Little Poems in Prose

XXVI POOR FOLKS’ EYES AH, you would like to know why I hate you to-day; it would doubtless be less easy for you to understand than for me to explain, for you are, I think, the finest example of feminine denseness that one might meet in a long day’s march. We had passed a long day together which had seemed short to me; we had promised ourselves that we should have all our thoughts in common, and that thenceforward our two souls should be no more than one. A dream which has nothing original about it, after all, unless it be that, imagines by all men, it has been realized by none. In the evening you were a little tired, and wanted to sit down in front of a new café at the corner of a new boulevard; still full of rub- bish, and already proudly displaying its unfin- ished splendours. The café sparkled; the gas itself flamed with all the enthusiasm of a first night, and lighted up with all its power the walls blinding with whiteness, the glittering