28 
RECEPTION 
(Recollection) 
T HERE IS no true language other than that of the heart. 
It is not another speech I envy, not some other than that 
which was given me, which I perceive is in myself, and 
in which I seek to aquit myself fittingly at all times. It 
is so little distorted by impurity, that surely you will not 
refuse me your welcome. I ask you to receive me and ask it 
without pride and without humility. Will it be permitted me 
to come close to you? I have come to you with no clever artifices 
nor fine gestures. I have come to you only with what belongs 
to me, that which is myself, and I know it is very slight, and 
you may well laugh at such unpretentious baggage. And yet I 
attempt the path that leads directly to you. 
You must not think me too forward. I have no desire to be 
seductive and certainly none to educate. There are enough 
others to do that without me. Their role is excellent—although 
I desire none of it. It is not pride, I feel, it is by no means pride 
which directs my words, so much as the need of an indulgent 
presence. I am in need of you. I am writing you what I should 
never dare to say to you. 
And perhaps after I have written it I shall be full of remorse 
and confusion. But for this once I am letting myself be guided 
by my weakness and by heaven knows what persistent hope of 
assuagement, of gentle warmth and human joy. I come toward 
you only as a man, and not one of the strongest, and very likely 
one of the most uncertain of men. 
I should like you to receive me as the peasants do the people 
who knock at their door. What freshness in this dwelling place! 
The pump drips; the hornets are asleep on the ceiling.—“Would 
you mind giving me a glass of water? Outside the place is broil 
ing like a Christmas turkey.—A glass of water? why, we are well 
enough off to give you a glass of wine.” 
Yes, I should like to move you by these country scenes. They 
encourage me, and perhaps they may not displease you either. I 
wish you the same fortune among the groups that form in the 
summer evenings before the houses which are dead from heat. 
And then the air is become so pure that as it glides past your 
curtains it seems to come to appease you.—Let us go out, you 
say; and you drag your chairs out in front of the door. In the 
gathering night the leaves spread themselves and sigh feebly.