"
... The essential thing, for every one is to accept his destiny. Fate
has deceived you; you have sometimes grumbled at your lot; well, no more
mutual reproaches; go to sleep in peace.
August 30, 1880. (_Two o'clock_).--Rumblings of a grave and distant
thunder. The sky is gray but rainless; the sharp little cries of the
birds show agitation and fear; one might imagine it the prelude to a
symphony or a catastrophe.
"Quel eclair te traverse, o mon coeur soucieux?"
Strange--all the business of the immediate neighborhood is going on;
there is even more movement than usual; and yet all these noises are, as
it were, held suspended in the silence--in a soft, positive silence,
which they cannot disguise--silence akin to that which, in every town,
on one day of the week, replaces the vague murmur of the laboring hive.
Such silence at such an hour is extraordinary. There is something
expectant, contemplative, almost anxious in it. Are there days on which
"the little breath" of Job produces more effect than tempest? on which a
dull rumbling on the distant horizon is enough to suspend the concert of
voices, like the roaring of a desert lion at the fall of night?
September 9, 1880.--It seems to me that with the decline of my active
force I am becoming more purely spirit; everything is growing
transparent to me.
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