BROUGHT back Olivier’s things from Passavant’s. As soon as I got home, set to work on _The Counterfeiters_. My exaltation is calm and lucid. My joy is such as I have never known before. Wrote thirty pages without hesitation, without a single erasure. The whole drama, like a nocturnal landscape suddenly illuminated by a flash of lightning, emerges out of the darkness, very different from what I had been trying to invent. The books which I have hitherto written seem to me like the ornamental pools in public gardens--their contours are defined--perfect perhaps, but the water they contain is captive and lifeless. I wish it now to run freely, according to its bent, sometimes swift, sometimes slow; I choose not to foresee its windings. X. maintains that a good novelist, before he begins to write his book, ought to know how it is going to finish. As for me, who let mine flow where it will, I consider that life never presents us with anything which may not be looked upon as a fresh starting point, no less than as a termination. “Might be continued”--these are the words with which I should like to finish my _Counterfeiters_. Visit from Douviers. He is certainly an excellent fellow. As I exaggerated my sympathy for him, I was obliged to submit to his effusions, which were rather embarrassing. All the time I was talking to him, I kept repeating to myself La Rochefoucauld’s words: “I am very little susceptible to pity; and should like not to be so at all.... I consider that one ought to content oneself with showing it and carefully refrain from feeling it.” And yet my sympathy was real, undeniable, and I was moved to tears. Truth to tell, my tears seemed to console him better than my words. I almost believe that he gave up being unhappy as soon as he saw me cry. I was firmly resolved not to tell him the name of the seducer; but to my surprise he did not ask it. I think his jealousy dies down as soon as he no longer feels Laura’s eyes upon him. In any case, its energy had been somewhat diminished by the act of coming to see me. There is something illogical in his case; he is indignant that the other man should have deserted Laura. I pointed out that if it had not been for his desertion, Laura would not have come back to him. He is resolved to love the child as if it were his own. Who knows whether he would ever have tasted the joys of paternity without the seducer? I took good care not to point this out to him, for at the recollection of his insufficiencies, his jealousy becomes more acute. But then it belongs to the domain of vanity and ceases to interest me. That an Othello should be jealous is comprehensible; the image of his wife’s pleasure obsesses him. But when a Douviers becomes jealous it can only be because he imagines he ought to be.