October 1922

Important. When we can begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves. What Shestov calls * a touch of easy familiarity and derision ' has its value. What will happen to Anatole France and his charm- ing smile? Doesn't it disguise a lack of feeling, like M.'s weariness? Life should be like a steady, visible light. What remains of all those years together? It is difficult to say. If they were so important, how could they have come to nothing. Who gave up and why? Haven't I been saying, all along, that the fault lies in trying to cure the body and paying no heed what- ever to the sick psyche? G. claims to do just what I have always dreamed might be done. The sound of a street pipe, hundreds and hundreds of years old.

The Luxembourg Gardens. A very small railway train came along, with a wooden whistle. First it stopped, blew the whistle, and then moved slowly forward with a wonderfully expressive motion of the right arm. People mattered not at all. It went through them, past them ; skirted them. Then down it fell, full length. But two gentlemen picked it up, patted its be- hind, and in a minute it whistled (rather longer than usual) and started off again. . . . A little bird-like mother with a baby in her arm, and tugging at one hand a minute little girl in a coat made out of a pleated skirt, and a pink bow — it looked like pink flannel — on her clubbed hair. A very rich child in a white beaver hat passed and fell quite in love with the pink flannel bow. When its nurse was not looking it hung back and walked beside its little poor sister, looking at her wonderingly and very carefully keeping step. A little person in a pink hat passed, very carefully dragging a minute doll's pram. It was so minute she had to drag it on a thread of cotton. Naturally, once she stopped looking and her hand gave a jerk, down fell the pram. For about two minutes she dragged it along on its side. Then she discovered the accident, rushed back, set it up, and looked round very angrily in all directions : certain some enemy had knocked it over on purpose. Her little dark direct gaze was quite frightening. Did she see some one? And then suddenly the wind lifts, and all the leaves, leaves fly forward so gladly, so eagerly, as if they were thankful it is not their turn yet to . . .