The birth of Eve seemed lovely to me. While Adam sleeps among the flowers of Eden, she uprises erect and unclothed, with floating hair. One of her knees--look at it, I am sure of it!--slightly bent, is caressed by the sunlight. Through her, by this light upon her knee, I felt something of the pure perfection of nudity long before I even dreamed of its desire. Abraham leads his flocks to the land of Canaan, and the backs of the huddled sheep undulate like the waves that I had seen from the lake shore. The cradle of Moses floats upon the Nile; Pharaoh’s daughter has come out from the palace that stands basking in the sun; she draws near the river; one of her waiting women takes up the little bark. Rebecca, in a long white veil, rests her pitcher upon the margin of the well and talks with Eliezer, a venerable old man; but I don’t distinguish her from the Samaritan woman who takes the same position. Ruth, kneeling, gleans the wheat ears. The great cedars of Lebanon, cut down, lie upon the earth which their shadow overspreads; they are waiting to be used in building the temple in Jerusalem. The angel of the Annunciation hovers in the air, like a falling leaf upheld by the wind. Jesus in the house of Lazarus is sitting on the window ledge, the moonlight stealing through the palm trees. Mary crouching at his feet is drinking in his words, Martha, standing, is busy with household cares. Pictures through which peace flows like a limpid stream, and which are but the transposition of every-day scenes, almost like those which I might have seen at our house and in the country,--pictures of obscure lives, through which God passes. One day when I declined to be present at the return of the prodigal son to the paternal home, my mother, who loved that parable, asked the reason of this disdain. “Why don’t you look at this page?” I made a gesture of disgust. It seemed commonplace to me--a father forgiving his son--what was there surprising in that? Athalia wringing her hands in despair beside the temple wall, while the soldiers come running to kill her, recalled to my mother her convent. She had herself taken part in the chorus of that tragedy which Racine had written for the young pupils of Saint-Cyr, and which by a happy tradition all girls’ boarding schools used to present in those days; the Unes came back to her with a rush: The universe is full of His magnificence: Let us praise God and worship Him forever. She would recite them with that emotion which religious things always awakened in her, and her tones touched me more directly than that sophisticated art which was beyond my powers.