You don’t yet understand, my good friend, how all lonely souls, without knowing one another, without beholding one another’s face, without knowing one another’s names, journey together and lend one another mutual support. The others, those who are not lonely, talk about one another, offer one another their hands, congratulate one another, belaud and denigrate one another, chatter among themselves--and each one goes his own way. And they all fly from the sepulchre. You don’t belong to the coterie but to the battalion of free crusaders. Why do you hover round the walls of the coterie to hear what they are cackling about inside? No, my friend, no! When you pass close to a coterie, stop your ears, fling your word and go straight on, on to the sepulchre. And let the word that you fling vibrate with all your thirst, with all your hunger, with all your home-sickness, with all your love. I remember that unhappy letter that you wrote me when you were on the point of succumbing, of yielding, of joining the confraternity. I saw then how much your solitude weighed upon you, that solitude which must be your consolation and your strength. You had arrived at the most terrible and desolating state of all; you had approached the brink of the precipice of your perdition; you had come to doubt your solitude, you had come to believe that you were surrounded by companions. “May not this notion that I am alone,” you said, “be mere cavilling, the fruit of pride, of petulance, perhaps of madness? For when I am tranquil, I see myself companioned, I feel my hand warmly clasped, I hear voices of encouragement, words of sympathy, I receive all kinds of proofs that I am not alone--far from it.” And I saw you deceived and lost, I saw you flying from the sepulchre. No, you are not deceived in the accesses of your fever, in the agonies of your thirst, in the anguish of your hunger; you are alone, eternally alone. Not only are the bites that you feel really bites, but those that seem like kisses are bites too. Those who applaud you are hissing you, they want to stop you marching to the sepulchre when they shout “Forward!” Stop your ears. And, above all, beware of a terrible temptation--however much you may try to shake it off, it will return to you with the pertinacity of a fly--beware of the temptation to concern yourself with how you appear to others. Think only of how you appear to God, think only of the idea that God has of you. You are alone, much more alone than you imagine, and yet, even so, you have not arrived at absolute, utter, real solitude. Absolute, utter, real solitude consists in not being even with yourself. And you will not be really, utterly, absolutely alone until you have emptied yourself of yourself, by the side of the sepulchre. Holy Solitude! * * * * * All this I said to my friend, and he answered me, in a long letter, full of furious dismay, in these words: