erent soul), agonize--and disappear.... The world is
full of incomprehensible things.... Last of all, on our way back, I
discovered near the park gate--saw it before She did--one of those
invincible beasts called hedge-hogs, the mere sight of which brings us
dogs to bay. What madness to realize that an animal is hiding under that
pin-cushion and laughing at me, and that I can do nothing, _nothing_! I
implored her--She can do nearly everything--to pluck him for me. She
began by turning him over with a little stick, as if he were a horse
chestnut. "Astonishing," said She, "I can't find the top of him!" Then
She took one of his spines between two fingers and carried him home that
way--I dancing behind her--and put him in her work basket. After a while
the horrid beast unrolled himself, stuck out a pig-like nose, opened two
shiny rat's eyes and raised himself, holding fast by his little paws,
which were exactly like a mole's. "How pretty he is," She cried, "a real
little black pig." I stood near the table groaning with covetousness,
but She didn't pluck him for me, not then, or ever, and perhaps the cook
ate him.... This cat's a dissembler. Maybe _he_ ... But away with care!
I'm too excitable! I mustn't let myself think of these things. Life is
beautiful, O Fire, since you illumine it ... I'm going to sleep ...
Watch over my unconscious body ... I'm going ... to sleep....

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

One would think me asleep because the narrow slit made by my parted
eyelids, seems but the continuation of that velvety line, that bold
crayon-stroke, a sort of Oriental make-up, uniting my eyelids and my
ears. But I'm awake, keeping watch like a yogi, in a state of blissful
ankylosis, conscious of all that's going on around me.... My privileged
eyes, Fire, do but behold you better when they're closed and I can count
the various essences you mingle in a sparkling bouquet. Here in a flame
of mauve-color and blue, glows the soul of a branch of arbor-vitae.
Yesterday it waved a plume-like shadow on the garden walk ... To-day,
with its delicate twigs, it is but a writhing skeleton. She cut it with
one stroke of the pruning scissors. Why? That it might breathe out its
fervent blue and mauve-colored soul? For like me, She delights in your
dance, Fire, and chastises you when you're quiet, with a stern pair of
tongs. Sitting there with her head bent and her arms hanging along her
sides, what does She read, I wonder, in that fiery rose which is th