We give to things a soul which we cultivate in their absence and expect to recover when once more in their presence. I am tracing my steps of last year. I go looking for the same tea-cups and tea, the same candles and soap. I visit the Boulangerie with dark chocolate tarts. I find the place on the Rue Daguerre with black circles of fromage de chèvre. I am trying to gird up the spirit of Paris. I can’t seem to find it.
Besides, there are signs of neighbourly discord with the birds. On one floor, a woman feeds them at her window—they go right inside; when she is not home, they come flapping at the glass. On the floor above, where the wire is, the birds are most unwelcome. The woman living there—she could be a man, or a man and a woman— is invisible; I see only the wire. Have he and she put it there? Or was it there already on moving in, arranged by the building, since: (i) the birds are a nuisance, and (ii) the birds like the eaves best, and (iii) this is where the eaves are?