Believe me, when in your distress you think of Abelard you will not look
with the same eye upon the sweet blasphemy of Voltaire and the badinage
of Courier; you will feel that the human reason can cure illusions but
not sorrows; that God has use for Reason but He has not made her the
sister of Charity. You will find that when the heart of man said: "I
believe in nothing, for I see nothing," it did not speak the last word on
the subject. You will look about you for something like hope, you will
shake the doors of churches to see if they still swing, but you will find
them walled up; you will think of becoming Trappists, and destiny will
mock at you and for reply give you a bottle of wine and a courtesan.
And if you drink the wine, if you take the courtesan, you will have
learned how such things come about.
PART II
CHAPTER I
AWAKENING the next morning I experienced a feeling of such deep disgust
with myself, I felt so degraded in my own eyes that a horrible temptation
assailed me. I leaped from bed and ordered the creature to leave my room
as quickly as possible. Then I sat down and looked gloomily about the
room, my eyes resting mechanically on a brace of pistols that decorated
the walls.
When the suffering mind advances its hands, so to speak, toward
annihilation, when our soul forms a violent resolution, there seems to be
an independent physical horror in the act of touching the cold steel of
some deadly weapon; the fingers stiffen in anguish, the arm grows cold
and hard.
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