And I heard him sigh, in a low raucous voice, the word: cake! I had to laugh, hearing the term with which he sought to dignify my more or less white bread and I cut a hefty slice to offer him. Slowly he came nearer, his eyes never leaving the coveted object; then seizing the slice with his hand, jumped back, as if afraid my offer were not sincere or had been already taken back.

But at that moment, he was knocked over by another little savage, springing from I don’t know where, and so perfectly like the first that they could be supposed twins. Together they rolled on the ground, disputing the precious acquisition, neither one willing, obviously, to sacrifice a half to his brother. The first, exasperated, grabbed the other by his hair; who in turn clamped his teeth on the first one’s ear, spitting out a bloody bit of it along with a superb dialect oath. The rightful possessor of the cake then tried to dig his nails into the ursurper’s eyes while the other put all he had into strangling his opponent with one hand while, with the other, slipping the contested article into his pocket. But revived by desperation, the conquered made a comeback and brought his conqueror down by ramming his head into the other’s stomach. Useless to describe further this hideous fight which lasted in fact longer than seemed possible from their childish frames. The cake traveled hand to hand and changed pocket to pocket moment by moment; but, alas, changed also in volume; and when finally, exhausted, panting, bloody, they stopped because they could fight no more, there was no longer, actually, anything to fight about; the bread had disappeared, scattered in crumbs like the grains of sand it fell among.

For me, this spectacle darkened the landscape, completely gone the calm joy that had enlivened my soul before seeing these little men. I remained sad for some time, saying to myself over and over, “So there exists a superb land where bread is called cake, a delicacy so rare as to cause strictly fratricidal war!”

XVI
The Clock

The Chinese tell time by looking into the eyes of cats.

One day a missionary, rambling a Nanking suburb, found he had forgotten his watch and asked a boy for the time.

This imp of the Celestial Empire at first hesitated but then, thinking better, replied, “I’ll check.” Moments later, he reappeared carrying a fat cat and, peering (as it’s put) into its eyes, reported forthwith, “It’s not quite noon.” Which was correct.

As for me, if I incline towards the beautiful (and so well named) Feeline, who is at once paragon of her sex, pride of my heart, and my spirit’s balm; whether night or day, in sunshine or shadow, in the depth of her adorable eyes I see the time distinctly, always the same, a vast and solemn time, grand like space, undivided into minutes or seconds — an unmoving time not marked on clocks, but light as a sigh and quick as a wink.

And if some intruder disturbs me while I’m resting my eyes on this delicious dial, if some dishonest and intolerant Genie or disruptive Demon, asks, “What are you looking at so intently? What do you think you can discover in the eyes of this creature? Do you read the time there, you wasteful, lazy mortal?” I answer with no hesitation, “Yes, the time, I do see — it is Eternity!”

Well, Madame, is this not a worthy madrigal, as grandiloquent as yourself? It has in fact given me so much pleasure to embellish this pretentious gallantry, that I beg of you, in return, nothing at all.

XVII
A Hemisphere in a Head of Hair

Allow me long — longer — to inhale the odor of your hair, to bury my face in it, like a thirsty man at a spring, and to shake it out like a scented hanky, flinging its memories into the air.

If you only knew all I see! all I sense! all I comprehend in your hair! My soul is transported by its perfume as other men may be by music.

Your hair contains a dream, complete with mast and sails, contains the open sea where a monsoon hurtles me towards clement weather, space deeper and bluer, an atmosphere redolent of fruit, of foliage, of human skin.

In the ocean of your hair, I glimpse a port swarming with melancholy songs, sturdy men of all nations and ships of every shape, their careful and elaborate architecture outlined against an immense sky holding the eternal heat.

Caressing your hair, I find again the languor of long hours passed on a couch in the cabin of a fine ship, rocked by the imperceptible roll of the seaport, between potted flowers and cool drinking water.

At the blazing hearth of your hair I breathe the odor of tobacco mixed with opium and sugar; in the night of your hair, I see glittering the infinite tropical azure; on downy beaches of your hair the combined odors of tar, musk, and oil of coconut send me.

Leave me long to gnaw your dark weighty tresses. Nibbling your buoyant and rebellious hair I feel myself feasting on memories.

XVIII
Invitation to the Voyage

Superb land, Cockaigne it’s called, that I dream of visiting with my long-standing loved one. Singular land, drowned in our Northern fog — it could be labeled Orient-West, Europe’s China, so much enthused and capricious fantasy has reared, so patiently and relentlessly heightened with improved and delicate vegetation.

A true land of milk and honey, where all is beautiful, opulent, tranquil, honest; where luxury prides its orderliness; where life is rich, easy-going, altogether excluding disorder, turbulence, the unforeseen; where joy merges with quiet; where even cooking is poetic, at once plentiful and exciting; where everything, my angel, resembles you.

Don’t you feel the feverish illness wrapping us in bleak misery, this nostalgia for a land we don’t know, the anguish of curiosity? But there is a region that resembles you, where everything is beautiful, opulent, tranquil, honest, where fantasy has built an occidental Cathay, where the breath of life is sweet, where joy merges with quiet. That is where we must live, where we must die.

Yes, there we must go to breathe, to dream, to extend the hours by an infinity of sensations. A musician has written Invitation to the Waltz; who will compose Invitation to the Voyage to offer to the woman we love, to our chosen sister?

Yes, in that atmosphere we could build the good life — there where slower time yields more thought, where clocks chime out happiness with a deeper and more significant solemnity.

On glistening walls, or on darkly gilded vellum, live unobtrusive paintings, blissful, calm, deep, like the souls of the artists who created them. The setting sun’s violent colors reach dining room and parlor, subdued by fine curtains or through tall windows worked in small leaded panes. The furnishings are immense, curious, bizarre, larded with locks and secret recesses, like subtle souls. Mirrors, metals, fabric, gold-work, earthenware, compose for the eyes a mute and mysterious symphony, while from all of it — from every corner, crevices in drawers, folds of the linen — a singular perfume escapes, a Sumatra come-back-here, the soul of the apartment.

A true Cockaigne, I tell you, where all is opulent, proper, gleaming, like a clean conscience, like magnificent kitchen utensils, like splendid gold-work, like gaudy jewels! Treasures of the world abound there, as in the house of a hard worker who has well deserved the whole world. Singular land, as superior to all others as Art is to Nature, Nature made over by dream, corrected, embellished, remolded.

Let them search and continue to search, ceaselessly to push back their happiness limit — alchemists of horticulture! Let them offer sixty or a hundred thousand florins to someone who can solve their difficult problems! As for me, I have found my black tulip and my blue dahlia!6

Incomparable flower, retraced tulip, dahlia of allegory, is it not there, in that fair land so calm and dreamlike, we must go in order to live and to flower? Would you not step into your analogy; could you not see yourself in — as the mystics put it — your own proper correspondence?

Dreams! always dreams! The more ambitious and discerning the soul, the more dreams distance it from the possible. Every man carries within him his dose of natural opium, secreted and renewed endlessly. From birth to death, how many of our hours can we count fulfilled by positive delight, by action decided and done? Will we ever live, ever cross into this picture my spirit paints, this picture which resembles you?

Such treasures, such furnishings, this abundance, this order, these perfumes, miraculous flowers — all this is you. You as well, the grand rivers and tranquil canals. Afloat on them, loaded with valuables, amid the monotony of the crew’s songs, those enormous ships are my thoughts, on your bosom sleeping or sailing. You conduct them gently towards that sea which is the Infinite, reflecting the while celestial depths in your beautiful and pellucid soul. And when, sick of the sea-swell and overloaded with Eastern goods, they return to their native port, my thoughts, grown rich, still turn again from the Infinite towards you.

6. La Tulipe noire is the title of a novel by Dumas père; the image comes from an episode of the Dutch tulipomania. “Le Dahlia bleu” is a song by Pierre Dupont, a popular poet much admired by Baudelaire.

XIX
A Toy for the Poor

I’d like to introduce an innocent diversion. There are so few amusements not wicked.

Going for a morning stroll to take in the sights along a main street, fill your pockets with cheap little gimmicks — such as cardboard puppets on a thread, little blacksmith figures beating anvils, horsemen on horses with a whistle for tail — and along by the taverns, under the trees, offer them gratis to whatever poor and unknown children you come by. You will see their eyes widen. At first they won’t dare accept, such good fortune not quite believable. Then they will grab the gift and move away, as cats distance themselves to eat what you toss them, having learned to distrust mankind.

On a drive inside the gate of a large garden, where sunlight reveals a lovely white manor, stood a neat and beautiful little boy in fastidious country garments.

Luxury, freedom from care, habitual wealthy surroundings, give children good looks like this, until one could suppose them made of a different substance from offspring of the middle class or of the poor.

Beside him, on the grass, lay a splendid toy, a figure neat as its master, polished, gilded, in a purple robe covered with plumes and trinkets. But he paid no attention to this favored toy, for here is what he was actually looking at:

Outside the gate, across the road, between thistle and nettle, was another boy, dirty, sickly, soot-covered, one of those outcast urchins whose beauty an impartial eye might appreciate, if — as connoisseurs can spot a transcendent painting veneered over with later varnish — it could wash off the repulsive patina of poverty.

Across the symbolic bars separating two worlds, big street and big house, the poor boy displayed his own toy to the rich, who stared greedily, as if at an object rare and unknown. For the toy that this guttersnipe poked at, shook, waved about in a cage, was a live rat! His parents, for economy no doubt, had provided him a toy from life itself.

And the two children, each to the other, laughed fraternally, with teeth of equal whiteness.

XX
Fairy Gifts

It was a grand assembly of the Fairies, gathered to work out procedures for distributing their gifts among all the new-born come into the world in the last twenty-four hours.

Motley in the extreme, all these ancient and capricious Sisters of Destiny, all these bizarre Mothers of joy and sorrow: some with a gloomy look, surly, others playful, cunning; some young, who had always been young, some old, having always been old.

All the fathers with faith in Fairies were there, each holding his new-born in his arms.

The Gifts, the Faculties, the good Luck, unbeatable Circumstances, were stacked beside the tribunal, as prizes to be handed out.