My Little Table 



She is after game, this slender huntress, clad 

 in black, busy collecting Wood-lice for her 

 grubs. A whole nation is devouring you, you 

 old table; I am writing on a swarm of in- 

 sects ! No support could be more appropriate 

 to my entomological notes. 



What will become of you when your mas- 

 ter is gone? Will you be knocked down for 

 a franc, when the family come to apportion 

 my poor spoils? Will you be turned into a 

 stand for the pitcher beside the kitchen-sink? 

 Will you be the plank on which the cabbages 

 are shredded? Or will my children, on the 

 contrary, agree and say : 



'Let us preserve the relic. It was where 

 he toiled so hard to teach himself and make 

 himself capable of teaching others; it was 

 where he so long consumed his strength to 

 find food for us when we were little. Let us 

 keep the sacred plank.' 



I dare not believe in such a future for you. 

 You will pass into strange hands, O my old 

 friend; you will become a bedside-table, 

 laden with bowl after bowl of linseed-tea, 

 until, decrepit, rickety and broken down, you 

 are chopped up to feed the flames for a brief 

 moment under the simmering saucepan. You 

 will vanish in smoke to join my labours in 



309 



