‘Et comme j’esquissais un discret sourire de scepticisme, M. Francis Jammes me regarda avec infiniment de générosité. ‘Je vous souhaite le bonheur que j’ai.’ ‘I was converted on the 7th of July, 1905,’ began M. Francis Jammes, when I asked him if I were not indiscreet in seeking to trace the progress of his mind from indifference to fervour. ‘You were not always a Catholic?’ ‘I was christened a Catholic, but that was about all: that, and a sort of sympathy for the fine literary themes afforded by the Church, mixed by much disdain for what I no longer call the “churchiness” of old women. I was a Pagan, a veritable Faun! Flowers, forests, women--I was in love with all that lived! In all Nature there was not a merrier young vagabond alive. Life was so delightful in my eyes that the very idea of one day quitting all that, seemed to me a frightful blasphemy.’ ‘And you are no longer so much in love with Life?’ ‘Not in the same way.’ ‘You were changed by a sudden flash of grace?’ ‘No; there were trials before the Grace of God touched me; and there was Claudel, too, ... Claudel with whom I made friends (through one of his old schoolfellows, Marcel Schwob) when I was still a Faun, haunting the thickets. (Claudel! The poet pronounces the name with a touching admiration and emotion.) ‘Claudel! I shall never forget our first interview. He was already a great writer in the eyes of a little clan. I still see the small room into which we were shown, my friend and I. It was a sort of bare cell: three things attracted my attention, a rosary, an old woman’s prayer-book, and Barrès’s _Appel au Soldat_. And then Claudel came in. It was as if a Roman bust were to move its lips and speak. He disliked the person who accompanied me, and I remember the harsh cut-and-dry tone of his short answers. But the next day I lunched with him and Schwob; and the icy marble softened into flesh and blood. I was lost in wonder, a sort of happy astonishment. Catholicism had entered into my life....’ ‘The Faun began to feel anxious?’ ‘The Faun stood firm! But, little by little, I began to ask myself: Where lies the Truth? And the sense of my ignorance, that feeling of a limit to what man can do and be, was the canker in the fruit. I felt there was a force in Life--a force that I did not possess.