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.