But unannealed by water the gaunt days sloped into the grots of time.
Paris, Saturday Night: Today has been a horrible one—I was able to sleep only the most diseased and distressed sleep (the worst sort of American-in-Europe sleep) last night after leaving Mrs. Morton. I was sick with my loss (the loss of the picture and several letters Helen sent me) and I got up sick and with the shakes this morning—I came to the Abiga bar—I went to the Am. Ex. Co.—I went to Wepler’s in Montmartre—At each place, as I knew they would, with mean and servile regret cut by mocking, they were sorry, sorry, sorry.
The day was of the most horrible European sort—Something that passes understanding—the wet heavy air, that deadens the soul, puts a lump of indigestible lead in the solar plexus, depresses and fatigues the flesh until one seems to lift himself leadenly through the thick wet steaming air with a kind of terrible fear—an excitement that is without hope, that awaits only the news of some further grief, failure, humiliation, and torture. There is a lassitude that enters the folds and lappings of the brain, that makes one hope for better things and better work tomorrow, but hope without belief or conviction.
The grey depression of the wet buildings—the horrible nervous pettiness of the French, swarming, honking, tooting along the narrow streets and the two-foot sidewalks, while the heavy buses beetle past—
A chapter called PARIS or So You’re Going to “Paris”? (Perhaps a piece for a magazine in This.)
The fear always of the corners—you are coming out into the open, there will be waiting to thrust at you, the heavy grinding buses, the irritation of the horns, etc.
A chapter to be called “The Arithmetic of the Soul.”
The music deepened like a passion.
All of our hearts are fulfilled of you, all of our souls are growing warm with you, all of our lives are beating out their breath for you, and the strange feel of our pulses is playing through our blood for you, immortal and unending living.
Sunday—Up at noon, bathed, etc. Lunch at Casenave’s—Went to Delacroix
