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September, 1923

NCE more the curtain falls and liberty is rendered to the spectators; at least to those who live by the profane clock, who are "strongly attached to the world," as the Jansenists said, instead of imposing the rhythm of their own life on their environment. In other words the Paris season has ended.

Days without vacation, when the pleasures of vanity (a luxury tax) succeed to the artificial duties of gossip and the fork; when the social instincts—appetites or antipathies—dovetail perfectly like a piece of joiner's work, are followed now, after tumultuous departures, by those hours of liberty and work which are the best of the year. You are alone, as if in a museum; everyone has abandoned you. At last you can work, or even stroll and listen to your own heart; "full of a thousand essential causes of ennui," wrote Pascal, whom we have been forced to re-read in all the newspapers. To glorify his centenary they decided to reveal this young and gifted writer to a public always greedy for the unknown. With that indiscretion, smiling menace, which is one of the ornaments of the after-war, they glorified not only Pascal, but his enemies and his love affairs. And, unintentionally, with the help of certain buried ladies, they brought us closer to portions of his work which had remained obscure. They threw light with a modern violence on several phrases of the Pensées, admirable for the profane experiences which they resumed; maybe it was Proust who prepared us to understand them. Gracious and irritated phantoms have been brought to life: for example that lovely demoiselle de Roannez whom Pascal loved, in spite of her being the victim "of idleness, of the love of adornment, and of her attachment to companies which she herself had recognized as being dangerous for her." And the mother-superior of Port Royal who wrote these lines has added, "She cannot resist the furious instinct which drives her to cut her hair." If this garçonne were living to-day, I am sure she would be weighing, like the others, on our consciences. To such a degree is it true that certain subjects are always held at the disposition of the public, in all good bookstores.