The Garden of the Luxembourg,
Late July 1914.
When on some scintillating summer morning I leap lightly up to the
seclusion of my garret, I often think of those lines: "In the brave days
when I was twenty-one."
True, I have no loving, kind Lisette to pin her petticoat across the
pane, yet I do live in hope. Am I not in Bohemia the Magical, Bohemia
of Murger, of de Musset, of Verlaine? Shades of Mimi Pinson, of Trilby,
of all that immortal line of laughterful grisettes, do not tell me that
the days of love and fun are forever at an end!
Yes, youth is golden, but what of age? Shall it too not testify to the
rhapsody of existence? Let the years between be those of struggle, of
sufferance--of disillusion if you will; but let youth and age affirm
the ecstasy of being. Let us look forward all to a serene sunset, and
in the still skies "a late lark singing".
This thought comes to me as, sitting on a bench near the band-stand, I
see an old savant who talks to all the children. His clean-shaven face
is alive with kindliness; under his tall silk hat his white hair falls
to his shoulders. He wears a long black cape over a black frock-coat,
very neat linen, and a flowing tie of black silk. I call him "Silvester
Bonnard". As I look at him I truly think the best of life are the years
between sixty and seventy.