The Song of the Fireplace

It’s God’s shirt that is burning or, if you like it any better, his beard.

Fires in a fireplace are more and more infrequent, at least where we are, and for that reason too they are all the more precious to us.

At one time or another, there is always a friend or relative who can take advantage of a fire to visit us or sound off.

Wood fires always have something to tell us. The one giving me my excuse now for a flight of poetic fancy speaks to me of the past, of war, of the Resistance.

It insists on my not forgetting the Haute-Savoie, Vercors, Mont Mouchet, where fires of logs and dead leaves strengthened and warmed our will to keep fighting on to victory.

Fires in a fireplace always lead us back to the essential, their warmth has nothing in common with the warmth produced by electric power. God sometimes speaks above a small candle-flame, but rarely in light from an electric bulb.

Let’s leave it at that.