Not Jules Verne

Birds with leaf footprints. Awareness of age not in due course, not after childhood, youth, maturity, etc. but that strikes every season. Writing to learn how to write. Irony to burn off the weeds. Happiness as a sometimes silencing of unhappiness. Modesty always false modesty. A haughty modesty. Socialism to begin at the head and move to heart. How to describe country life without imposing a sure sensibility. A longing for the name in print, the once-again sting of envy. Hunting partridge not like domesticating chicken. Jules Renard’s Journals, 1887-1910, stop just before his death at the age of forty-six.