For some day, across your stagnant life, a gust of wind will blow. Those
beautiful trees that you water with the stream of oblivion, Providence
will destroy; you will be reduced to despair, messieurs the impassive,
there will be tears in your eyes. I will not say that your mistresses
will deceive you; that would not grieve you so much as the loss of your
horse; but I do tell you that you will lose on the Bourse; your moneyed
tranquillity, your golden happiness are in the care of a banker who may
fail; in short I tell you, all frozen as you are, you are capable of
loving something; some fiber of your being will be torn and you will give
vent to a cry that will resemble a moan of pain. Some day, wandering
about the muddy streets, when daily material joys shall have failed, you
will find yourself seated disconsolately on a deserted bench at midnight.
O! men of marble, sublime egoists, inimitable reasoners who have never
given way to despair or made a mistake in arithmetic, if this ever
happens to you, at the hour of your ruin you will remember Abelard when
he lost Heloise. For he loved her more than you love your horses, your
money or your mistresses; for he lost in losing her more than your prince
Satan would lose in falling again from the battlements of Heaven; for he
loved her with a certain love of which the gazettes do not speak, the
shadow of which your wives and your daughters do not perceive in our
theaters and in our books; for he passed half of his life kissing her
white forehead, teaching her to sing the psalms of David and the
canticles of Saul; for he did not love her on earth alone; and God
consoled him.
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