I remembered that just ten years ago that very day, our old servant Marguerite had, without my mother’s permission, handed me a letter in the same kind of envelope. My face then had flushed with joy, but this time I felt a faint tinge of pallor touch my cheeks. When events occur which disturb my life, I always have a movement of recoil toward the past. I cling for a second to what is, and then I fling myself headlong into what is to be. It is like a gymnast who clings first to his trapeze bar in order to fling himself afterwards with full force into space. In one second the “now” becomes for me the “has been,” and I love it with tender emotion as something dead. But I adore what is to be without seeking even to know about it, for what is to be is the unknown, the mysterious attraction. I always fancy that it will be something unheard of, and I shudder from head to foot in delicious uneasiness. I receive quantities of letters, and it seems to me that I never receive enough. I watch them accumulating just as I watch the waves of the sea. What are they going to bring me, these mysterious envelopes, large, small, pink, blue, yellow, white? What are they going to fling upon the rock, these great wild waves, dark with seaweed? What sailor-boy’s corpse? What remains of a wreck? What are these little brisk waves going to leave on the beach, these reflections of a blue sky, little laughing waves? What pink “seastar”? What mauve anemone? What pearly shell? So I never open my letters immediately. I look at the envelopes, try to recognize the handwriting, the seal, and it is only when I am quite certain from whom the letter comes that I open it. The others I leave my secretary to open or a kind friend, Suzanne Leylor. My friends know this so well that they always put their initials in the corner of their envelopes. At that time, I had no secretary, but my _petite dame_ served me as such. I looked at the envelope a long time and gave it at last to Mme. Guérard. “It is a letter from M. Perrin, director of the ‘Comédie Française,’” she said. “He asks if you can fix a time to see him on Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon at the ‘Comédie Française,’ or at your own house.” “Thanks, what day is it to-day?” I asked. “Monday,” she replied. I then installed Mme. Guérard at my desk and asked her to reply that I would go there the following day at three o’clock. I was earning very little at that time at the Odéon. I was living on what my father had left me, that is, on the transaction made by the Hâvre notary, and not much remained. I therefore went to see Duquesnel and showed him the letter. “Well, what are you going to do?” he asked. “Nothing. I have come to ask your advice.” “Oh, well, I shall advise you to stay at the Odéon! Besides, your engagement does not terminate for another year, and I shall not let you leave!”