zling than a
window lighted by a candle. What one can see in the sunlight is always
less interesting than what takes place behind a blind. In that dark or
luminous hole life lives, dreams, suffers.

Over the sea of roofs I see a woman, mature, already wrinkled, always
bent over something, never going out. From her clothes, her movement,
from almost nothing, I have reconstructed the history of this woman, or
rather her legend, and sometimes I tell it over to myself in tears.

If it had been a poor old man I could have reconstructed his story as
easily.

And I go to bed, proud of having lived and suffered in lives not my own.

Perhaps you may say, "Are you sure that this story is the true one?"
What difference does it make what is the reality outside of me, if it
has helped me to live, to know who I am and what I am?

DRINK

One should be always drunk. That is all, the whole question. In order
not to feel the horrible burden of Time, which is breaking your
shoulders and bearing you to earth, you must be drunk without cease.

But drunk on what? On wine, poetry, or virtue, as you choose. But get
drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass of a
moat, in the dull solitude of your chamber, you awake with your
intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, the wave, the
star, the clock, of everything that flies, sobs, rolls, sings, talks,
what is the hour? and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock
will answer, "It is the hour to get drunk!" Not to be the martyred slave
of Time, get drunk; get drunk unceasingly. Wine, poetry, or virtue, as
you choose.

FROM A JOURNAL

I swear to myself henceforth to adopt the following rules as the
everlasting rules of my life.... To pray every morning to God, the
Fountain of all strength and of all justice; to my father, to Mariette,
and to Poe. To pray to them to give me necessary strength to accomplish
all my tasks, and to grant my mother a life long enough to enjoy my
reformation. To work all day, or at least as long as my strength lasts.
To trust to God--that is to say, to Justice itself--for the success of
my projects. To pray again every evening to God to ask Him for life and
strength, for my mother and myself. To divide all my earnings into four
parts--one for my daily expenses, one for my creditors, one for my
friends, and one for my mother. To keep to principles of strict
sobriety, and to banish all and every stimulant.