I mean, as much as it hurts me to consider it, that the soul of Amélie could be turned away from her superior interests in such a way. And upon returning to the house, I prayed for her with all the sincerity of my heart.

 

As for the abstention of Jacques, that was due to other reasons, and a conversation that I had with him a short time afterwards made this clear.

3 May

 

The religious instruction of Gertrude has caused me to reread the Gospel with a new eye. It appears to me more and more that many of the notions that make up our Christian faith do not come from the words of Christ but rather from the commentaries of St. Paul.

 

This was the subject of the discussion that I just had with Jacques. He has a dry temperament, and his heart does not furnish enough food for his mind. He has become traditionalist and dogmatic. He reproaches me for choosing in the Christian doctrine “that which pleases me.” But I do not choose such and such words of Christ. It is simply that between Christ and St. Paul, I choose Christ. For fear of having to oppose either one of them, he refuses to disassociate one from the other and will not let himself feel a difference in inspiration from one or the other. He protests if I say to him that here I am listening to a man while there I am hearing God. The more he is logical, the more he persuades me of this: that he is not the least bit sensitive to the unique and divine accent of the slightest words of Christ.

 

I search through the Gospel, I searched in vain through the commandments and other writings… Many of these are from St. Paul. And what bothers Jacques is precisely that he cannot find this in the words of Christ. Souls like his believe themselves to be lost when they no longer feel they have guardians, ramps, and railings to support them. The more they are intolerant of liberty in others, the more they resign themselves and wish to obtain by constraint all that people are ready to accord them through love.

 

“But, my father,” he says to me, “I also wish for the happiness of souls.”

 

“No, my friend, what you want is their submission.”

 

“It is through submission that happiness is found.”

 

I let him have the last word because I don’t like to quibble. But I know very well that it undermines happiness by trying to obtain simply the effects of happiness, and if it is true to think that the loving soul rejoices in voluntary submission, nothing will separate one more from happiness than submission without love.

 

However, Jacques uses sound reasoning, and if it bothers me to see so much doctrinal rigidity in such a young mind, I certainly admire the quality of his arguments and the consistency of his logic. It often appears to me that I am younger than he is, younger today than I was yesterday, and I repeat these words,

 

“If you will not be like little children, you will not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

 

Is it betraying Christ, is it diminishing or profaning the Gospel to see in it only a method to arrive at a happy life? The state of joy, which pushes away doubts and the hardening of our hearts, is an obligatory state for a Christian. Each being is more or less capable of joy. Each being must reach out for joy. The mere smile of Gertrude teaches me more about this than all the lessons that I have taught her.

 

And these words of Christ are drawn up brightly before me. “If you were blind, you would not know sin.” Sin is what obscures the soul and what opposes joy. The perfect happiness of Gertrude, which resonates throughout her being, comes because she does not know sin. There is only light and love in her.

 

I placed into her vigilant hands the four Gospels, the Psalms, the Apocalypse, and the three Epistles of John so she can read things like, “God is the light and in him there is no darkness.” In his Gospel she can hear the Savior say, “I am the light of the world. He who is with me will not walk in darkness.”

 

I refused to give her the Epistles of Paul, for if, as a blind person, she does not know about sin, what would it serve to bother her by having her read, “Sin has gained new strength by the commandments,” (Romans,VII, 13) and all the dialectic that follows, as admirable as it might be?

8 May

Doctor Martins came yesterday from La Chaux-de-Fonds. He examined Gertrude for a long time with his ophthalmology instruments. He said he spoke to Gertrude about a certain Doctor Roux, a specialist from Lausanne, and he would report to him his observations. They both believe that Gertrude might be operable. But we agreed not to say anything to her about it until there was more certainty. Martins would come and inform me of the results of his consultation.