This ill-informed and totally inadequate scribe rushed in to translate Le Soulier de Satin almost before he had read it through. In his awe (of later date) at the magnitude of the task, he was much upborne by the encouragements of the illustrious author, and in the final revisions he had the precious aid of Monsieur and Madame Paul Petit, whose keen scrutiny eliminated many a slack rendering. To them also he is deeply indebted for a glimpse into the mental and spiritual history of the present ambassador of France at Washington. The said Ambassador has translated into French the Unknown Eros of Coventry Patmore.

Claudel began life—intellectual life—as an honest Monist. Possessed by this Calvinism of Philosophy, he realised vividly the interplay of all creatures and their reactions to one another. His high poetic instincts led him on to the mysticism of the mind, less vague and specifically graver than that of Shelley, and here the French genius was never more valuable. He brooded on the nature of things and discovered for himself an Hegelian mystery, that every single reality connotes its opposite : motion connotes rest, and a starting-place as well as a winning-post; reality connotes nothingness; and can it be that there is something which is motion and rest in one, and an All-in-all which can contemplate and contain and actuate the Nothingness? So one Christmas afternoon he discovered how the Infinite had fallen in love with and embraced our nothingness, made it His very own; and from that hour Claudel may be said to have lived anew.