The regret that I felt for
this, while I lingered alone to dream for a little by myself, made me
suffer so acutely that, in order not to feel it, my mind of its own
accord, by a sort of inhibition in the instant of pain, ceased entirely to
think of verse-making, of fiction, of the poetic future on which my want
of talent precluded me from counting. Then, quite apart from all those
literary preoccupations, and without definite attachment to anything,
suddenly a roof, a gleam of sunlight reflected from a stone, the smell of
a road would make me stop still, to enjoy the special pleasure that each
of them gave me, and also because they appeared to be concealing, beneath
what my eyes could see, something which they invited me to approach and
seize from them, but which, despite all my efforts, I never managed to
discover. As I felt that the mysterious object was to be found in them, I
would stand there in front of them, motionless, gazing, breathing,
endeavouring to penetrate with my mind beyond the thing seen or smelt. And
if I had then to hasten after my grandfather, to proceed on my way, I
would still seek to recover my sense of them by closing my eyes; I would
concentrate upon recalling exactly the line of the roof, the colour of the
stone, which, without my being able to understand why, had seemed to me to
be teeming, ready to open, to yield up to me the secret treasure of which
they were themselves no more than the outer coverings.
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