Long years have passed by since that day, and perhaps long years still
await me; but whatever be the duration of my life nothing will ever efface
the remembrance—not of the moment I have just described, for that moment
is always present, it can never become a memory of the past—but of the
effect which the sight of the earth, the sky, and the sea had on me when I
issued from the church where I had received so great a blessing.
Everything seemed to have assumed a new aspect, a new meaning, a more
glorious signification; for the torrent of happiness in my soul seemed
diffused over all nature! I no longer wished for anything. I had found
all. I was freed from all anxiety. Hope had become certitude—a certitude
more complete than can be derived from the surest of earthly things; for
great indeed is the certitude of that assurance which _nothing_ can
deprive us of, except _through our own will_!...
_Nothing_ could quench the source from which sprang my joy, or deprive me
of its benefits: _nothing_, for my will was henceforth absorbed, and, so
to speak, _lost_ in the most ardent love!
To love with strength, disinterestedness, and passion the worthiest object
on earth, and learn all at once we could not be deprived of it without the
consent of our own heart, would not this induce us to utter the word
_never_ with an absolute meaning that the things of this world do not
admit of? It was thus God gave me the grace to love, to feel sure of
loving always, sure of the impossibility of ever being deprived of the
object of my love!
The beauty of the natural world around me now seemed a mere ray of this
joy. Never had I found it so lovely. And yet (those whom I _alone_ address
now will understand this, however contradictory it may appear) I felt an
almost equal disgust for all created things, an ardent desire to renounce
everything, a profound contempt for all that had hitherto seemed worthy of
so much esteem. Wealth, honor, dress, display, luxury, even the beauty, so
uncertain, which I prized so much—they all lost their importance and
became worthless in my eyes, not through satiety, or a feeling of
melancholy, but through the disgust one naturally feels for the mediocre
after seeing the beautiful, and for the beautiful after seeing the
perfect!
On the other hand, in spite of this fountain of inexhaustible joy, I by no
means imagined I was released from suffering; and what was also strange,
perhaps, I did not desire to be. I already felt there was a lively,
poignant, and sometimes terrible suffering inherent in the divine love I
had just begun to experience. He who has described this love better than
any other human being, doubtless because he felt it in a greater degree;
he who more than six centuries ago wrote the following words: “Nothing is
stronger than love, nothing more generous, nothing more pleasant, nothing
fuller or better in heaven or earth.... When weary it is not tired, when
straitened is not constrained, when frightened is not disturbed, but like
a lively flame and a torch all on fire, it mounts upward and securely
passes through all opposition;”(154) he who uttered these and so many
other burning words, likewise said these: “There is no living in love
without some pain or sorrow.” I knew it, and my heart was as ready to
embrace the one as the other. As to the ordinary trials of life, it seemed
to me I had sufficient courage to encounter them all, and that henceforth
I should have nothing in the world to fear, nothing to complain of....
To the reader who comprehends me, and knows all this is perfectly true, I
need not say that the state I have just described, though a blessed and
rare one, has in all ages, as well as ours, been one to which a great
number of souls have arrived by slow but natural progression. When,
therefore, I speak of this as _miraculous_ and supernatural, I merely
apply the word to the sudden wonderful grace which shortened the way for
me, making me pass in an instant from a totally different frame of mind to
a plenitude of faith and happiness!
And now ... how did they who were much more closely interwoven with my
life than the natural world around me, appear in this new light? How did I
now regard them in my heart?—Lorenzo! Livia! Stella! Gilbert! What were
the feelings of my heart and soul towards them now that I was so suddenly
brought to see and feel what was clear and right?...
In order to express my sentiments with regard to them, I will employ an
illustration that may seem obscure, and yet I know no better way of making
myself understood. It seemed to me that all the pure, tender, legitimate,
and noble feelings of my heart found in this luminous flame a new and
powerful aliment, while all others were consumed by this flame as quickly
as pernicious weeds cast into a fiery furnace!
Nothing, therefore, was changed in my feelings towards Livia and Stella,
unless I loved them more tenderly than before, one seeming more than ever
an angel, and the other the dearest of friends!
As to Lorenzo, the change was great, sudden, and profound!... My affection
for him, which he had mortally wounded and extinguished, was now rekindled
at the divine source of all true love, and became equal to that I had felt
at the time of my brightest hopes. The wish I once so ardently felt seemed
now to be the only one worthy of occupying my mind. What did a little more
or less of human love matter to me now? As Livia had predicted, my heart
was satiated; I was rich, even if I did not possess the affection of a
single heart on earth. It was, therefore, no longer through a selfish
thirst for happiness I now wished to set his soul at liberty, but from a
desire a thousand times more ardent—so ardent that it seemed to become my
only passion!
And now, Gilbert! ... how shall I speak of him? How, in the light of this
divine flame, did the dangerous attachment, the enervating, subtle
affection that had so absorbed my mind, appear to me now? And those vague,
false hopes—those impossible dreams—those harrowing regrets? And my
foolish and culpable longing for his return?
All this was consumed like the pernicious weeds I have just spoken of, and
I distinctly saw the abyss on the edge of which I had been walking. I
turned away from the danger I had escaped with terror. I felt with
profound gratitude that I was saved! ... and like one who has escaped from
the perils of the sea, I looked back with horror on the waves that had so
recently threatened to engulf me.
This impression was so strong that it began to render the memory odious
that I so recently thought the only joy of my life—the joy I could not
make up my mind to deny myself. The miraculous effect of the divine mercy
had been in answer to the very essence of my prayer; the obstacle that
separated me from God had been completely rooted out of my heart. In this
respect, more than any other, I felt changed and transformed. But this
powerful impression was modified by degrees, and I was soon able to see
Gilbert in so clear and true a light as to think of him henceforth without
the least disturbance of mind. I now thought of his danger, and the
thought filled me with regret. I perceived my secret participation, the
primary, and often the only, cause of others’ faults, from which it is so
rare to be wholly exempt in such cases, and I prayed God to pardon me and
heal the wounds of his soul as perfectly as he had healed mine!
Perhaps I have dwelt too long on this event—the greatest, the only great
event of my life—and the effect it had on me in so many ways. But it was
necessary to describe the transfigured state of my soul in order to
explain what I still have to relate—this day having, thank heaven! set its
ineffaceable seal on every succeeding day of my life.