Formerly, I hardly knew any books. Now, I love what they do. I have brought together as many as I could. There they are, on the shelves, with their immense titles, their regular, profound contents; they are there, all around me, arranged like houses. * * * * * * Who will tell the truth? But it is not enough to say things in order to let them be seen. Just now, pursued by the idea of my temptation at the War Museum, I imagined that I had acted on it, and that I was appearing before the judges. I should have told them a fine lot of truths, I should have proved to them that I had done right. I should have made myself, the accused, into the prosecutor. No! I should not have spoken thus, for I should not have known! I should have stood stammering, full of a truth throbbing within me, choking, unconfessable truth. It is not enough to speak; you must know words. When you have said, "I am in pain," or when you have said, "I am right," you have said nothing in reality, you have only spoken to yourself. The real presence of truth is not in every word of truth, because of the wear and tear of words, and the fleeting multiplicity of arguments. One must have the gift of persuasion, of leaving to truth its speaking simplicity, its solemn unfoldings. It is not I who will be able to speak from the depths of myself. The attention of men dazzles me when it rises before me. The very nakedness of paper frightens me and drowns my looks. Not I shall embellish that whiteness with writing like light. I understand of what a great tribune's sorrow is made; and I can only dream of him who, visibly summarizing the immense crisis of human necessity in a work which forgets nothing, which seems to forget nothing, without the blot even of a misplaced comma, will proclaim our Charter to the epochs of the times in which we are, and will let us see it. Blessed be that simplifier, from whatever country he may come,--but all the same, I should prefer him, at the bottom of my heart, to speak French.