The same thing happens when human affections are shipwrecked in us, lose their object, no longer find anything to which they can attach themselves. In France, as in England and America, the habitual devotion of spinsters has long since been observed, though it often coincides with a certain pining away of the heart. In our times a virtuous unmarried woman is, so to speak, predestined to devotion; divine love is for her (on an average, of course) a necessary compensation. Remark also that old men are generally more inclined to devotion than young. There are, no doubt, a number of reasons for it: the approach of death, the enfeeblement of the body and of the intelligence, the increasing need for a support, etc.; but there exists also a more profound reason. The old man, always more isolated than the young, and deprived of the excitations of the sexual instinct, possesses a smaller outlet for his instinct for affection and for love. Thus there accumulates in him an amount of treasure which he is free to apply as to him seems best; well, the service of God is that which demands least effort, which is most appropriate to the natural indolence of the old, to their preoccupation with themselves; they become therefore devotees, partly out of egoism, partly out of a need for some disinterested occupation. A grain of incense burns in every heart, and when the perfume of it can no longer be given to the earth we let it mount to heaven. Note also that the loss of beloved beings, misfortunes of every sort, and irreparable infirmities all provoke an expansion of the heart toward God. In the Middle Ages unhappiness was frequently one of the most important factors of piety; when a great and unmerited misfortune happened to a man, the chances were that he would enter the Church or else become an atheist; it depended often on his strength of mind, his habits, and his education. When one strikes an animal it is equally possible that it may bite one or crouch at one’s feet. Every time the heart is violently bruised there comes an inevitable reaction; we must reply from within to the blows from without, and this reply is sometimes revolt and sometimes adoration. The feeble, the disinherited, the suffering, all those to whom misfortune has not left strength enough for rebellion, have but one resource: the sweet and consoling humility of divine love. Whoever does not love, or is not loved completely and sufficiently, on earth will always turn toward heaven: the proposition is as regular as the parallelogram of forces. [Sidenote: Power of mysticism a perversion of love.]