I have never felt more than I did that day the infinite joy of listening.
During a silence, Mlle. Hocquigny turned to the marshal and said: “Are you not of the opinion that our young friend ought to enter the Comédie Française?”
“Ah, no, no!” I exclaimed, “I am so happy at the Odéon. I began at the Comédie and the short time I stayed there I was so unhappy.”
“You will be obliged to go back there, my dear friend—obliged! Believe me, it will be better early than late.”
“Well, do not spoil to-day’s pleasure for me, for I have never been happier!”
One morning after this my maid brought me a letter. The large round stamp, on which the words “Comédie Française” are to be read, was on the corner of the envelope.
I remembered that just ten years ago that very day, our old servant Marguerite had, without my mother’s permission, handed me a letter in the same kind of envelope. My face then had flushed with joy, but this time I felt a faint tinge of pallor touch my cheeks. When events occur which disturb my life, I always have a movement of recoil toward the past. I cling for a second to what is, and then I fling myself headlong into what is to be. It is like a gymnast who clings first to his trapeze bar in order to fling himself afterwards with full force into space. In one second the “now” becomes for me the “has been,” and I love it with tender emotion as something dead. But I adore what is to be without seeking even to know about it, for what is to be is the unknown, the mysterious attraction. I always fancy that it will be something unheard of, and I shudder from head to foot in delicious uneasiness.
I receive quantities of letters, and it seems to me that I never receive enough. I watch them accumulating just as I watch the waves of the sea. What are they going to bring me, these mysterious envelopes, large, small, pink, blue, yellow, white? What are they going to fling upon the rock, these great wild waves, dark with seaweed? What sailor-boy’s corpse? What remains of a wreck? What are these little brisk waves going to leave on the beach, these reflections of a blue sky, little laughing waves? What pink “seastar”? What mauve anemone? What pearly shell?
So I never open my letters immediately. I look at the envelopes, try to recognize the handwriting, the seal, and it is only when I am quite certain from whom the letter comes that I open it. The others I leave my secretary to open or a kind friend, Suzanne Leylor. My friends know this so well that they always put their initials in the corner of their envelopes. At that time, I had no secretary, but my petite dame served me as such. I looked at the envelope a long time and gave it at last to Mme. Guérard.
“It is a letter from M. Perrin, director of the ‘Comédie Française,’” she said. “He asks if you can fix a time to see him on Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon at the ‘Comédie Française,’ or at your own house.”