The eyes of the poor
Ahhh! You want to know why I hate you today? It will undoubtedly be harder for you to understand than for me to explain: for you must be the finest example one could find of female impenetrability.
We had passed a long day together which had seemed short to me. We had promised each other that we would share all our thoughts, and that from now on our two souls would be as one: -not a very original dream, after all, even though it is dreamed by all men and achieved by none.
In the evening you were rather tired, and wanted to sit down in a new café on the corner of a new boulevard still covered with debris, which was already displaying its uncompleted splendour. The café was sparkling. The very gas shone with the eagerness of a newcomer, lighting up with all its strength the walls that blinded us with their whiteness, the dazzling surface of the mirrors, the gold on the mouldings and the the cornices, the pages with their chubby cheeks dragged along by dogs on a lead, the ladies smiling at a falcon perched on their fist, the nymphs and the goddesses carrying fruits, paté and game on their heads, the Hebes and the Ganymedes with arms stretched out offering little jars of sweetmeats or an obelisk of multicoloured ices - the whole history, the whole mythology, in the service of gluttony.
Right in front of us, on the roadway, stood a worthy man of forty-odd with a grizzled beard: he looked tired, and held a little boy with one hand, while on the other arm he carried a tiny creature too weak to walk. He was their nursemaid, bringing the children out to take the evening air. They were all in rags. The three faces were strikingly earnest, and the six eyes stared at the new café with the same wonder, but subtly differentiated by age.
The father's eyes said: How beautiful! How beautiful! How beautiful! One would think all the gold in the world had been brought here for these walls. The eyes of the little boy said: How beautiful! How beautiful! But this place is not for the likes of us. As for the eyes of the tiny one, they were too fascinated to express anything other than a deep and utter joy.
The cabaret song tell us that pleasure makes the soul good and softens the heart. The songs were right that evening, as far as I was concerned. I was not only touched by that family of eyes, I felt a bit ashamed of our glasses and our decanters, much more than our thirst required. I turned to look at you, my love, in order to read my own thoughts; I plunged into your eyes, so beautiful and so strangely sweet, into your green eyes inhabitated by caprice, inspired by the moon, when you said to me: "I can't stand those people, with their eyes like wide open gates. Couldn't you ask the manager to get rid of them?".
That's how difficult it is to understand each other, my angel, that's how incommunicable our thoughts are, even between people in love.
We had passed a long day together which had seemed short to me. We had promised each other that we would share all our thoughts, and that from now on our two souls would be as one: -not a very original dream, after all, even though it is dreamed by all men and achieved by none.
In the evening you were rather tired, and wanted to sit down in a new café on the corner of a new boulevard still covered with debris, which was already displaying its uncompleted splendour. The café was sparkling. The very gas shone with the eagerness of a newcomer, lighting up with all its strength the walls that blinded us with their whiteness, the dazzling surface of the mirrors, the gold on the mouldings and the the cornices, the pages with their chubby cheeks dragged along by dogs on a lead, the ladies smiling at a falcon perched on their fist, the nymphs and the goddesses carrying fruits, paté and game on their heads, the Hebes and the Ganymedes with arms stretched out offering little jars of sweetmeats or an obelisk of multicoloured ices - the whole history, the whole mythology, in the service of gluttony.
Right in front of us, on the roadway, stood a worthy man of forty-odd with a grizzled beard: he looked tired, and held a little boy with one hand, while on the other arm he carried a tiny creature too weak to walk. He was their nursemaid, bringing the children out to take the evening air. They were all in rags. The three faces were strikingly earnest, and the six eyes stared at the new café with the same wonder, but subtly differentiated by age.
The father's eyes said: How beautiful! How beautiful! How beautiful! One would think all the gold in the world had been brought here for these walls. The eyes of the little boy said: How beautiful! How beautiful! But this place is not for the likes of us. As for the eyes of the tiny one, they were too fascinated to express anything other than a deep and utter joy.
The cabaret song tell us that pleasure makes the soul good and softens the heart. The songs were right that evening, as far as I was concerned. I was not only touched by that family of eyes, I felt a bit ashamed of our glasses and our decanters, much more than our thirst required. I turned to look at you, my love, in order to read my own thoughts; I plunged into your eyes, so beautiful and so strangely sweet, into your green eyes inhabitated by caprice, inspired by the moon, when you said to me: "I can't stand those people, with their eyes like wide open gates. Couldn't you ask the manager to get rid of them?".
That's how difficult it is to understand each other, my angel, that's how incommunicable our thoughts are, even between people in love.