But no clock will ever do more than merely mark our hours of purest pain! Will I be carried off, like a child, to play in paradise, forgetting all my misfortune!
Quick: are there other lives? —It’s impossible to sleep surrounded by riches. Riches are supremely public. Only divine love grants the keys to science. I see that nature is only a spectacle of goodness. Farewell chimeras, ideals, mistakes.
The angels’ prudent songs rise from the ship of souls: divine love. —Two loves! I may die of earthly love, or of devotion. I’ve left souls behind whose suffering will swell with my departure! You pluck me from the shipwreck; are those who remain not my friends?
Save them!
Reason is born within me. The world is good. I bless life. I will love my brothers. These are no longer idle promises of youth, nor a hope of evading old age and death. God is my strength. I praise God.
Boredom is no longer my bride. I know these passions and disasters too well—the rages, the debauches, the madness—my burden lifts. Let us soberly consider the depth of my innocence.
I can no longer find consolation in being beaten. There is no chance of a honeymoon when Jesus Christ is your father-in-law.
I’m no prisoner of reason. I said: God. I want salvation to bring freedom: what do I do? I’ve lost my taste for frivolity. Nor do I need devotion or divine love. I don’t repent the age of sensitive hearts. Contempt and charity have their place: I reserve mine for the top of this angelic ladder of common sense.
As for pre-existing happiness, whether domestic or not … no: I just can’t. I’m too exhausted, too weak. Life blossoms with work, an old truth: my life isn’t sufficiently substantial, it flies away, floats far above the bustle, over the focal point of the world.
What an old maid I’m becoming, not even courageous enough to love death!
If only God gave me heavenly, aerial calm, and the power of prayer—like ancient saints. —Saints! What strength! The anchorites were artists abandoned by the world.
Unending farce! My innocence leaves me in tears. Life is the farce we lead.
Enough! Here’s punishment! —March!
Ah! How my lungs burn, how my temples stew! Night rolls in my eyes from all this sun! The heart … The limbs …
Where are we going? To war? I’m weak! The troops advance. Tools, weapons … Time …!
Shoot! Shoot me! I’m over here! Or I’ll surrender … —Cowards! —I’ll kill myself! I’ll throw myself under a horse!
Ah …!
—I’ll get used to it.
That’s the French thing to do. That’s the path of honor.
I swallowed a gollup of poison. —May the advice I received be thrice blessed! —My gut burned. The violence of the venom wracked my limbs, left me deformed, threw me to the ground. I die of thirst, suffocate, can’t even cry out.
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