Reading: Science Fiction; nearly done with Firbank--laughed just once, towards the end of Valmouth, but frequently smirked and sometimes tittered. I've determined to set to music the poem on page sixty of Valmouth ("Le temps des lilas et le temps des roses/ Ne reviendra plus a` ce printemps-ci, Etc."). Which, no doubt, Faure and Debussy have already done--but I think I can make it pretty (giving it a natural, sweet, singable tune); which I am sure those sour, dry unromantics would not, could not, have done, out of their morbid Gallic fear of doing anything at all pleasant and obvious. Look at what Debussy, for example, did to Charles d'Orle'ans' "Le Temps a laisse' son Manteau/ De Vent de Froidure et de Pluie," with its fussy, anachronistic "swooshy" pianistic watery sounds in the accompaniment (cheap shot), and compare it to the ever so much more melodious, slightly jazzy [7/8 meter] little monodic jewel that I confected of it--with all the "effects," of wetness and beasts crying, coming directly out of the tune itself. Which do you think the father of Louis XII and sometime patron of Francois Villon would've preferred? I ask you.