blouses loose to the breeze, have become so weatherbeaten by the
wind, the rain, the frost, the snow, the fog, and the great sun,
that they end by looking very much like the old statues of
cathedrals. They are all friends of mine, and I scarcely ever
pass by their boxes without picking out of one of them some old book
which I had always been in need of up to that very moment, without
any suspicion of the fact on my part.

Then on my return home I have to endure the outcries of my
housekeeper, who accuses me of bursting all my pockets and filling
the house with waste paper to attract the rats. Therese is wise
about that, and it is because she is wise that I do not listen to
her; for in spite of my tranquil mien, I have always preferred the
folly of the passions to the wisdom of indifference. But just
because my own passions are not of that sort which burst out with
violence to devastate and kill, the common mind is not aware of
their existence. Nevertheless, I am greatly moved by them at times,
and it has more than once been my fate to lose my sleep for the
sake of a few pages written by some forgotten monk or printed by
some humble apprentice of Peter Schaeffer. And if these fierce
enthusiasms are slowly being quenched in me, it is only because
I am being slowly quenched myself. Our passions are ourselves.
My old books are Me. I am just as old and thumb-worn as they are.

A light breeze sweeps away, along with the dust of the pavements,
the winged seeds of the plane trees, and the fragments of hay
dropped from the mouths of the horses. The dust is nothing remarkable
in itself; but as I watch it flying, I remember a moment in my
childhood when I watched just such a swirl of dust; and my old
Parisian soul is much affected by that sudden recollection. All