dog and watching the faces of the poor. But I reach the hillside where the prickly furze is spread, and in musing upon my difficulties I am filled with a beneficent gentleness. To-day it is no longer the coarse and disdainful laugh of the public, nor the terrible doubt of everything, which disturbs me. The laugh of my detractors has grown wearied, and I have become indifferent to what I am. Yet I have become grave toward myself and others. It is with an apprehensive joy that I regard the heedlessness of the happy. I have learned what misery may spring from love, what blindness is born of a glance. And it is because of what I have suffered that I would bestow a sad and slow caress on those who have not yet known anything but happiness.

* * * * *

The open door, the blue sky, the watering of the grass and the gilliflowers, and the hyacinths, and a single bird which chirps, and my dogs stretched on the ground and the rosebushes with their thick stems, the verdure of the lilacs, and a clock that is striking, a wasp which flies straight and marks the meadow with the lines of its golden vibration, and stops, hesitates, sets off again, is silent and buzzes....

Hearts and choirs of primroses in the moist, shadowy mosses of the woods; long threads of rose and blue dew floating and swinging and suspended—from what?—in the immaterial morning; tree-frogs with golden eye-lids and white throbbing throats; furze whose perfume of faded peach and rose follows along the roads, already torrid....

Iris, cries of jays, turtledoves, mountains of blue snow which are rocks of azure, green fields laid out in squares, brook rolling a golden pebble in the silence; first foliage of the waters, icy trembling of the body beside the springs when the sun lies burning on your hands....

* * * * *

Slender alders; fiery marshes where toward noonday puffing out their throat, the hoarse gray frogs climb up on the coriaceous plants, while slowly from the deep of the shady and gilded mire rises a bubble....

Dry and twisted vines; swarms of insects from the blossoms of rosy peach-trees, in slanting flight into the azure; pear-trees and roses of Bengal....

* * * * *

Setting of the cherry sun; nocturnal snow of a fruit-tree; green and transparent shadowing of the lanes; summit of little hills at seven o'clock where the trees are like sponges which little by little blend into the severity of the uniform curve which swells and rises sharply.

Starless night; violet night in which the white sandals of a beloved pagan can hardly be distinguished, and dense bristling of slender, dry trees; pallor of a limestone slope, and water in which something casts two long and deep shadows....

Night; fire; lines of shadow blended with shadows of lines; fire; humid thickness of fields; fire; crimsoning and reddening of clouds; poplars; whiteness which must be a village. Water again, water, and shadows of water....

A wagon passes. The lantern lights up only the rear of the horse, all else is night. When I was a child it was this which astonished me—this light which was quenched again. Another wagon...One sees only the rosy bust of a girl. It slips into the night....

* * * * *

I return from a journey. The recollection of a maroon reflection of a boat in the canal, the color of gray fish, makes my memory quiver. I dream of white tulips.

I have returned at night. The croaking of frogs has greeted me from the depths of the damp meadow. My heart, do not burst!... Do not burst like the lilacs of the flower-garden whose fragrance I alone have touched....

Will hope be born again? I am afraid. Is this one more disillusion?

The wasp has hummed. I love none but the violet lilacs, I love none but the blue violets. It is Sunday, and I hear in the depths of my soul the droning of the harmoniums of poor churches.

My life, behold my life, ardent and sad like a flame which burns through too warm a summer night beside the open window. An imperceptible breeze has suddenly swelled out the curtain of muslin like my heart.

* * * * *

In the garden the perfume of the lilacs suddenly make me feel ill because I am horribly sad.

Nevertheless, lilacs, you are dear to me since childhood. Then I thought your clusters were the beautiful polished images of a box of toys.

And you, oh lilacs, have also haunted an orchard which I knew well in my youth. In this orchard there were hedge-hogs. They glided along old beams. How innocent and gentle the hedge-hogs are in spite of their quills! I remember my emotion one winter's evening, when I found one of them at the threshold of the kitchen; it had taken flight from the snow, and was poking its little nose into the refuse left there....

* * * * *

I love the creatures of the night, the screech-owls with their graceful flight, the bats, the badgers, all the timid beasts which glide through the air or in the grass and of which we know so little. What festivals do they hold amid the plants, their sisters?

At the hour when man is at rest, the rabbits, silvered by the dew, bound over the mint of the furrow and hold their conventicles; the frogs croak in the marsh and make it ripple; the glowworms filter their soft and humid yellow light; the mole bores the meadow; the nightingale sobs like a fountain; the owl utters sad laughter as if it too, however timidly, were trying to have a share in the joy of God.

How I would like to be a creature of the night, a hare trembling in a hedge of hawthorn, a badger grazed by the leaves of the juicy green corn. My only care would have been to safeguard my physical being. I would not have loved. I would not have hoped.

THE END