She would make me tell her, too, all about the poems that I
meant to compose. And these dreams reminded me that, since I wished, some
day, to become a writer, it was high time to decide what sort of books I
was going to write. But as soon as I asked myself the question, and tried
to discover some subjects to which I could impart a philosophical
significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a clock, I would
see before me vacuity, nothing, would feel either that I was wholly devoid
of talent, or that, perhaps, a malady of the brain was hindering its
development. Sometimes I would depend upon my father's arranging
everything for me. He was so powerful, in such favour with the people who
'really counted,' that he made it possible for us to transgress laws which
Francoise had taught me to regard as more ineluctable than the laws of
life and death, as when we were allowed to postpone for a year the
compulsory repainting of the walls of our house, alone among all the
houses in that part of Paris, or when he obtained permission from the
Minister for Mme. Sazerat's son, who had been ordered to some
watering-place, to take his degree two months before the proper time,
among the candidates whose surnames began with 'A,' instead of having to
wait his turn as an 'S.
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