* * * * *

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.