A thousand thoughts wandered through my brain. I thought how much history it had taken to make what I saw possible; Judaea, Egypt, Greece, Germany, Gaul; all the centuries from Moses to Napoleon, and all the zones from Batavia to Guiana, had united in the formation of this gathering. The industry, the science, the art, the geography, the commerce, the religion of the whole human race, are repeated in every human combination; and what we see before our own eyes at any given moment is inexplicable without reference to all that has ever been. This interlacing of the ten thousand threads which necessity weaves into the production of one single phenomenon is a stupefying thought. One feels one’s self in the presence of law itself--allowed a glimpse of the mysterious workshop of nature. The ephemeral perceives the eternal. What matters the brevity of the individual span, seeing that the generations, the centuries, and the worlds themselves are but occupied forever with the ceaseless reproduction of the hymn of life, in all the hundred thousand modes and variations which make up the universal symphony? The motive is always the same; the monad has but one law: all truths are but the variation of one single truth. The universe represents the infinite wealth of the Spirit seeking in vain to exhaust all possibilities, and the goodness of the Creator, who would fain share with the created all that sleeps within the limbo of Omnipotence. To contemplate and adore, to receive and give back, to have uttered one’s note and moved one’s grain of sand, is all which is expected from such insects as we are; it is enough to give motive and meaning to our fugitive apparition in existence.... After the concert was over the paved esplanade behind the hotels and the two roads leading to the Hague were alive with people. One might have fancied one’s self upon one of the great Parisian boulevards just when the theaters are emptying themselves--there were so many carriages, omnibuses, and cabs. Then, when the human tumult had disappeared, the peace of the starry heaven shone out resplendent, and the dreamy glimmer of the Milky Way was only answered by the distant murmur of the ocean. _Later_.--What is it which has always come between real life and me? What glass screen has, as it were, interposed itself between me and the enjoyment, the possession, the contact of things, leaving me only the role of the looker-on? False shame, no doubt. I have been ashamed to desire. Fatal result of timidity, aggravated by intellectual delusion! This renunciation beforehand of all natural ambitions, this systematic putting aside of all longings and all desires, has perhaps been false in idea; it has been too like a foolish, self-inflicted mutilation. Fear, too, has had a large share in it-- “La peur de ce que j’aime est ma fatalité.”