In the thirteenth he is little and wolfish and vile—and strong. I fall in love with him.
In the fourteenth he is calm and confident and intellectual—and strong. I fall in love with him.
In the fifteenth he is vacillating and fretful and his mouth is like a woman’s—and still he is strong. I fall in love with him.
In the sixteenth he is slow and heavy and brutal—and strong. I fall in love with him.
In the seventeenth he is rather tender—and strong. I fall vividly in love with him.
Napoleon was rather like the Devil, I think as I sit in the straight-backed chair with my feet on the bureau and gaze long and intently at the seventeen pictures, late in the evening.
Then I wearily put them away, maddened with the sense of Nothingness, and take Little Fido and go to bed.
Sometimes, early in the evening just before dinner, I sit in the stiff-backed chair with my elbows on the window-sill and my head resting on one hand, and I look out of the window at a Pile of Stones and a Barrel of Lime. These are in the vacant lot next to this house.
I fix my eyes intently on the Pile of Stones and the Barrel of Lime. And I fix my thoughts on them also. And some of my widest thoughts come to me then.
I feel an overwhelming wave of a kind of pantheism which, at the moment I feel it, begins slowly to grow less and less and continues in this until finally it dwindles to a Pile of Stones and a Barrel of Lime.