April 2, 1920. -- For ten years or so I have been inclined to avoid Paris, and when I could not avoid it, to spend there but a few hours, making it merely my jumping-board for larger leaps into less familiar regions. It somehow seemed no longer to concern me, and no longer even to interest me. Now, although, with all the world, I am feeling more alien from the prevailing national mood of France than I have ever felt since I began to know France at all, I linger here day after day, wishful to linger still.

Never has Paris seemed so beautiful to me, never have I felt more appreciatively near to its people. Every step I take along its streets, above all in this Latin Quarter I have trodden for over thirty years, I marvel at its familiarity; every yard of it seems known to me, every landmark I recognise, every shop that has changed its character I miss. I realise how richly memory is stored with old pictures, neglected, it may be, but still ready to come to the surface at the challenge of their living counterparts that correspond, or that now cease to correspond.