APOLOGY xyii 



sands of years ago we told our story ; thousands 

 of years hence we shall tell it again in these 

 lines which were fashioned before Eternity 

 began. We change, we fade, we die, in a 

 changing, fading, dying world, but we come 

 again, obedient, each tiniest crystal, to the 

 ultimate Law." 



As I looked at the frost garden, and listened 

 to its voices, I thought of gardens I had known 

 and loved before. Some of them are with the 

 snows of yester year, some are so far away that 

 I cannot even hope to see them with the eyes 

 of flesh again. A great wave of desolation 

 came over me as I thought of myself shut out 

 from all the things I cared most for, shut in 

 by all the things I most abhorred : a sparrow 

 on a housetop, with not even a sparrow's 

 heritage of a green bough to cling to. 



Balzac had once such a desolation, such a 

 longing, and this is how he overcame it. He 

 made the roofs of Paris, spread out before his 

 garret window, a playground for his imagina- 



