Above all do we know that certain ideas are fraught with extreme danger; that do we but for an instant deem ourselves in safety, this alone suffices to draw down the thunderbolt; we know that happiness creates a void, into which tears will speedily be hurled. After a time, too, we learn something of the preferences of events. It is soon borne home to us that if we take a few steps along the path of life by the side of this one of our brothers, the ways of fortune will no longer be the same, whereas, with this other, our existence will encounter unvarying events, coming in regular order. We feel that some beings there are who protect in the unknown, others who drag us into danger there; we feel that there are some who awaken the future, others who lull it into slumber. We suspect, further, that things at their birth are but feeble, that they draw their force from within us, and that, in every adventure, there is a brief moment when our instinct warns us that we are still the lords of destiny. In fine, there are some who dare assert that we can learn to be happy, that, as we become better, so do we meet men of loftier mind; that a man who is good attracts, with irresistible force, events as good as he, and that, in a beautiful soul, the saddest fortune is transformed into beauty.... Indeed, is it not within the knowledge of us all that goodness beckons to goodness, and that those for whom we devote ourselves are always the same; that they are always the same, those whom we betray? When the same sorrow knocks at two adjoining doors, at the houses of the just and the unjust, will its method of action be identical in both? If you are pure, will not your misfortunes be pure? To have known how to change the past into a few saddened smiles—is this not to master the future? And does it not seem that, even in the inevitable, there is something we can keep back? Do not great hazards lie dormant that a too sudden movement of ours may awaken on the horizon; and would this misfortune have befallen you to-day, but for the thoughts that this morning kept too noisy festival in your soul? Is this all that our wisdom has been able to glean in the darkness? Who would dare affirm that in these regions there be more substantial truths? In the meanwhile, let us learn how to smile, let us learn how to weep, in the silence of humblest kindliness. Slowly there rises above these things the shrouded face of the destiny of to-day. Of the veil that formerly covered it, a minute corner has been lifted, and there, where the veil is not, do we recognise, to our disquiet, on the one side, _the power of those who live not yet_, on the other, _the power of the dead_. The mystery has again been shifted further from us—that is all. We have enlarged the icy hand of destiny; and we find that, in its shadow, the hands of our ancestors are clasped by the hands of our sons yet unborn. One act there was that we deemed the sanctuary of all our