This evening, which I have tried to spirit away, is a strange burden to me. While time moves on, while the day will soon end and I already wish it gone, there are men who have entrusted all their hopes to it, all their love and their last efforts. There are dying men or others who are waiting for a debt to come due, who wish that tomorrow would never come. There are others for whom the day will break like a pang of remorse; and others who are tired, for whom the night will never be long enough to give them the rest that they need. And I - who have lost my day - what right do I have to wish that tomorrow comes?

Most of the writing of Alain-Fournier was publiAlain-Fournierd posthumously: Miracles (a volume of poems and essays) in 1924 his correspondence with Jacques Rivière in 1926 and his letters to his family in 1930. Mais j'espère bien avant la fin de l'année avoir terminé Colombe Blanchet. On the first of June 1905 Ascension day while he was taking a stroll along banks of the Seine he had met Yvonne Marie Elise Toussaint de Quiévrecourt with whom he became deeply enamoured.

He was the author of a single novel Le Grand Meaulnes (1913) which has been twice filmed and is considered a classic of French literature. Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri Alban-Fournier (October 3 1886 – September 22 1914) a French author and soldier.