December 5th.
I was reading an essay on Balzac to-day. I read about Balzac's fondness for things; and I put the book down and spent an hour of perplexity. I fear I am a very narrow person in my sympathies and understandings. Why should a man care about things! About all sorts of houses and furniture, and pictures, and clothes, and jewels!
I can understand a man's caring about love and joy and aspiration. But things! I can understand a child's caring about things, or a fool's caring; I see millions of such; but an artist? A thinker? A man?
I am reading novels nowadays—reading all sorts of things that entertain. I have not read a poem for a long time, I have no interest in reading unless I can go with it.
I have been studying some of the French novelists—some of Maupassant yesterday. What a strange creature is a Frenchman! A nervous, hysterical, vain, diseased creature!
“The Gallic disease!” Let that be a phrase.
The Gallic disease is this: to see only one thing in life, to know only one purpose, to understand only one pleasure; to have every road lead to that, every thought, every phrase. To know that every character in a book is thinking it; to know that every man who is introduced is looking for a woman! And that as soon as he finds her, they must forthwith—whatever be their age, rank, character, and position at the moment—begin to burn with unclean desires!