Premature despair and the deepest discouragement have been my constant
portion. Incapable of taking any interest in my talents for my own sake,
I let everything slip as soon as the hope of being loved for them and by
them had forsaken me. A hermit against my will, I have not even found
peace in solitude, because my inmost conscience has not been any better
satisfied than my heart.
Does not all this make up a melancholy lot, a barren failure of a life?
What use have I made of my gifts, of my special circumstances, of my
half-century of existence? What have I paid back to my country? Are all
the documents I have produced, taken together, my correspondence, these
thousands of journal pages, my lectures, my articles, my poems, my notes
of different kinds, anything better than withered leaves? To whom and to
what have I been useful? Will my name survive me a single day, and will
it ever mean anything to anybody? A life of no account! A great many
comings and goings, a great many scrawls--for nothing. When all is added
up--nothing! And worst of all, it has not been a life used up in the
service of some adored object, or sacrificed to any future hope. Its
sufferings will have been vain, its renunciations useless, its
sacrifices gratuitous, its dreariness without reward.
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