O the vast avenues of the holy land, terraces of the temple!  What became of the brahmin who explained the Proverbs to me?  Back then, of there, I can still see the same old ladies!  I can remember the silvery hours and the sun by the rivers, the hand of the country on my shoulder, and our caresses standing on the acid plains. - A flight of scarlet pigeons thunder around my thought. - Exiled here, I have a stage to play the dramatic masterpieces of every literature.  I could show you incredible riches.  I observe the history of treasures you've discovered.  I see the next!  My wisdom is disdained like chaos.  What is my nothingness, next to the stupor that awaits you?
 

I am an inventor far more deserving than all my predecessors; a musician even, who has found something like the key of love.  At present, a gentleman of the bitter country with sober skies, I try to agitate the memory of my beggar-childhood, of my apprenticeship or my arrival in clogs, polemics, the five or six widowhoods, and a few weddings where my hard head prevented me rising in tune with my comrades.  I don't regret my old part in holy frolic: the sober air of this bitter country very actively nourishes my atrocious scepticism.  But from now on, because this scepticism can hardly be put to work, and anyway I am devoted to a new turmoil, - I expect to become a very nasty madman.
 
 

In an attic where I was locked up aged twelve I knew the world, I illustrated the human comedy.  In a cellar I learned history.  At some nocturnal party, in a city in the North, I met all the women of the old painters.  In an old alley in Paris I was taught the classical sciences.  In a magnificent residence surrounded by the entire Orient I finished my great work and spent my illustrious retirement.  I braced my blood.  My duty is pardoned.  I don't even have to consider that.  I am truly from beyond the grave, and no commissions.