the Printemps.

Then I looked at my coat. The silvery stripes turned out to be black and
white, giving a grey effect. The texture of the back-ground was not
purple smoke, but rather scratchy wool. Evidently it was no longer the
coat of my sad dreams. In becoming once more "la création" of the
Printemps it had ceased to be the creation of my imagination.
Resurrection is a dangerous thing.

My coat which was once a legend is a reality again. It has travelled
from fairy-land to life. Now it is a symbol. Isn't this the story of the
Life of Christ?


II: BALLOONS

All my life I have loved balloons--all balloons--the heavy English sort,
immense and round, that have to be pushed about, and the gay, light,
gas-filled French ones that soar into the air the moment you let go of
them. How well I remember when I was little, the colossal effort of
blowing up the dark red, floppy India rubber until it got brighter and
brighter and more and more transparent, though it always stayed opaque
enough to hold the promise of still greater bigness. And then the
crucial moment when ambition demanded an extra puff and a catastrophe
became ever more imminent.

And now, when I suddenly see a huge bunch of wonderful bloated tropical
grapes, overpowering some old woman in the street, I feel so happy! In
Paris, of course, they are quite different--balloons have much too much
flavour to be international--they are smaller and lighter in colour and