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March 19, 1915

I WENT to Chartier to lunch and had a maquereau grillé and épinards à la crême. It was very strange to be there alone. I felt that I was a tiny little girl and standing on a chair looking into an aquarium. It was not a sad feeling, only strange and a bit ‘femmeseuleish.’ As I came out it began to snow. A wind like a carving knife cut through the streets, and everybody began to run. So did I—into a café, and there I sat and drank a cup of hot black coffee. Then for the first time I felt in Paris.

It was a little café and hideous, with a black marble top to the counter, garni with lozenges of white and orange. Chauffeurs and their wives and fat men with immense photographic apparatus sat in it. And a white fox-terrier bitch, thin and eager, ran among the tables. Against the window beat a dirty French flag, fraying out on the wind and then flapping on the glass. Does black coffee make you drunk, do you think? I felt quite enivrée [The word is circled with a line and the following remark written in: “Oh, I won't do this: it's like George Moore. Don't be cross.”] and could have sat three years, smoking and sipping and thinking and watching the flakes of snow. And then you know the strange silence that falls upon your heart—the same silence that comes one minute before the curtain rises. I felt that and knew that I should write here. I wish that you would write a poem about that silence some time. It is so peculiar. It is a kind of dying before the new breath is blown into you. As I write, I can almost see the poem you will make—I see the Lord alighting upon the breast of the man and He is very fierce. (Are you laughing at me?)

So after this intense emotion I dashed out of the café, bought some oranges and a packet of rusks and went back to the hotel. Me voici! The garçon has just polished the handles of the door; they are winking and smelling somethink horrible. The sky is still full of snow, but everything is clear to see—the trees against the tall houses, so rich and so fine, and on the grey streets the shiny black hats of the cabmen are like blobs of Lawrence's paint. It's very quiet. A bird chirrups, a man in wooden shoes goes by. Now I shall start working.