September Roses [antikvár]

The evening was mild and misty. In the pathways of the Bois a carpet of dead leaves creaked beneath the feet with a muffled, silky sound. How unexpected an air of youth-fulness, thought Hervé Marcenat, did the rapidity of his movements, the síimness of his figure, and the brightness of his eyes, give to the man walking beside him. He tried to make him talk about his books. Fontane stopped dead, raised his stick to point at the sky, and said, indignantly: 'No, no, my friend! let us leave those wretched works of mine in peace. You may think it affectation on my part, but I assure you that I have almost forgottén them* What could be more natural? A book is - what? - the hardening, the fixing, of a moment's thought ¦ . • The author takes a - hm - mould of his passions at a specific instant of time which we may call MK But the man you meet ten, twenty years later belongs to both M1 and Mü: he has no longer anything in common with the author of the book you love other than a few memories of child-hood, The Guillauine Fontane who once sat in a shabby room, writing those Exercises which you are kind enough to praise so highly, is to me, now, almost a stranger. That is why a writer feels profoundly indifferent to his early work, and intolerably bored if he finds himself compelled to re-read it. That experience will be yours in good time/ 'And yet, cher maitre, Balzac loved to discuss his heroes/ 'Balzac was that rarest of all phenomena - a true novel-ist. I am no more a novelist than was Montesquieu, and he was scarcely one at all/