He who looks in through an open window never sees so many
things as he who looks at a shut window. There is nothing more
profound, more mysterious, more fertile, more gloomy, or more
dazzling, than a window lighted by a candle. What we can see
in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on
behind the panes of a window. In that dark or luminous hollow,
life lives, life dreams, life suffers.
Across the waves of roofs, I can see a woman of middle age,
wrinkled, poor, who is always leaning over something, and who
never goes out. Out of her face, out of her dress, out of her
attitude, out of nothing almost, I have made up the woman's
story, and sometimes I say it over to myself with tears.
If it had been a poor old man, I could have made up his just as
easily.
And I go to bed, proud of having lived and suffered in others.
Perhaps you will say to me: "Are you sure that it is the real
story?" What does it matter, what does any reality outside of
myself matter, if it has helped me to live, to feel that I am,
and what I am?