"Tircis, voici le temps de prendre sa retraite."
Is it that I care so much to go on living? I think not. It is health
that I long for--freedom from suffering.
And this desire being vain, I can find no savor in anything else.
Satiety. Lassitude. Renunciation. Abdication. "In your patience possess
ye your souls."
April 10, 1881. (_Sunday_).--Visit to ----. She read over to me letters
of 1844 to 1845--letters of mine. So much promise to end in so meager a
result! What creatures we are! I shall end like the Rhine, lost among
the sands, and the hour is close by when my thread of water will have
disappeared.
Afterward I had a little walk in the sunset. There was an effect of
scattered rays and stormy clouds; a green haze envelops all the trees--
"Et tout renait, et deja l'aubepine
A vu l'abeille accourir a ses fleurs,"
--but to me it all seems strange already.
_Later_.--What dupes we are of our own desires!... Destiny has two ways
of crushing us--by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them. But he
who only wills what God wills escapes both catastrophes. "All things
work together for his good."
April 14, 1881.--Frightful night; the fourteenth running, in which I
have been consumed by sleeplessness....
April 15, 1881.--To-morrow is Good Friday, the festival of pain.
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