"A Fable"

"A certain short man said, "I'd do anything if only I could be just a little taller."

He had hardly finished saying this when he saw a witch standing in front of him.

"What do you want?" the witch asked him.

The short man stood there, and he was so frightened, he couldn't say anything.

"Well?" said the witch.

The short man stood there and said nothing. The witch disappeared.

At that point the short man started crying and biting his nails. First he bit all the nails on his fingers and then those on his toes.

Reader, think hard about this fable and you will feel pretty strange."

Ylayali

"'So, she must have been pretty, then, eh?' the old man mumbled with an absent air, looking down at the ground.

Pretty? She was magnificent, that sort of magnificence ought to have been prohibited! Her eyes were as soft as silk, and her arms the color of amber! A simple glance from her was like a kiss from any other woman, and when she spoke my name her voice poured through my veins like wine right into my heart. And why shouldn't she be that beautiful? Who did he think she was, a filing clerk or a receptionist in the Fire Department? She was simply out of a fairy tale, he could take my word for it, she was a masterpiece, divine!

'Yes, I'm sure she was,' the man said, a little bewildered."

"Nothing is more pessimistic or skeptical than the famous text in which Pascal, asking himself what it is to love, remarks that one does not love a woman for her beauty, which is perishable, or for her mind, which she can lose, and then suddenly concludes: "One never loves anybody; one loves only qualities." Pascal is proceeding like the skeptic who asks if the world exists, remarks that the table is only a sum of sensations, the chair another sum of sensations, and finally concludes: one never sees anything; one sees only sensations.

If, on the contrary, as the primacy of perception requires, we call what we perceive "the world," and what we love "the person," there is a type of doubt concerning man, and a type of spite, which become impossible. Certainly, the world which we thus find is not absolutely reassuring. We weigh the hardihood of the love which promises beyond what it knows, which claims to be eternal when a sickness, perhaps an accident, will destroy it...But it is true, at the moment of this promise, that our love extends beyond qualities, beyond the body, beyond time, even though we could not love without qualities, bodies, and time."

what happened

"He kissed Maud a lot and told her he loved her, but after a while it became a little monotonous and then he was not too proud of going out with her: he would have liked to give her advice on how she should dress, but she was full of prejudices and angered quickly. Between kisses, they were silent, gazing at each other and holding hands. 'God knows what she's thinking with those strict eyes she has.' Lucien still thought of the same thing: this small existence, sad and vague, which was his own, and told himself, 'I wish I were Lemordant, there's a man who's found his place!' During those times he saw himself as though he were another person: sitting near a woman who loved him, his hand in hers, his lips still wet from kisses, refusing the humble happiness she offered him: alone. Then he clasped Maud's fingers tightly and tears came to his eyes: he would have liked to make her happy."