Page:Letters from Abroad.pdf/22

 LETTERS FROM ABROAD13

therefore, though the sea is singing its hymns to the rising and the setting sun and to the star-lit silence of the night, and though the forest round me is standing a tip-toe on the rock like an ancient Druid, raising its arms to the sky, chanting its incantation of primeval life, we have to hasten back to Paris to be restored to the respectability ministered to by tailors and washermen. (This is what our first parents have brought upon us. Our clothes are acting like screens dividing us from the rest of the world; and for this we have to pay—pay the bills! Do you not think that it is outrageously undignified for my humanity, that, standing face to face with the magnificent spirit of this naked Nature, I can think and speak of nothing but wretched clothes, which in three years’ time will be tattered into shreds, while these pine trees will remain standing ever fresh and clean majestically unaffected by the soiling touch of the hours?

I suppose I told you in my last letter that I met Sylvain Levy in Paris. He is a great scholar, as you know, but his philology has not been able to wither his soul. His mind has the translucent simplicity of greatness and his heart is overflowing with trustful generosity which never acknowledges disillusionment. His students come to love the subject he teaches them, because they love him, I realise clearly when I meet these great teachers that only through the medium of personality can truth be communicated to men. This fundamental