Time! A strange thought has come into my head. How many fractional names has the weak sense of man invented for the description of an infinitely small particle of time out of the infinitely large circle of eternity! Years, months, days, hours, minutes! God has nothing of all this: he has not even evening nor morrow. With him all this has united itself into one eternal _now_!... Shall we ever behold this ocean in which we have hitherto been drowning? But I ask, to what end will all this serve man? Can it be for the satisfaction of an idle curiosity? No! the knowledge of truth, i.e. the All-knowing Goodness, does the soul of the reflecting man thirst after. It wishes to draw a full cup from the fountain of light which falls on it from time to time in a fine dew! And I shall imbibe it. The secret fear of death melts like snow before the beam of such a hope. I shall draw from it. My real love for my fellow-creatures is a security for it. The leaden ways of error will fall asunder before a few tears of repentance, and I shall lay down my heart as an expiating sacrifice before the judgment-seat which will have no terrors for me! It is wonderful, my beloved--hardly do I look at the mountains, the sea, the sky, ... but a solemn but inexpressibly sweet feeling o'er-burthens and expands my heart. Thoughts of you mingle with it; and, as in dreams, your form flits before me. Is this a foretaste of earthly bliss, which I have only known by name, or a foreboding of ... etern ...? O dearest, best, angelic soul, one look of yours and I am cured of dreaming! How happy am I that I can now say with assurance--_au revoir_! CHAPTER XI.