What frightful upheaval has taken place in my soul of late! who has transformed my blood and changed it to venom? O monstrous thought, that puttest forth thy pale green twigs and umbels of hemlock in the glacial shadow of my heart, what poisoned wind deposited there the seed from which thou didst spring? This, then, was what was in store for me, this is the end of all the roads that I so desperately attempted!--O fate, how thou dost mock at me!--All those upward flights of the eagle toward the sun, those pure flames aspiring to reach the sky, that divine melancholy, that profound, restrained passion, that worship of beauty, that refined and curious fancy, that unquenchable and ever-rising flood from the interior fountain, that ecstasy borne upon wings always spread, that reverie blooming brighter than the hawthorn in May--all the poesy of my youth, all those beautiful and rare gifts were destined to serve no other purpose than to place me beneath the lowest of mankind. I longed to love.--I went about like a madman, calling and invoking love;--I writhed in frenzy because of my feeling of helplessness; I set my blood on fire, I dragged my body about in the gutters of debauchery;--I strained to my arid heart until I almost stifled her, a woman, young and beautiful, who loved me.--I ran after the passion that avoided me. I prostituted myself, and I acted like a virgin who should venture into an evil place, hoping to find a lover among those whom depravity led thither, instead of waiting patiently, in dignified, silent retirement, until the angel whom God has set aside for me should appear in a radiant penumbra, a heavenly flower in her hand. All these years that I have wasted in puerile agitation, in running hither and thither, in seeking to force nature and time, I should have passed in silence and meditation, in trying to make myself worthy to be loved;--that would have been wisely done;--but I had scales over my eyes and I marched straight to the precipice. I already have one foot suspended over the void, and I believe that I shall soon lift the other. It is useless for me to resist, I feel that I must roll to the bottom of this new abyss that has opened within me. Yes, it was thus that I imagined love. I feel now what I had dreamed.--Yes, there are the delightful yet terrible sleepless nights when the roses were thistles and the thistles roses; there are the sweet misery and the miserable joy, the ineffable trouble that encompasses you in a golden cloud and makes objects waver before your eyes as drunkenness does, the ringing in the ears in which you always hear the last syllable of the loved one's name, the pallor, the flushes, the sudden shivering, the burning and freezing perspiration;--all those are there; the poets do not lie.