e Bartholomew or the
Revolution or the Commune or the Day of Judgment. It is this sense of
crisis that makes France eternally young. It is perpetually pulling down
and building up, as it pulled down the prison and put up the column
in the Place de La Bastille. France has always been at the point of
dissolution. She has found the only method of immortality. She dies
daily.

X. On Lying in Bed

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if
only one had a coloured pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.
This, however, is not generally a part of the domestic apparatus on the
premises. I think myself that the thing might be managed with several
pails of Aspinall and a broom. Only if one worked in a really sweeping
and masterly way, and laid on the colour in great washes, it might drip
down again on one's face in floods of rich and mingled colour like some
strange fairy rain; and that would have its disadvantages. I am afraid
it would be necessary to stick to black and white in this form of
artistic composition. To that purpose, indeed, the white ceiling would
be of the greatest possible use; in fact, it is the only use I think of
a white ceiling being put to.

But for the beautiful experiment of lying in bed I might never have
discovered it. For years I have been looking for some blank spaces in
a modern house to draw on. Paper is much too small for any really
allegorical design; as Cyrano de Bergerac says, "Il me faut des geants."
But when I tried to find these fine clear spaces in the modern rooms
such as we all live in I was continually disappointed. I found an
endless pattern and complication of small objects hung like a curtain of
fine links between me and my desire. I examined the walls; I found them
to my surprise to be already covered with wallpaper, and I found the
wallpaper to be already covered with uninteresting images, all bearing
a ridiculous resemblance to each other. I could not understand why one
arbitrary symbol (a symbol apparently entirely devoid of any religious
or philosophical significance) should thus be sprinkled all over my
nice walls like a sort of small-pox. The Bible must be referring to
wallpapers, I think, when it says, "Use not vain repetitions, as the
Gentiles do." I found the Turkey carpet a mass of unmeaning colours,
rather like the Turkish Empire, or like the sweetmeat called Turkish
Delight. I do not exactly know what Turkish Delight really is; but I
s