IV

The very rich man owns several estates. There is always one that he

prefers, that he frequents and cultivates by choice. There are others

where he goes only from time to time, at the solicitation of some state

of his soul which inclines him to seek, for a period, the mountains, or

the ocean, or the open country. There are some, finally, which he does

not love at all but of which, nevertheless, he will not dispossess

himself because they are part of his fortune.

It is so with you who possess a family, friends, comrades, and

adversaries. It is so with you who are able to draw, without let

or hindrance, from the immense well of humankind. You must refuse

nothing; you must accept everything, find out the value of everything,

store everything away. The world of men is a rich patrimony, the

exploitation of which is expressly confided to you. You must not be a

bad administrator, you must make all your land bring forth its fruit.

Choose every day what is necessary to you, for you are the master.

You must know, besides, how to accept the inevitable and take chances,

for you are nothing but a man.

Construct a scale, a clear, harmonious keyboard. Like an organist you

must know the right moment to pull the stop of the oboe and unloose

the thunder of the bass. The pipes are not at fault: it is for you

to become a good musician. The face of Guillaumin suits you in the

morning, and his ideas rejuvenate you like fresh water. The eloquence

of Maurin is like a tonic in your hours of recreation. But there are

desolate evenings when what you undoubtedly need is the deep voice of

Cauchois and his affectionate silence.

V

In spite of the legendary ages, in spite of the religions, in spite

of the poets, in spite of the marvelous traditions and, above all, in

spite of our own deepest aspirations, we must unquestionably abandon

the hope of an occult correspondence between souls.

It is a renunciation that it is hard to admit. Every day events envelop

us that seem to revive the vanished perfume of mystery. Our reason is

in no haste to dissipate these clouds, to pierce these appearances: too

well they soothe the irritating need of not being quite solitary in the

interior of ourselves, of not being quite exiles in an inaccessible

desert.

That nothing outside our senses can reveal to us the proximity of a

beloved person, the danger that is approaching him, the death that is

coming to clasp him, is an extremity to which we find ourselves reduced

without ever submissively making up our minds to it.

A few courageous men have halted before this mountain and undertaken to

lift it. Let us leave them toiling in the shadow; let us aid them, if

not by our effort, at least by our silence, and wait.

Let us wait, but let us not cease to go forth to other battles. The

unknown never fails us. And as for what we shall choose, there is

so much in the unknown to allure us, to enchant us! If we give up

surmounting one obstacle another will always rise before our feet. From

obstacle to obstacle we shall always be led to the foot of the same

wall. We shall consume our whole life in the struggle, knowing that the

very interest of life lies in that struggle and in those obstacles.

Now and then, detached by great efforts of the pickaxe and the mattock,

a fragment of the somber mountain rolls at our feet. We stop it with

rapture, we examine it, we lift it with a sort of sadness, in order to

try its weight. There is no victory that demands so great a price or

seems to us more desolate. It is as if we roused ourselves to a frenzy

to destroy the unknown in order that our success might fill us with

bitterness. Happily, the unknown is always there.

I find myself alone with the person who of all the world is the closest

to me, the best loved, the most perfectly chosen. The silence exhales a

light perfume, a unique perfume that seems that of our kindred souls.

Oh! how we should like to believe that the essences of our beings,

delivered at last, might communicate and unite with each other in the

intermediate space, in the impassable abyss!

At this very moment we surprise in one another’s eyes a common

thought. Simultaneously, it escapes our lips with a sort of rapturous

precipitancy, as if we were afraid of not arriving at exactly the same

moment at the _rendez-vous_, as if we wished, with the harmonious

precision of a well-rehearsed duet, to confess together some matchless

certainty.

We are happy, filled with astonishment.... But I am not deceived.

I do not yet hold it, palpitating, for good and all, between my

fingers, the proof that has been so long sought for. Not yet, this day,

have I met face to face either God or the immortal soul.

Only too well I know that some slight sound, some rhythm outside us,

the beating of a bird’s wing, the boring of an insect in the old wood

of the furniture, the sigh of the wind under the door,--that it is one

of these things which has suddenly set our souls in tune, awakened the

echoes of affinity in the abysses of our two separate selves. We have

so many memories in common, we have so carefully matched our tastes,

we have so well unified our material world and tried to blend even our

futures together that the very touch of the violinist’s bow suffices to

make us vibrate in harmony.

But there must be the touch of the bow, there must be the perfume,

so faint that one experiences its suggestions without being sure of

its presence; perhaps there is necessary only one of those obscure

phenomena which pass the limit of our senses in the twilight where our

inadequate organs can only gropingly divine the world.

This is our meager certainty. Very well! Let us not reject it in our

spite; for it has its depth, its beauty. We must make it our own, force

it to enrich us.

Where the exercise of the intelligence seems to result in the fatal

imprisonment of the soul within itself, love enables us to see how

the soul can reach beyond its own limits into time and space. In vain

does the intelligence prove to us that all this is only an illusion.

That illusion is beautiful; let us make up our minds to give it shape.

Through its very longings to escape from its confines, the soul may

perhaps succeed in breaking them, and it is to love without a doubt

that it will owe the miracle of its deliverance.

We possess only an imperfect means of communion. So be it! Let us labor

tenderly to perfect that means. It is thus that the creators of science

and industry labor, and we must admit that their stubbornness has

succeeded in making a very great evil out of a small one. Let us not be

less ingenious! This sinister progress ought to give us encouragement:

moral civilization deserves as much care as the other sort.

With our brothers, our wives, our friends, let us freely seek to have

so many things in common, let us strive so passionately to understand

one another, that our thoughts, ceaselessly pressing toward this goal,

may continually experience the sense of infinity and eternity.

There lies our path; if it urges us to possess the largest portion we

can of the human world, let us first begin by intimately possessing

what we love. This possession I am sure is the only real one. They

knew it very well, those desperate men who have loved fiercely the

mere bodies of women without ever receiving the real gift that can be

yielded in a glance, from a distance, with the swiftness of lightning.