To make an inventory of the books we have consulted would be a torture worse than that of Tantalus, for desire, far from looking forward with eagerness, would look sadly back, like an old man who sees again in memory the women of his twentieth year, whom he has let fly under the willows without profiting in their pursuit by the vigour of his legs.
These books—which we serve not up here—are full of documents which we have not been able to enshrine, and it seems that the crumbs which fall from the table make a larger volume than the repast which has just been taken.
For the rest, a truce to sadness and superfluous regrets! Who knows whether we are not odiously unjust to ourselves? Who knows whether the little schoolboy path which we have chosen is not the prettiest, the least rugged, the most unforeseen—that is to say, the least painful and the most verdant, and at the same time the shortest?
Every work, however small it may be, requires distance, a time of calm and oblivion. The eye of the painter wanders in distress before one and the same picture for entire days; the brain of an investigator becomes anchylosed and petrified by dreaming in one and the same atmosphere of small ideas which remain attached to dress.
When we shall have unfurnished our skull of those delicate things, the Sunshade, Glove, and Muff, to carry thither a current of more serious conceptions, we shall perhaps have leisure to read again our little work as strangers, and not as producers, and thus, doubtless, we shall reflect with a satisfied smile, that there was much more in us of wisdom than carelessness in not tarrying too long amongst such charming trifles!
LONDON,
14, King William Street, Strand, W.C.
May 1883.