The Cafe de la Paix, August 1, 1914.
Paris and I are out of tune. As I sit at this famous corner the faint
breeze is stale and weary; stale and weary too the faces that swirl
around me; while overhead the electric sign of Somebody's Chocolate
appears and vanishes with irritating insistency. The very trees seem
artificial, gleaming under the arc-lights with a raw virility that rasps
my nerves.
"Poor little trees," I mutter, "growing in all this grime and glare,
your only dryads the loitering ladies with the complexions of such
brilliant certainty, your only Pipes of Pan orchestral echoes from the
clamorous cafes. Exiles of the forest! what know you of full-blossomed
winds, of red-embered sunsets, of the gentle admonition of spring rain!
Life, that would fain be a melody, seems here almost a malady. I crave
for the balm of Nature, the anodyne of solitude, the breath of Mother
Earth. Tell me, O wistful trees, what shall I do?"
Then that stale and weary wind rustles the leaves of the nearest
sycamore, and I am sure it whispers: "Brittany."
So to-morrow I am off, off to the Land of Little Fields.