Literature, then. Literature before and after, if need be. Which
does not release me from the demands of tact and humility
required for this overdetermined trip. I am afraid of betraying
so many contradictory claims.

( Sontag, "'Project for a Trip to China'", in I, etc.)

Histoire de la Chine.
Je ne crois que les histoires dont les témoins se feraient égorger.
(Lequel est le plus croyable des deux, Moïse ou la Chine?) Il
n'est pas question de voir cela en gros; je vous dis qu'il y a de
quoi aveugler et de quoi éclaircir . . . mais la Chine obscurcit,
dites vous. Et je réponds: la Chine obscurcit, mais il y a clarté à
trouver. Cherchez-la . . . Il faut donc voir cela en détail. Il faut
mettre papiers sur table.

( Pascal, Pensées)

One evening, shortly after vespers, a nun enters the church of St-Jean
in Lyons. Thinking that she is alone, she first kneels, and then cries
out her pain to her God. The women she has unwittingly interrupted
in their devotions listen in silence, hidden in the semi-darkness of a
side-chapel (they themselves are there in secret). The nun has broken
the rule of her enclosed order and is passing through Lyons on a pil-
grimage to Rome. Without quite understanding how, she has found
herself to be with child; she trusts that the Pope will both understand
how this can have happened, and return to her her lost virginity. One

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