I remember the day when I was setting out on a journey, having left Paris slightly tipsy with wine of which a philosopher has told us that it provides us with momentary freedom, looking out from the carriage at the convex bosoms of the Sèvres hills, the river, the immense arch of the sky, I felt them rest lightly - simple paintings - on the orb of my eye which was opened wide, offering itself up to support further burdens [...] on its delicate surface. The circle of my gaze found itself insufficiently filled by the sphere of the horizon; everything of life that nature bestowed upon me through the days of summer seemed to me a rather paltry and brief puff of wind in comparison to the immense inhalations that were swelling my breast. Life was not outside of me in the world; it was inside of me. I was not lost in the universe; the universe was lost in my boundless heart where I amused myself by scornfully tossing it into a corner. Also too, at that moment, the idea that I would die one day, that the eternal force that was to be found in these hills, in this river, in this sunshine, would outlive me, and that I was nothing more than a speck of dust beneath its divine footsteps, that idea made me smile. How could I possibly endure for a shorter age than these things, how could they crush me with their power, when they were inside me, when it was the universe that was prisoner and lost in the bosom of my consciousness, just like these hills and this sun bathed sky that were resting on my eye? No doubt the artificial and vulgar intoxication whose rational frenzy I am evoking here can only provide a very imperfect idea of the inspiration that Mme de Noailles possesses. [...] In vain does Mme de Noailles sometimes tell us that she does not believe in the eternity of thought, and replacing the old beliefs with graceful fables [...], the philosophy to which she adheres and that she sometimes expresses directly in her verses, is contradicted or at least superceded by a higher philosophy that breaks free, whether she likes it or not, from her poetry. True she calls her book: "Resplendence", but if the universe makes her resplendent, she knows how to give back spark for spark all the lights that it pours forth upon her.