There is a fall of days as there is a I fall of leaves. I do not know
what wind, blowing from the infinite, shakes the years, and sends
falling from them one by one the sere and yellow days. Whither do they
go? Whither go the sere and yellow leaves? To the great laboratory,
no doubt, where Nature fashions her annual resurrections. They will
return to us from this laboratory as green as ever, and everlastingly
the same in their unchangeable designs, those of the poplar, which are
hearts, the chestnut, which are hands, the aspen, which are tridents,
and the willow leaves, which are lances. But what becomes of days when
they have fallen, sere and yellow? To what remote, unknown, chimerical
worlds are they carried off forever? For they are never seen again.
New days come,--the foliage of the years,--unheralded days, unexpected
days, surprising days, days that one loves and days that one fears; but
the olden days, those which were familiar to us, those that we desire,
that we wait for, will never return. The foliage of the year will be so
well renovated that we shall no longer be able to recognize it at all.
Yes, they are days. They have a beginning and an end, they have light
and shadow, they are born of night and into night withdraw to die.
They are days, without a doubt, but not the same. Their smiles are
different, and also their frowns. The joys they bring us are not
distributed with less niggardliness, but they have neither the same
perfume nor the same color. Hope not to find again the smile that
enchanted you. It is dead. It will not return to the face you love any
more than the day of your birth will return. But may you at least hope
to see once more the face you love, as it was. Alas! You will perhaps
have the illusion of seeing it thus, but it will not be reality, for
the days, as they vanish into the night, carry off with them somewhat
of the countenances of men as a remembrance. It may well be that with
these tiny bits they fashion brand new faces, yonder in the chimerical
world, but that is not at all sure.
No, never the same, never. Slowly or rapidly, an indefatigable motion
whirls everything about in a farandola whose ends never can meet. The
year passes by: one day more! The day passes by: an hour longer! The
hour passes by: only another minute! In vain. But all this will at
least come back? I have already told you, No. Why insist? Bow to fate.
One never crosses the same river twice, said the Greek philosopher,
and if this be to some a source of bitterness, others will find in
it good reason to take heart. The latter are those whose memories are
filled chiefly with evil days. Let them, then, be content. Neither will
they ever behold the same days. Tears flow and smiles fade to the same
rhythm of life, to disappear together in the bottomless abyss.
Nothing returns, nothing begins anew; it is never the same thing, and
yet it seems always the same. For, if the days never return, every
moment brings forth new beings whose destiny it will be to create for
themselves, in the course of their lives, the same illusions that have
companioned and at times illuminated ours. The fabric is eternal;
eternal, the embroidery. A universe dies when we die; another is born
when a new creature comes to earth with a new sensibility. If, then,
it is very true that nothing begins all over again, it is very just to
say, too, that everything continues. One may fearlessly advance the
latter statement or the former, according to whether one considers the
individual or the blending of generations. From this second point of
view, everything is coexistent; the same cause produces contradictory,
yet logical effects. All the colors and their shades are printed at a
single impression, to form the wonderful image we call life.
And there is neither beginning nor end, nor past nor future; there is
only a present, at the same time static and ephemeral, multiple and
absolute.
It is the vital ocean in which we all share, according to our strength,
our needs or our desires. Then what matters that which we call the fall
of the days or the fall of the leaves?
Neither the leaves nor the days fall at the same time for all men, and
the hour that marks the end of a year is likewise that which marks the
birth of another.
It is thus I dream, during these closing days of December, of life
which is nothing, since it dies incessantly, and which is all, since
it is ceaselessly reborn. It is the drop of water that flows off as
soon as it falls, but which is followed by another drop that presses
upon it in its course. We are that, nothing but that,--drops of water
that are formed, fall, and flow away; and during such brief moments
we nevertheless have the time to create a world and live in it. It is
the nobility and the mystery of life that it should be of such little
account and yet be capable of such great things, for the most humble
creature is still very important,--one of the atoms without which the
mass would possess neither its proper weight nor form. It has its part
in the universal movement; it is one of the elements of the movement's
equilibrium and its periodicity.
Each one, then, should love his life, even though it be not Very
attractive, for it is the only life. It is a boon that will never
return and that each person should tend and enjoy with care; it is
one's capital, large or small, and can not be treated as an investment
like those whose dividends are payable through eternity. Life is an
annuity; nothing is more certain than that. So that all efforts are
to be respected that tend to ameliorate the tenure of this perishable
possession which, at the end of every day, has already lost a little
of its value. Eternity, the bait by which simple folk are still lured,
is not situated beyond life, but in life itself, and is divided among
all men, all creatures. Each of us holds but a small portion of it, but
that share is so precious that it suffices to enrich the poorest. Let
us then take the bitter and the sweet in confidence, and when the fall
of the days seems to whirl about us, let us remember that dusk is also
dawn.