"Shakespeare has been dead three centuries, and the haunts of Macbeth are now treeless and a waste of factories. In Spain Don Quixote has been succeeded by a horde of commercial travellers from here. In Italy Carducci is a kind of half-witted Hugo. Like Switzerland, your romantic countries are now the hunting-grounds of tourists. There are turnstiles at the bottom of all your peaks.
"Suarès, whose book you lent me, felt all this, and surpasses himself when speaking of our Dostoevsky. He ought to come, if only for a short time, to our gorges of Dariel. I am quite sure he would prefer them to those of the Ebro and Douro, of which you see pictures in every station.
"There is no doubt that Madame de Noailles is your greatest poet. But why insist on calling her Greek! She is no more Greek than the Ariadne of the Indian Dionysus or the Circassian Medea. All that is best in her she owes to Armenia and Persia, our countries. Greek indeed! How silly they are! Haven't you ever seen her? I once lunched with her at Evian. I can tell you I took a great fancy to her. She's lovely and malicious, but honestly she is not Greek at all. At home we have a species of bird that you call jackdaw. It is very wild, flies high and has a vicious peck. Its plumage is blue and black, and it is strong, though slight. Your Madame de Noailles is a Tartar jackdaw, not a fat, lazy Greek dove."
"What about this?" I said, holding up Renée Vivian's volume of verse.
She kissed the book. "My words are too clumsy for her," she replied. "I adore her."
I was almost drank with joy to hear the woman whom I admired to the point of idolatry speak of things dearest to my heart in a setting which satisfied my exotic tastes. I told her so in a few simple words—as one always should.
I think she was touched, for she laid her hand on my shoulder and murmured, I have forgotten in what language:
"Thou art kind and I love thee well, my comrade."
Turning to Melusine, she repeated the Russian phrase of the previous evening:
"No, indeed, it's no good my relying on for my admission to the Kirchhaus."