I am quite willing to bear, but I do not wish to forbear. I do not wish not to meet grace halfway, not to seek for it in the night flooded with frosty perfumes, in the tossing forest where two interlocked branches groan through the long hours, on the plateau haunted with thistles that labor with feverish piety to perpetuate their innumerable lineage. I ask only to be allowed to interrogate the earth like those who seek minerals and water-courses, and to experience every morning the green ascent of the spring-time over the rocky slopes. I do not know by what path joy will come; I ask only to be permitted, none the less, to go to meet it, for truly I cannot sit here by this mile-post at the cross-roads, and placidly await it. One joy has come to me during the war, one that is undoubtedly the greatest joy of my life: that of having a child. My reason did not revolt at it, it did not dare to tell me that it was foolhardy to desire a child at a time when the human world was left without defense against confusion, disorder and crime. Yes, I rejoiced to have a man-child born to me now when the future of men seems to be corrupted for long years to come. I even hailed the child as a savior. You see, the paths of joy are as unknown to us as those of grace. I shall not forbear, therefore, and when I feel my heart bleeding from an unjust wound I shall go with respectful steps and recover myself in the world of solitude. I shall not ask in the name of justice, I shall not insist, I shall not importune; I shall wait until it manifests itself and sets me free, I shall wait until at last it bestows upon me the grace which, like a fine sap, like mother’s milk, it always contains. Solitude! I can still conquer it among a hundred thousand chattering companions; I know how to sing to myself little songs that surround me with the silence of the steppes. I will go back again to the ravine where, the whole summer long, a blackbird I know of whistles that same liquid song that grows purer and more perfect from week to week. Ten notes are his whole career and his reason for being. Perhaps on a day that music will be just what my soul needs to recover its flight, like a stranded bark which a lazy wave has just set floating. I will go back to the spots where I have been happy, and I do not think this will be very imprudent; for, like the perfume a woman leaves in her garments, like a drop of wine in the bottom of a glass, a little happiness often remains attached to things. I shall go out again behind the hamlet, where I know that every morning a couple of turtle-doves mingle a plaint that secretly cuts the silence, hollows it with a melodious tunnel. And I shall stretch myself out there, my face to the sky, like a well-exposed vine that longs to ripen some fine fruit.