This dim freshness of my room was to the broad daylight of the street what
the shadow is to the sunbeam, that is to say, equally luminous, and
presented to my imagination the entire panorama of summer, which my
senses, if I had been out walking, could have tasted and enjoyed in
fragments only; and so was quite in harmony with my state of repose, which
(thanks to the adventures related in my books, which had just excited it)
bore, like a hand reposing motionless in a stream of running water, the
shock and animation of a torrent of activity and life.
But my grandmother, even if the weather, after growing too hot, had
broken, and a storm, or just a shower, had burst over us, would come up
and beg me to go outside. And as I did not wish to leave off my book, I
would go on with it in the garden, under the chestnut-tree, in a little
sentry-box of canvas and matting, in the farthest recesses of which I used
to sit and feel that I was hidden from the eyes of anyone who might be
coming to call upon the family.
And then my thoughts, did not they form a similar sort of hiding-hole, in
the depths of which I felt that I could bury myself and remain invisible
even when I was looking at what went on outside? When I saw any external
object, my consciousness that I was seeing it would remain between me and
it, enclosing it in a slender, incorporeal outline which prevented me from
ever coming directly in contact with the material form; for it would
volatilise itself in some way before I could touch it, just as an
incandescent body which is moved towards something wet never actually
touches moisture, since it is always preceded, itself, by a zone of
evaporation.
Pages:
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159