There are reminiscences which will not lie down until the pen or the tongue has published them. An ancient author said that he cursed companions with good memories. Life is full of such companions, and it may be that I am one of them, although the proof that my memory is fallible can be found precisely in the fact that I cannot think of the name of that same author: but he was one of the ancients, and that’s enough.*
No, no, my memory is not good. On the contrary, it can be compared to someone who has lived in numerous lodgings, without remembering either faces or names, and only a few of their circumstances. For someone who passes his whole life in the same family house, with the same old furniture and clothes, people and affections, everything is engraved on his mind through continuity and repetition. How I envy those who have not forgotten the color of the first trousers they wore! I can’t recall the color of those I put on yesterday. I can only swear that they were not yellow because I detest that color; but even that may be forgetfulness and confusion.
Let us hope it is forgetfulness rather than confusion; let me explain myself. There is no way of emending a confused book, but everything can be put into books with omissions. I never get upset when I read one of this latter type. What I do, when I get to the end, is shut my eyes and think of all the things I didn’t find in it. How many delightful ideas occur to me then! What profound reflections! The rivers, mountains, churches that I didn’t see in the pages I have read, all appear to me now with their waters, their trees, their altars, and the generals draw the swords that had stayed in their scabbards, and the trumpets sound out the notes that were sleeping in the metal, and everything proceeds in the most unpredictably lively way.
For everything can be found outside a book with gaps in it, dear reader. Thus I fill in others’ lacunae: in this way too you can all in mine.