I fly from him in one book only to find him in another. I hear his
voice reading me even those pages which I discover without him. I care
only for what interests him, and my mind has taken the form of his to
such an extent, that I can distinguish one from the other no better
than I did at the time when I took pleasure in feeling they were one.
Sometimes I force myself to write badly in order to escape from the
rhythm of his phrases; but even to struggle against him is still to
be concerned with him. I have made a resolution to read nothing but
the Bible (perhaps the _Imitation_), and to write nothing more in this
book, except every evening the chief text of my reading.
* * * * *
There followed a kind of diary, in which the date of each day, starting
with July 1st, was accompanied by a text. I transcribe only those which
are accompanied by some commentary.
_20th July._
“Sell all that thou hast and give it to the poor.”
I understand that I ought to give to the poor this heart of mine which
belongs only to Jerome. And by so doing should I not teach him at the
same time to do likewise?... Lord, grant me this courage.
_24th July._
I have stopped reading the _Interior Consolation_. The old-fashioned
language greatly charmed me, but it was distracting, and the almost
pagan joy it gives me is far removed from the edification which I set
myself to get from it.
I have taken up the _Imitation_ again and not even in the Latin text,
which I was vain of understanding. I am glad that the translation in
which I read it should not even be signed. It is true that it is
Protestant, but “adapted to the use of all Christian communities,” says
the title.
“Oh, if thou wert sensible how much peace thou wouldest procure for
thyself and joy for others, by rightly ordering thyself, methinks thou
wouldest be more solicitous for thy spiritual progress!”
_10th August._
If I were to cry to Thee, my God, with the impulsive faith of a child
and with the heavenly tongues of angels....
All this comes to me, I know, not from Jerome, but from Thee.
Why, then, between Thee and me, dost Thou everywhere set his image?
_14th August._
Only two months more in which to complete my work ... Oh, Lord, grant
me Thy help!
_20th August._
I feel--I feel by my _unhappiness_ that the sacrifice is not
consummated in my heart. My God, grant that henceforth I owe to none
but Thee the joy that he alone used to give me.
_28th August._
How mediocre, and miserable is the virtue to which I attain! Do I then
exact too much from myself?... To suffer no more.
What cowardice makes me continually implore God for His strength? My
prayers now are nothing but complainings.
_29th August._
“Consider the lilies of the field ...”
This simple saying plunged me this morning into a sadness from which
nothing could distract me. I went out into the country and these words,
which I kept continually repeating to myself filled my heart and eyes
with tears. I contemplated the vast and empty plain where the labourer
was toiling, bent over his plough.... “The lilies of the field ...”
But, Lord, where are they...?
_16th September, 10 o’clock at night._
I have seen him again. He is here under this roof. I see the light from
his window shining on the grass. He is still up as I write these lines,
and perhaps he is thinking of me. He has not changed. He says so and I
feel it. Shall I be able to show myself to him such as I have resolved
to be, so that his love may disown me?
_24th September._
Oh, torturing conversation in which I succeeded in feigning
indifference--coldness, when my heart was fainting within me! Up till
now I had contented myself with avoiding him. This morning I was able
to believe that God would give me strength to be victorious and that to
slink for ever out of the combat was to prove myself a coward. Did I
triumph? Does Jerome love me a little less? Alas! I both hope and fear
it together. I have never loved him more.
* * * * *
And if it is Thy Will, Lord, that to save him from me I must compass my
own perdition, so be it.
“Enter into my heart and into my soul in order to bear in them my
sufferings and to continue to endure in me what remains to Thee to
suffer of Thy Passion.”
* * * * *
We spoke of Pascal.... What did I say? What shameful, foolish words?
I suffered even as I uttered them, but to-night I repent them as a
blasphemy. I turned again to the heavy volume of the _Pensées_, which
opened of itself at this passage in the letters to Mademoiselle de
Roannez:
“We do not feel our bonds as long as we follow willingly him who leads;
but as soon as we begin to resist and to draw away, then indeed we
suffer.”
* * * * *
These words affected me so personally that I did not have strength to
go on reading, but opening the book in another place I came across an
admirable passage which I did not know and which I have just copied out.
* * * * *
The first volume of the Journal came to an end here. No doubt the
next had been destroyed, for in the papers which Alissa left behind
the Journal did not begin again till three years later--still at
Fongueusemare--in September--a short time, that is to say, before our
last meeting.
The last volume begins with the sentences which follow.
_17th September._
My God, Thou knowest I have need of him to love Thee.
_20th September._
My God, give him to me so that I may give Thee my heart.
My God, let me see him only once more.
My God, I engage to give Thee my heart. Grant me what my love
beseeches. I will give what remains to me of life to Thee alone.
My God, forgive me this despicable prayer, but I cannot keep his name
from my lips nor forget the anguish of my heart.
My God, I cry to Thee. Do not forsake me in my distress.
_21st September._
“Whatever ye shall ask the Father in my name ...”
Lord, in Thy name, I dare not.
But though I no longer formulate my prayer, wilt Thou be the less
aware of the delirious longing of my heart?
_27th September._
Ever since the morning a great calm. Spent nearly the whole night in
meditation, in prayer. Suddenly I was conscious of a kind of luminous
peace like the imagination I had as a child of the Holy Ghost; it
seemed to wrap me round, to descend into me. I went to bed at once
fearing that my joy was due only to nervous exaltation. I went to sleep
fairly quickly without this felicity leaving me. It is still here this
morning in all its completeness. I have the certainty now that he will
come.
_30th September._
Jerome, my friend! you whom I still call brother, but whom I love
infinitely more than a brother ... How many times I have cried your
name in the beech copse. Every evening towards dusk I go out by the
little gate of the kitchen-garden and walk down the avenue where it is
already dark. If you were suddenly to answer me, if you were to appear
there from behind the stony bank round which I so eagerly seek you, or
if I were to see you in the distance, seated on the bench waiting for
me, my heart would not leap ... no! I am astonished at not seeing you.
_1st October._
Nothing yet. The sun has set in a sky of incomparable purity. I am
waiting. I know that soon I shall be sitting with him on this very
bench. I hear his voice already. I like it so much when he says my
name. He will be here! I shall put my hand in his hand. I shall let
my head lean on his shoulder. I shall breathe beside him. Yesterday
I brought out some of his letters with me to re-read, but I did not
look at them--I was too much taken up with the thought of him. I took
with me, too, the amethyst cross he used to like, and which I used to
wear one summer every evening as long as I did not want him to go. I
should like to give him this cross. For a long time past I have had a
dream--that he was married and I godmother to his first daughter, a
little Alissa, to whom I gave this ornament.... Why have I never dared
tell him?
_2nd October._
My soul to-day is as light and joyful as a bird would be that had made
its nest in the sky. For to-day he will come. I feel it! I know it!
I should like to proclaim it aloud to the world. I feel I must write
it here. I cannot hide my joy any longer. Even Robert, who is usually
so inattentive and indifferent to what concerns me, noticed it. His
questions embarrassed me and I did not know what to answer. How shall I
be able to wait till this evening?...
Some kind of strange transparent bandage over my eyes seems to show
me his image everywhere--his image magnified, and all love’s rays are
concentrated on a single burning spot in my heart.
Oh! how this waiting tires me!
Lord, unclose for me one moment the wide gateways of gladness.
_3rd October._
All is over. Alas! he has slipped out of my arms like a shadow. He was
here! He was here! I feel him still. I call him. My hands, my lips seek
him in vain in the night....
* * * * *
I can neither pray nor sleep. I went out again into the dark garden.
I was afraid--in my room--everywhere in the house--I was afraid. My
anguish brought me once more to the door behind which I had left him.
I opened it with a mad hope that he might have come back. I called. I
groped in the darkness. I have come in again to write to him. I cannot
accept my grief.
* * * * *
What has happened? What did I say to him? What did I do? Why do I
always want to exaggerate my virtue to him? What can be the worth of a
virtue which my whole heart denies? I was secretly false to the words
which God set upon my lips. In spite of all that my heart was bursting
with, I could bring nothing out. Jerome! Jerome, my unhappy friend in
whose presence my heart bleeds and in whose absence I perish, believe
nothing of all I said to you just now, but the words spoken by my love.
* * * * *
Tore up my letter, then wrote again.... Here is the dawn, grey, wet
with tears, as sad as my thoughts. I hear the first sounds of the farm
and everything that was sleeping re-awakens to life.... “Arise, now.
The hour is at hand....”
My letter shall not go.
_5th October._
Oh, jealous God, who hast despoiled me, take Thou possession of my
heart. All warmth henceforth has forsaken it; nothing will touch it
more. Help me to triumph over the melancholy remnant of myself. This
house, this garden encourage my love intolerably. I must fly to some
place where I shall see none but Thee.
* * * * *
Thou wilt help me to bestow upon Thy poor what fortune I possessed; let
me leave Fongueusemare, which I cannot dispose of easily, to Robert.
I have made my will, it is true, but I am ignorant of the necessary
formalities and yesterday I could not talk to the lawyer properly, as I
was afraid he might suspect the decision I had taken and warn Juliette
and Robert. I will finish this business in Paris.
_10th October._
Arrived here so tired that I was obliged to stay in bed the first
two days. The doctor, who was sent for against my will, speaks of an
operation which he considers necessary. What is the use of objecting?
But I easily made him believe that I was frightened at the idea of an
operation and preferred waiting till I had “regained my strength a
little.”
I have managed to conceal my name and address. I have deposited enough
money with the management of the house for them to make no difficulty
about taking me in and keeping me for as long as God shall continue to
think it necessary.
I like this room. The walls need no other decoration than their perfect
cleanliness. I was quite astonished to feel almost joyful. The reason
is that I expect nothing more from life--that I must be content now
with God, and His love is sweet only if it fills to completion whatever
space there is within us....
* * * * *
The only book I have brought with me is the Bible; but to-day there
sounded in me louder than any words I find there, this wild and
passionate sob of Pascal’s:
“Whatever is not God cannot satisfy my longing.”
Oh! too human joy, that my imprudent heart desired ... Was it to wring
this cry from me, Lord, that Thou hast thus bereft me?
_12th October._
Thy Kingdom come! May it come in me; so that Thou alone mayest reign
over me and reign over the whole of me. I will no longer grudge Thee my
heart.
Though I am as tired as if I were very old, my soul keeps a strange
childishness. I am still the little girl, who could not go to sleep
before everything in her room was tidy and the clothes she had taken
off neatly folded beside her bed.... That is how I should like to get
ready to die.
_13th October._
Re-read my journal before destroying it. “It is unworthy of noble
natures to spread round them the disturbance they feel.” It is, I
think, Clotilde de Vaux who says this so finely.
Just as I was going to throw this journal into the fire, I felt a
kind of warning which held me back. It seemed to me that it no longer
belonged to me, that I had no right to deprive Jerome of it, that I
had never written it except for him. My anxieties, my doubts seem
to me now so foolish that I can no longer attach any importance to
them, or believe that they will disturb Jerome. My God, grant that he
may at times catch in these lines the unskilled accent of a heart,
passionately desirous of urging him to those heights of virtue which I
myself despaired of reaching.
“My God, lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”
_15th October._
“Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy ...”
Above human joy and beyond all suffering, yes, I foresee that radiant
joy. The “rock that is higher than I” bears, I know, the name of
happiness ... I understand that my whole life has been vain, except
in so far as it culminates in happiness.... Ah! Lord, but Thy promise
to the pure and renouncing soul was this: “Blessed _from henceforth_”
said Thy holy word, “Blessed are they which die in the Lord from
henceforth.” Must I wait until I die? This is the point where my faith
wavers. Lord! I cry unto Thee with all my strength. I am in the night!
I am waiting for the dawn. I cry unto Thee with a crying that wastes me
to death. Come and slake the thirst of my heart. It is now, at once,
that I thirst for happiness.... Or ought I to persuade myself that I
have it? And as the pipe of the impatient bird before daybreak calls
rather than heralds the light, ought I to sing, without waiting for the
night to dwindle?
_16th October._
Jerome, I wish I could teach you perfect joy.
* * * * *
This morning I was shattered by a fit of sickness. And afterwards I
felt so weak that for a moment I hoped I was going to die. But no;
first a great calm fell upon my whole being; then a pang of anguish
pierced me, a shudder of my flesh and soul; it was like the sudden and
disenchanting _illumination_ of my life. It seemed to me that I saw for
the first time the walls of my room in their atrocious bareness. I was
seized with fear. Even now I am writing to reassure myself, to calm
myself. Oh Lord! may I reach the end without blasphemy!