“No, it’s not zat. I just want to pretend it’s leetle bébé.”
“So she holds it close to her breast, and ever since then she will not sleep unless she is holding what she calls ‘her poupée.’”
CHAPTER IV
THE CITY OF LAUGHTER
The last few weeks have passed so swiftly I scarce can credit it. In the mornings my vitalising walks; in the afternoons my lapidary work in prose. I have begun a series of articles on Paris, and have just finished the first two, bestowing on them a world of loving care. Never have I known such a steady glow of inspiration. A pure delight in form and colour thrills in me. I begin to see beauty in the commonest things, to find a joy in the simplest moments of living.
It is rather curious, this. For instance, I gaze in rapture at a shop where vegetables are for sale, charmed with its oasis of fresh colouring in the grey street, the globular gold of turnips, the rich ruby of radishes, the ivory white of parsnips. Then a fish shop charms me, and I turn from the burning orange of the dories to the olive and pearl of the merlin; from the jewelled mail of the mackerel, to the silver cuirass of the herring. And every day seems fresh to me. I hail it with a newborn joy. I seem to have regained all the wonder and vital interest of the child point of view. In my work, especially, do I find such a delight that I shall be sorry to die chiefly because it will end my labour. “So much to do,” I sigh, “and only one little lifetime to do it in.”
Then there are long, serene evenings by the fire, where I ponder over my prose, while Anastasia sits absorbed in her work. What a passion she has for her needle! She plies it as an artist, delighting in difficulties, in intricate lacework, in elaborate embroidery. In little squares of fine net she works scenes from Fontaine; or else over a great frame on which a sheet of satin is tightly stretched, she makes wonderful designs in silks of delicate colouring. At such times she will forget everything else, and sit for hours tranquilly happy. So I write and dream; while she plies that exquisite needle, and perhaps dreams too.
“Oh, how good it is to be poor!” I said last night. “What a new interest life takes on when one has to fight for one’s bread! How much better to have nothing and want everything, than to have everything and want nothing! Just think, Little Thing, how pleased we are at the end of the week if we’ve spent five francs less than we thought! Here’s a month gone now and I’ve done four articles and a story, and we still have three hundred francs left.”
“When it will be that you will send them to the journals?”
“Oh, no hurry, I want to stack up a dozen, and then I’ll start shooting them in.”
“We have saved four francs and half last week.”