"Le Printemps a brûlé cette nuit." The news greeted me when I was
called. It had no special significance, but spread through my
semi-consciousness into meaningless patterns. Then I woke up. "Comme
c'est terrible," I said, "quelle chance que ça s'est fait la nuit!" I
saw visions of leaping flames and angry reds reflected in the sky.
Then I remembered. It was at the Printemps that I had chosen my divine
coat. They had promised faithfully to send it me to-day. The loveliest
coat in the world--"fumée de Londres," the salesman had called it, and
in fact, it was the colour of the purple-grey smoke that ascends in
solid spirals from factory chimneys. There were stripes too of silvery
grey chenil which made a play-ground for lights and shadows. In shape it
was like an old print of a coachman driving a four-in-hand, long with a
flapping cape, and the lining was the colour of the sky when the sun has
set.
I saw my coat giving new life to the dying flames. Tongues of fire were
darting down the lines of silvery grey chenil, greedily eating up the
smoky back-ground. Finally, a mass of ashes--purple-grey like their
victim--was carried by the wind into the unknown. All day long my coat
became more and more beautiful. The texture was solid smoke and the
stripes were shafts of moonlight. How it shimmered through the mirage of
my regrets.
When I got home that afternoon I found a cardboard box. The inspector of
the Printemps, knowing that I was leaving for England, had brought me a
coat from the reserve stock which was not kept in the shop. Infinitely
touched, my heart overflowing with gratitude, I wrote a love letter to
the Printemps.
Then I looked at my coat. The silvery stripes turned out to be black and
white, giving a grey effect. The texture of the back-ground was not
purple smoke, but rather scratchy wool. Evidently it was no longer the
coat of my sad dreams. In becoming once more "la création" of the
Printemps it had ceased to be the creation of my imagination.
Resurrection is a dangerous thing.
My coat which was once a legend is a reality again. It has travelled
from fairy-land to life. Now it is a symbol. Isn't this the story of the
Life of Christ?