In the silence of the cemeteries there are some flowers that kiss each other and to which, perhaps, from under the earth responds the quivering of certain bones; there are certain lips on our planet, which closely pressed against each other one day, which death cruelly separated and which a second death has reunited forever. And when we survive, it is because a new organism has been created in us, and today we are no longer what we were yesterday. The thoughts of the past, the limbs of the past, all that we were yesterday is dead, dead forever; from the withered trunk of our existence, science, duty, friendship, paternal or maternal or filial love cause a new branch to shoot forth, which reproduces the ancient tree; and the common passer-by, seeing the same leaves, the same flowers, the same fruits, believes that only one corpse is buried there--but he is in error. We can survive certain sorrows on one condition only: to accomplish the miracle of dying today in order to be born anew tomorrow with the same name, but with a new life. And for the honor of human nature, these survivors remain the faithful and silent priests of the vanished god, like those Peruvians who, on the summits of the Andes, amidst the eternal glaciers of the Sorata or of the Illimani, still worship the god of their fathers. To understand certain sorrows is the proof of a lofty mind; to have experienced them is the glory of a martyr which exalts and purifies us. I feel very sure that many who weep for love, either because their love is not returned or because they fear deception--if they have not already been deceived--or because of their bitter disappointment when they found that they had burned their incense to an idol of clay or a statue of marble, will repute my description exaggerated, yet it is nevertheless a pallid picture of a sorrow which pen of man will never be able to portray from nature, but succeed only in divining from afar. To many death, the absolute evil, in the presence of which every hope perishes, seems preferable to the torture that threatens life yet does not kill, which opens the wounds and hinders the work done by nature to heal them. I wish that these gentlemen may never have the opportunity of making the cruel comparison for themselves, of experiencing the effects of an assimilated anatomy of two great sorrows, one of which is termed death, the other desperation. If they truly love, may they die earlier than their beloved! This is the sweetest blessing that I can offer them from the pages of my book.