Perdition and redemption in and through each other is the
destiny of men.
March 18, 1869 (_Thursday_).--Whenever I come back from a walk outside
the town I am disgusted and repelled by this cell of mine. Out of doors,
sunshine, birds, spring, beauty, and life; in here, ugliness, piles of
paper, melancholy, and death. And yet my walk was one of the saddest
possible. I wandered along the Rhone and the Arve, and all the memories
of the past, all the disappointments of the present and all the
anxieties of the future laid siege to my heart like a whirlwind of
phantoms. I took account of my faults, and they ranged themselves in
battle against me. The vulture of regret gnawed at my heart, and the
sense of the irreparable choked me like the iron collar of the pillory.
It seemed to me that I had failed in the task of life, and that now life
was failing me. Ah! how terrible spring is to the lonely! All the needs
which had been lulled to sleep start into life again, all the sorrows
which had disappeared are reborn, and the old man which had been gagged
and conquered rises once more and makes his groans heard. It is as
though all the old wounds opened and bewailed themselves afresh. Just
when one had ceased to think, when one had succeeded in deadening
feeling by work or by amusement, all of a sudden the heart, solitary
captive that it is, sends a cry from its prison depths, a cry which
shakes to its foundations the whole surrounding edifice.
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