o
think about, and that recalled a heap of things to my mind. They are
not those beloved articles of furniture which we have known since our
childhood and to which are attached recollections of events of joys or
sorrows, dates in our history, which, from the fact of being
intermingled with our lives, have assumed a kind of personality, a
physiognomy, which are the companions of our pleasant or gloomy house,
the only companions, alas! that we are sure not to lose, the only ones
that will not die, like the others--those whose features, whose loving
eyes, whose lips, whose voices, have vanished for ever. But I find
instead among the medley of worn-out gewgaws those little old
insignificant objects which have hung on by our side for forty years
without ever having been noticed by us, and which, when we suddenly
lay eyes on them again, have somehow the importance, the significance
of relics of the past. They produce on my mind the effect of those
people--whom we have known for a very long time without ever having
seen them as they really are, and who, all of a sudden, some evening,
quite unexpectedly, break out into a stream of interminable talk, and
tell us all about themselves down to their most hidden secrets, of
which we had never even suspected the existence.

And I move about from one object to the other with a little thrill in
my heart every time something fixes my attention. I say to myself:
"See there! I broke that the night Paul started for Lyons;" or else,
"Ah! there is mamma's little lantern, which she used to carry with
her going to her evening devotions on dark winter nights." There are
even things in this room which have no story to tell me, which have
come down from my grandparents, things therefore, whose history and
adventures are utterly unknown to those who are living to-day, and
whose very owners nobody knows now. Nobody has seen the hands that
used to touch them or the eyes that used to gaze at them. These are
the things that make me have long, long dreams. They represent to my
mind desolate people whose last remaining friend is dead. You, my dear
Colette, can scarcely comprehend all this, and you will smile at my
simplicity, my childish, sentimental whims. You are a Parisian, and
you Parisians do not understand this interior life, those eternal
echoes of one's own heart. You live in the outer world, with all your
thoughts in the open. Living alone as I do, I can only speak about
myself. When you are a