Nothing returns, nothing begins anew; it is never the same thing, and yet it seems always the same. For, if the days never return, every moment brings forth new beings whose destiny it will be to create for themselves, in the course of their lives, the same illusions that have companioned and at times illuminated ours. The fabric is eternal; eternal, the embroidery. A universe dies when we die; another is born when a new creature comes to earth with a new sensibility. If, then, it is very true that nothing begins all over again, it is very just to say, too, that everything continues. One may fearlessly advance the latter statement or the former, according to whether one considers the individual or the blending of generations. From this second point of view, everything is coexistent; the same cause produces contradictory, yet logical effects. All the colors and their shades are printed at a single impression, to form the wonderful image we call life. And there is neither beginning nor end, nor past nor future; there is only a present, at the same time static and ephemeral, multiple and absolute. It is the vital ocean in which we all share, according to our strength, our needs or our desires. Then what matters that which we call the fall of the days or the fall of the leaves? Neither the leaves nor the days fall at the same time for all men, and the hour that marks the end of a year is likewise that which marks the birth of another. It is thus I dream, during these closing days of December, of life which is nothing, since it dies incessantly, and which is all, since it is ceaselessly reborn. It is the drop of water that flows off as soon as it falls, but which is followed by another drop that presses upon it in its course. We are that, nothing but that,--drops of water that are formed, fall, and flow away; and during such brief moments we nevertheless have the time to create a world and live in it. It is the nobility and the mystery of life that it should be of such little account and yet be capable of such great things, for the most humble creature is still very important,--one of the atoms without which the mass would possess neither its proper weight nor form. It has its part in the universal movement; it is one of the elements of the movement's equilibrium and its periodicity.