Now he is lost in the whirl of Paris and mingles with
his fellow-men; and then he feels an impulse to travel and he starts
off.
I can see him leaning over the side of the ship, I can see him looking
for a new world and weeping over the country he has left. He lands; he
listens to the waterfalls and the songs of the Natchez; he watches the
flowing rivers and the bright scales of the snakes and the eyes of the
savages. He allows his soul to be fascinated by the languor of the
Savannah. They tell each other of their native melancholy and he
exhausts its pleasures as he exhausted those of love. He returns,
writes, and everyone is carried away by the charm of his magnificent
style with its royal sweep and its supple, coloured, undulating phrase,
as stormy as the winds that sweep over virgin forests, as brilliant as
the neck of a humming-bird, and as soft as the light of the moon shining
through the windows of a chapel.
He travels again; this time he goes to ancient shores; he sits down at
Thermoplyae and cries: Leonidas! Leonidas! visits the tomb of Achilles,
Lacedaemon, and Carthage, and, like the sleepy shepherd who raises his
head to watch the passing caravans, all those great places awake when he
passes through them.
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