toward man, even as man acts toward God? Does the poet know any more
what impulse he obeys, than does the clay? From the moment when
they have both proved their inspiration, I believe equally in their
consciousness, and I love both with the same love.

The sadness which disengages from things that have fallen into disuse
is infinite. In the attic of this house whose inhabitants I did not
know, a little girl's dress and her doll lie desolate. And here is an
iron-pointed staff which once bit into the earth of the green
hills, and a sunbonnet now barely visible in the dim light from the
garret-window. They have been abandoned since many years, and I am
wholly certain that they would be happy again to enjoy, the one the
freshness of the moss, and the other the summer sky.

Things tenderly cared for show their gratitude to us, and are ever
ready to offer us their soul when once we have refreshed it. They are
like those roses of the desert which expand infinitely when a little
water brings back to their memory the azure of lost wells.

In my modest drawing-room there is a child's chair. My father played
with it during his passage from Guadeloupe to France when he was
_seven_ years old. He remembered distinctly that he sat on it in the
ship's saloon, and looked at pictures which the captain lent him. The
island wood of which it was made must have been stout for it withstood
the games of a little boy. The piece of furniture had drifted into my
home, and slept there almost forgotten. Its soul too had been asleep
for many long years, because the child who had cherished it was no
more, and no other children had come to perch upon it like birds.

But recently the house was made merry by my little niece who was just