Can we indeed believe that no other being has this grandeur to any degree? Are we so sure that “a tree does not know it is miserable”? Even art, which may turn out to be the instrument of our redemption, is not certainly the lot of our race alone. Song and the dance triumph among the animals and often appear like the beautiful inventions of a gratuitous activity, with no other end than themselves and the emotions they give or interpret. In renunciation, perhaps, lies our distinction, the trait which stamps us and sets us apart. I say “perhaps,” because animals also offer us examples of abnegation. Sacrifice beautifies even their habits. With them, too, the individual sacrifices himself for the group, the hero sacrifices itself for the race. At the moment when I am writing these lines we are in autumn; a swarm of bees is dying of cold on a branch beside me. They are dying with a sort of resignation, in order that their hive, so poor in resources, may survive the winter. Why not share, then, with these humble victims, our most beautiful quality? Why refuse to possess something in common with them, since it is a virtue? Why cut ourselves off haughtily from the rest of life? Over and above this, the renunciation that has no particular or general motive of interest, the pure and absolute renunciation which is a heroic folly, is undoubtedly our business. I am not speaking now of the renunciation of the better religions, the renunciation that counts on celestial rewards, but of the renunciation which is an end in itself, which finds in itself its own sorrowful recompense. IX Can we ever forget, my friend, that woman who was the lesson of your youth, your counsellor and your example? She lived in that dark, low room where you so loved to go and to which you used to show me the way, a way that seemed to me that of veneration itself. Disillusionments, griefs, sickness and, without doubt, a great need for renunciation had gradually sequestered her in that unlovely place of refuge, encumbered with old books and full of the odor of dust. She seemed cut off from the world; but in the shadow of that retreat her eye sparkled so vivaciously, she spoke with so melodious a voice that the world pursued her who had abandoned it even into her retirement: the friendship of young people, that friendship which is so pure and spontaneous, was for her a constant testimony. This was the only thing she would not renounce, her only ornament, her last elegance, her possession. Year by year death came to snatch from her affection those of her own blood. Every sort of happiness withdrew from her as she retired into her abode, light itself she dreaded more and more, and more and more renounced. Every time we passed through her little door, so slow in opening, we had at first an insurmountable feeling of being suffocated, for we were still intoxicated with our radiant life, our destiny and our ambitions.