Perhaps it had been decided before; and who knows whether the struggle be not a mere simulacrum? If I push open to-day the door of the house wherein I am to meet the first smiles of a sorrow that shall know no end, I do these things for a longer time than one imagines. Of what avail to cultivate an ego on which we have so little influence? It is our star which it behoves us to watch. It is good or bad, pallid or puissant, and not by all the might of the sea can it be changed. Some there are who may confidently play with their star as one might play with a glass ball. They may throw it and hazard it where they list; faithfully will it ever return to their hands. They know full well that it cannot be broken. But there are many others who dare not even raise their eyes towards their star, without it detach itself from the firmament and fall in dust at their feet.... But it is dangerous to speak of the star, dangerous even to think of it; for it is often the sign that it is on the point of extinction.... We find ourselves here in the abysses of night, where we await what has to be. There is no longer question of free will, which we have left thousands of leagues below: we are in a region where the will itself is but destiny’s ripest fruit. We must not complain; something is already known to us, and we have discovered a few of the ways of fortune. We lie in wait like the birdcatcher studying the habits of migratory birds, and when an event is signalled on the horizon we know full well that it will not remain there alone, but that its brothers will flock in troops to the same spot. Vaguely have we learned that there are certain thoughts, certain souls, that attract events; that some beings there are who divert events in their flight, as there are others who cause them to congregate from the four quarters of the globe.