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 fir