The Yellow Book, Volume I, April 1894
                                                                                                             From the collection of the author

After much soul-searching and thanks in large part to your very kind and generous and unconditional encouragement, I realized I could cast fate to the winds and embark on this new project of mine that by its very nature precedes 1904.  I could, as a matter of fact, and as you so rightly pointed out, do anything I wanted to, couldn't I?  Perhaps even more importantly, it finally occurred to me that in order to do so, I don't have to go anywhere.  I can do this right here, right now.  I don't have to set up a new site -- I already have one. And obviously, since I own this address, why go and spend good money elsewhere?  Especially these days, when any opportunity to cut corners, be frugal and save a penny or two is hardly to be dismissed. 

This latter point I can tell you is something I have been attempting to impress upon my dear young friend Didier who stopped by just the other day to pick up another package from his aged doting aunt in Marseilles.  Why he is still reluctant to update the old lady on his current whereabouts is probably not my concern -- Didier says she thinks I have a nicer address and he doesn't want to disappoint her, but I try to tell him that where he's living now, with his friends at the beach, would surely impress someone who's lived out her life in a port city, but the boy gets glum whenever I try to suggest things to him, no matter how delicately, and so I decided not to pursue the matter just now.  

However, while he was in the kitchen helping himself to an early lunch -- it seems he is always hungry, although he never appears to gain an ounce of anything but muscle -- I could not help noticing the rather newish-looking Ferrari F430 parked out front in the red zone.  I have warned Didier in the past about borrowing his friend's possessions, sometimes expensive clothes and sunglasses but occcasionally their cars, yet for some inexplicable reason the language barrier always seems to get in the way.  To borrow ("Emprunter quelque chose") is quite a different thing, I try to explain, from being given a gift (cadeau) although gift or present is precisely what he insists the item in question happens to be, even including, I might add, the beach house in Malibu.  I fail to see how one can possibly confuse the two, yet the young man refuses to accept the notion that cars and houses are almost never presents.  On loan, perhaps.  Didier's view is that he is given things because he has a gift for doing something (avoir un don pour faire quelque chose) which is, as you can easily see, not quite the same thing at all, nor does it begin to explain the shiny new Ferrari he's driving, but later, after he's had his lunch and been given permission to take a shower and is standing there disrobed, asking to borrow a t-shirt, I don't think twice about whether I'll get it back, such are his powers of persuasion.

"Pourquoi jaune -- why is the book called yellow?" he asks, finding my copy of Volume I on the bedside table and beginning to leaf through it without (I hope desperately) cracking the slightly tender spine.  "Doucement," I whisper.  Gently.  Then, encouraged that he is taking an interest in my work, I attempt to explain that the books of that time period from France which came in yellow wrappers were understood to be -- I searched for the right word -- "of adult content."

His interest piqued, he stretches out and makes himself comfortable on the bed, and peruses the volume with renewed interest.  "Pornographie?"

Since the first story in the first volume is "The Death of the Lion," by Henry James, one can hardly say the subject matter qualifies as pornographic, except in the most elusive of ways, so I hesitate.   Which as you might imagine makes Didier think I'm withholding information from him, which, given his youth and his natural desire to rise to any challenge, only incites him to devilish behavior.  He grins lasciviously and reaches out his hand, as if imploring me to tell him the truth.  "Dites moi," he says.  Tell me everything.