To have described divinely a Christmas party is something, but it is not everything.  The disengaging of the erotic motive is everything, is the only touchstone.  If while that is being done we are soothed into a trance, a nebulous delirium of the nerves, then we know the novelist to be a supreme novelist.  If we retain consciousness, he is not supreme, and to be less than supreme in art is to not exist....  Dickens disengages the erotic motive through two figures, Mr. Winkle, a sportman, and Miss Arabella, “a young lady with fur-topped boots.”  They go skating, he helps her over a stile.  Can one not well see her?  She steps over the stile and her shin defines itself through her balbriggan stocking.  She is a knock-kneed girl, and she looks at Mr. Winkle with that sensual regard that sometimes comes when the wind is north-west.  Yes, it is a north-west wind that is blowing over this landscape that Hals or Winchoven might have painted—­no, Winchoven would have fumbled it with rose-madder, but Hals would have done it well.  Hals would have approved—­would he not?—­the pollard aspens, these pollard aspens deciduous and wistful, which the rime makes glistening.  That field, how well ploughed it is, and are they not like petticoats, those clouds low-hanging?  Yes, Hals would have stated them well, but only Manet could have stated the slope of the thighs of the girl—­how does she call herself?—­Arabella—­it is a so hard name to remember—­as she steps across the stile.  Manet would have found pleasure in her cheeks also.  They are a little chapped with the north-west wind that makes the pollard aspens to quiver.  How adorable a thing it is, a girl’s nose that the north-west wind renders red!  We may tire of it sometimes, because we sometimes tire of all things, but Winkle does not know this.  Is Arabella his mistress?  If she is not, she has been, or at any rate she will be.  How full she is of temperament, is she not?  Her shoulder-blades seem a little carelessly modelled, but how good they are in intention!  How well placed that smut on her left cheek!

Strange thoughts of her surge up vaguely in me as I watch her—­thoughts that I cannot express in English....  Elle est plus vieille que les roches entre lesquelles elle s’est assise; comme le vampire elle a ete frequemment morte, et a appris les secrets du tombeau; et s’est plongee dans des mers profondes, et conserve autour d’elle leur jour ruine; et, comme Lede, etait mere d’Helene de Troie, et, comme Sainte-Anne, mere de Maria; et tout cela n’a ete pour elle que....  I desist, for not through French can be expressed the thoughts that surge in me.  French is a stale language.  So are all the European languages, one can say in them nothing fresh....  The stalest of them all is Erse....

Deep down in my heart a sudden voice whispers me that there is only one land wherein art may reveal herself once more.  Of what avail to await her anywhere else than in Mexico?  Only there can the apocalypse happen.  I will take a ticket for Mexico, I will buy a Mexican grammar, I will be a Mexican....  On a hillside, or beside some grey pool, gazing out across those plains poor and arid, I will await the first pale showings of the new dawn....