I said these things to myself during that supreme night, and I said to myself, besides, that some day I would speak and show the truth to my brethren, the hearts of twenty years. I found a great lesson in my wasted youth, in my broken love; my entire being cried out: Why did you not remain at home, in Provence, among the tall grass, beneath the glowing sunbeams? There you would have increased in honor, in strength. But, when you came here to seek life and glory, why did you not keep from the mud and pollution of this great city? Did you not know that man has neither two youths nor two loves? You should have lived like a well-ordered young man amid your work, and you should have loved some pure and spotless creature, not Laurence. Those who accept without tears the life which I have led for a year past have no heart, those who weep as I have wept come out of that life with broken body and dying soul. The Laurences must be killed, then, as Jacques said, since they kill our flesh and our love. I am only a child who has suffered, I do not wish to preach here. But I show my empty breast, my wounded and bleeding body; I desire that my wounds may make the young men of my age tremble, and may arrest them on the edge of the gulf. To those who delight in brightness and purity I will say: "Take care, you are about to enter the gloom, the realm of temptation." To those whose hearts are asleep and who are indifferent in regard to evil I will say: "Since you cannot love, try at least to remain worthy and honest." The night was clear, I saw far into the blue sky. Marie, now stiffened, slept heavily; the sheet thrown over her had long folds, sharp and hard. I thought of the annihilation of the flesh, I thought that we had great need of faith, we who live in the hope of to-morrow and who know not what to-morrow may bring forth. If I had had a God in Heaven, whose protecting arm I had felt about me, I should not, perhaps, have yielded to the vertigo of a wretched passion. I should always have had consolations, even in the midst of my tears; I should have employed my excessive love in prayer, instead of not being able to bestow it upon any one and feeling it stifle me. I had abandoned myself, because I had faith in myself only and had lost all my strength. I do not regret having obeyed my reason, having lived in freedom, having had respect only for the true and the just. But, nevertheless, when the fever seizes upon me, when I tremble with weakness, I am filled with fear, I become a child; I would prefer to be controlled by the Divine will, to efface myself, to allow God to act in me and for me.