* * * * *
In imagination I have descended the Champs Elysees, and have crossed
the Place de la Concorde, and the Seine is flowing past just as it
flowed when the workmen were building Notre Dame, just as it will flow
a thousand years hence. A thousand years hence men will stand watching
its current, thinking of little blonde women, and the shudder they can
send through the flesh; they can, but not twenty years afterwards. The
Reverend Donne has it that certain ghosts do not raise the hair but
the flesh; mine do no more than to set me thinking that rivers were
not created to bear ships to the sea, but to set our memories flowing.
Full many a time have I crossed the Pont Neuf on my way to see another
woman--an American! The time comes when desire wilts and dies, but the
sexual interest never dies, and we take pleasure in thinking in middle
life of those we enjoyed in youth. She, of whom I am thinking, lives
far away in the Latin Quarter, in an ill-paven street. How it used to
throw my carriage from side to side! I have been there so often that I
know all the shops, and where the shops end, and there is a
whitewashed wall opposite her house; the street bends there. The
_concierge_ is the same, a little thicker, a little heavier; she
always used to have a baby in her arms, now there are no more babies;
her children, I suppose, have grown up and have gone away.
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