February 19.

When I read Mr. de Beausset, I think I am traveling by boat, on a fine day, in fine weather, in a pleasant country, and on a beautiful river, where I see charming islands, full of fruits, full of flowers, of inscriptions and monuments. I am going to explain all this.

The boat is his book itself. The river is his narrative, always easy, always flowing, always calm, always tranquil; and on it one is as though carried by an invisible movement of which one feels only the pleasure. The country is that unique reign, better known here than elsewhere; that reign of Louis XIV whose most important parts we see to right and left, like so many banks and shores picturesquely drawn; whose most illustrious figures we glimpse here and there, near us or in the distance, and which we traverse in its entirety. The weather or the fine season is that fortunate epoch when gravity in morals, amenity in manners, agreement in opinions, unanimity in tastes and order reestablished [in] life kept a happy temperature in people’s minds, singularly favorable to all their productions. The fine day is the light that comes from the author’s mind and spreads in his writings, over all the objects it touches, so peaceful a clarity. The islands are quotations and all those groups of words, strangely and variously configured, which, placed naturally though with infinite art in the very midst of the subject and in the course of these narratives whose elegance is continuous, break their uniformity and cast upon that expanse the pleasures, ornaments, accidents, viewpoints and all the varieties of the most marvelous landscapes. One stops there despite oneself, and always to praise them. I must follow the common law, and I am going to pay my tribute:

“Magnificent inscriptions! You [will] no longer be ignored; monuments to the gift of speaking well and that of thinking well, you at last strike every eye! — Sentences which, in your old contours, as in so many baskets, offer so many flowers and fruits fit to nourish reason and enchant memory, if we keep you in remembrance! — Sources and treasures of instruction, inexhaustible jets of doctrine! — Fragments of eternal duration, raised high by your steepness, and, worthy of the rich whole from which you were taken, each forming a whole yourselves through your worth and your weight! — Superb words, sacred passages that a skillful hand set! — Places where the highest eloquence makes all its voices heard. Last refuges of the sublime, mingled with the naïve and the simple and sometimes the popular! — By the happiness of the century that seems, alas! so far from us! — Antiquities of little time, immensities of little space, a numberless heap of beauties! — Promontories where I seem to see blocks and altars of marble on which oracles are engraved; prodigious recesses; hollowed out by vast knowledge, and where knowledge gone astray refits itself after shipwrecks ...astonishing dimensions! — Heights, widths and depths! One must indeed salute you. — A passerby who admired you and whom your new appearance introduced to an enthusiasm that filled him with illusions therefore addresses these words to you and gives you all his incense!”

I have said nothing of another point that one always has in view from the moment of departure; of the destination to which the author leads you and [which] he never loses sight of; of the aim, finally, that he proposes to us and that we propose to [ourselves] with him; of that last point of the journey which is the first [point] of the return... It is time to mention it.