eflect
on my lack of qualification for a literary career, and that I must
abandon all hope of ever becoming a famous author. The regret that I
felt for this, while I lingered alone to dream for a little by myself,
made me suffer so acutely that, in order not to feel it, my mind of
its own accord, by a sort of inhibition in the instant of pain, ceased
entirely to think of verse-making, of fiction, of the poetic future on
which my want of talent precluded me from counting. Then, quite apart
from all those literary preoccupations, and without definite attachment
to anything, suddenly a roof, a gleam of sunlight reflected from a
stone, the smell of a road would make me stop still, to enjoy the
special pleasure that each of them gave me, and also because they
appeared to be concealing, beneath what my eyes could see, something
which they invited me to approach and seize from them, but which,
despite all my efforts, I never managed to discover. As I felt that the
mysterious object was to be found in them, I would stand there in front
of them, motionless, gazing, breathing, endeavouring to penetrate with
my mind beyond the thing seen or smelt. And if I had then to hasten
after my grandfather, to proceed on my way, I would still seek to
recover my sense of them by closing my eyes; I would concentrate upon
recalling exactly the line of the roof, the colour of the stone, which,
without my being able to understand why, had seemed to me to be teeming,
ready to open, to yield up to me the secret treasure of which they were
themselves no more than the outer coverings. It was certainly not any
impression of this kind that could or would restore the hope I had lost
of succeeding one day in becoming an author and poet, for each of them
was associated with some material object devoid of any intellectual
value, and suggesting no abstract truth. But at least they gave me an
unreasoning pleasure, the illusion of a sort of fecundity of mind; and
in that way distracted me from the tedium, from the sense of my own
impotence which I had felt whenever I had sought a philosophic theme
for some great literary work. So urgent was the task imposed on my
conscience by these impressions of form or perfume or colour--to strive
for a perception of what lay hidden beneath them, that I was never
long in seeking an excuse which would allow me to relax so strenuous an
effort and to spare myself the fatigue that it involved. As good luck
would have it, my par