illaud had said: "Nous avons trempe la poesie dans la peinture et la
musique. Il faut la delivrer par la sculpture. Chaque ligne, chaque
vers, chaque poeme taille en bloc, sans couleur, sans decor, sans
rime."... "La sainte pauvresse du style depouille."... "Il faut de la
durete, toujours de la durete."

He thought of Reveillaud's criticism, and his sudden startled spurt of
admiration: "Mais! Vous l'avez trouvee, la beaute de la ligne droite."

And Reveillaud's question: "Vraiment? Vous n'avez jamais lu un seul vers
de mes poemes? Alors, c'est etonnant." And then: "C'est que la realite
est plus forte que nous."

The revolting irony of it! After stumbling and fumbling for years by
himself, like an idiot, trying to get it, the clear hard Reality; trying
not to collapse into the soft heap of contemporary rottenness; and,
suddenly, to get it without knowing that he had got it, so that, but for
Reveillaud, he might easily have died in his ignorance; and then, in the
incredible moment of realization, to have to let go, to turn his back on
Paris, where he wanted to live, and on Reveillaud whom he wanted to
know, and to be packed in a damnable train, like a parcel, and sent off
to Germany, a country which he did not even wish to see.

He wondered if he could have done it if he had not loved his father? He
wondered if his father would ever understand that it was the hardest
thing he had ever yet done or could do?

But the trees would be beautiful. He would rather like seeing the trees.

Trees--

He wondered whether he would ever care about a tree again.

Trees--

He wondered whether he would ever see a tree again, ever smell tree-sap,
or hear the wind sounding in the ash-trees like a river and in the firs
like a sea.

Trees--

He wondered whether any tree would ever come to life for him again.

He looked on at the tree-felling. He saw slaughtered trees, trees that
tottered, trees that staggered in each other's branches. He heard the
scream and the shriek of wounded boughs, the creaking and crashing of
the trunk, and the long hiss of branches falling, trailing through
branches to the ground. He smelt the raw juice of broken leaves and the
sharp tree dust in the saw pits. The trees died horrible deaths, in the
forests under the axes of the woodmen, and in the schools under the
tongues of the Professors, and in Michael's soul. The German Government
was determined that he should know all about trees. Its officials, the