7 
mirror a bouquet was fading. The vertical river of the shops 
had carried away neither the bits of chaff nor the bits of dream. 
So thereafter I decided to put my joy and my grief some 
where else rather than in myself, but such was my folly that on 
the sad road, from each creature I met, I asked not just amuse 
ment, nor some exaltation, which I might have touched, thanks 
to past loves, but—the absolute. 
With difficulty could I find from time to time again, that 
little pack of bones, of revelling papillas, of confused ideas and 
of clear feelings, that bore my name. 
What a fine mirror is a stranger’s eyes! 
Well, one day what I saw in transparence and in my eyes this 
time, was their eyes, the eyes of the others. 
Then how could it be that I should not long for the minute 
when free from all thought, I could be rid of the very memory? 
Thus, toiling by day and playing by night. 
Alas! mosaic of pretense that could not hold, the acts of my 
daily life separated showing the original illness. 
And there were painful surprises in this work and these 
fetes. 
A singer, when intricate drinks, a good victrola, and a few 
scattered desires, through two salons, began to put some magic 
into a most banal assembly, asking me what I think of her reper 
toire and I myself excited by a cocktail and two eyes beautiful 
enough for me to want to seduce the body to which they belong, 
I answering her that she is worth more than her art, anxious 
to justify herself in an explanation of her career, and for that 
searching out reasons but without succeeding in redeeming her 
songs at the end of her wits declares: Yes, I know the little 
value of my songs, the little value of all that are here, all those 
we must see, but . . . She did not finish. She has just experi 
enced, made me experience that activity which does not endow 
man with a lasting oblivion, does not console him as much as 
some commanding and sufficient sensation as, for example, the 
sensation of grandeur or truth. 
This singer and I—very wise, refuse to underestimate our 
selves, above all when we confess. 
So she, in spite of the will of the eyes, in spite of the wrinkles 
of fear all over her face, where the failure of the make-up 
exposes the most secret decompositions, her hands like sick 
flowers on her chest of velvet already undermined by lassitude, 
her body rebelling against the shock that the spirit commands, 
very slowly, with the gravity of one who offers to the court his 
last plea, asserts: I go to everything by modest roads. 
And I, touched by these mere words, I would like to kneel, 
to kiss her footsteps.