From
this window they look like shrubs, and beyond the houses that surround
these gardens Paris spreads out over the plain, an endless tide of
bricks and stone, splashed with white when the sun shines on some
railway station or great boulevard: a dim reddish mass, like a
gigantic brickfield, and far away a line of hills, and above the plain
a sky as pale and faint as the blue ash of a cigarette.
I can never look upon this city without strong emotion; it has been
all my life to me. I came here in my youth, I relinquished myself to
Paris, never extending once my adventure beyond Bas Meudon, Ville
d'Avray, Fontainebleau--and Paris has made me. How much of my mind do
I owe to Paris? And by thus acquiring a fatherland more ideal than the
one birth had arrogantly imposed, because deliberately chosen, I have
doubled my span of life. Do I not exist in two countries? Have I not
furnished myself with two sets of thoughts and sensations? Ah! the
delicate delight of owning _un pays ami_--a country where you may
go when you are weary to madness of the routine of life, sure of
finding there all the sensations of home, plus those of irresponsible
caprice. The pleasure of a literature that is yours without being
wholly your own, a literature that is like an exquisite mistress, in
whom you find consolation for all the commonplaces of life! The
comparison is perfect, for although I know these French folk better
than all else in the world, they must ever remain my pleasure, and not
my work in life.
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