"And I go into the great absence, but with no mental reservations. I shall not conjure the superficial magics of Claudius Mamertinus; I have perfected them, but I shall use neither those nor my own. The great absence, as one speaks of the great desert, without water and without love! But the Egyptian woman lived there forty years with four tiny loaves of bread which she had bought at Jerusalem; she nibbled at them, when she was very hungry. I, too, shall gnaw at my memories, but not to excess, and without straining for grievous corporeal images. I wish to meditate in peace. Mark you, Sixtine, this is because of my greatness of soul, for I could have carried you off on my shoulders and thrown you into my cavern, where the bones of hyenas, dead of hunger, can be seen. You see that it is not cheerful. So I spare you this exile. Nevertheless, 'you should know what corporeal vision is and you will refrain, when you think of your absent friend, from thinking him really absent. You think of him, and he appears before you corporeally, since you are thinking of his body (and how think of him otherwise, since the body is the sign of his existence and humanity?) And he will rise up before you, and likewise, across all obstacles, you will go into his presence, and he will see you.' And the author of _De Statu Animae_ (he also wrote the _Pange, lingua_: he was not a fool), after reflecting, adds: 'Vision is the true function of the intelligent'; and 'the image of things is their true reality.' "No, I shall, indeed, content myself with little loaves of bread; you will not suffer from my familiarities. In his 'Monitories,' Thomas Aquinas says that too great familiarity begets scorn at the same time that it turns one aside from contemplation and fixes the mind on external things. "He gives the example of Saint Dominic who, having too affectionate friends at Toulouse, went to live at Carcassonne. "Well, I do not wish to scorn you under the vain pretext that you have fulfilled your womanly calling, and I wish to meditate in peace, for there remains nothing else for me to do. So, I leave you to your loves and I go to the great desert. Adieu."