table; you never satisfy your
hunger, and my narrow room with its threadbare carpet and mouldy ceiling
is like a badly kept cage. But it's Sunday morning and I have undertaken
to make it inviting.

A handkerchief twisted about my hair, a white blouse and bare arms....
By persisting and rubbing again, by chasing the dust, by trying a place
for the books twenty times over, by pushing the chairs about, by
scraping away the layers of encrusted filth, I am bound to triumph. To
judge of the effect, I stop several times and perch on the tattered arm
of the red-flowered armchair; the place looks better already. But to it
again!

No pictures, no ornaments. I have taken down the sentimental prints
hypocritically concealing the scars of the wall-paper. Nothing but the
bare room and the high window with its dim panes.

The bed of a doubtful mahogany burrows into the bashful retreat of the
alcove. The wardrobe would wabble if it were not secured by a thick
rope tied to the rosette on the front. The rosette is typical of a
curious character that the room has for all its dinginess. There was an
attempt to decorate with a profusion of flowers. Flowers everywhere,
spread broadcast over the walls, cutting off the corners of the
wash-boards, and trailing their sallow procession in a border around the
top of the walls. They are even woven into the stuff on the back of the
armchair, they appear almost effaced in the maroon-colored linoleum, and
ravelled out and faded in the cretonne curtains.... In this cemetery,
the sweet violets blooming on my table have a sensual, almost insolent
splendor; their petals look red.

For all its bareness, my room radiates light; the meagre sunlight shines
in through the window and is already transfiguring the place; I feel
comfortable in it.

* * * * *

Oftener and oftener I ask myself what is my reason for existence, my
true, my sole destiny. Doubtless one must sleep in a room for a long
time before encountering the soul that prepares itself there.

I am, I know, like a person who wants to build a big house without
having a site or materials, who says nevertheless: "No, not this site,
no, not this material." But this is of no importance, I realize. Once
you have submitted to the wholesome discipline enjoined by poverty, you
receive in return energetic muscles and a patient outlook.

I wait; and no longer having any need to complain or criticize, I wait
with a smile.