d, life
glorified with love at last confessed and shared.

"Master, master, this comes from far back. I must tell you; I must make
my confession. It is true that I went to church in order to be happy.
But I could not believe. I wished to understand too much; my reason
rebelled against their dogmas; their paradise appeared to me an
incredible puerility. But I believed that the world does not stop at
sensation; that there is a whole unknown world, which must be taken
into account; and this, master, I believe still. It is the idea of the
Beyond, which not even happiness, found at last upon your neck, will
efface. But this longing for happiness, this longing to be happy at
once, to have some certainty--how I have suffered from it. If I went to
church, it was because I missed something, and I went there to seek it.
My anguish consisted in this irresistible need to satisfy my longing.
You remember what you used to call my eternal thirst for illusion and
falsehood. One night, in the threshing yard, under the great starry
sky, do you remember? I burst out against your science, I was indignant
because of the ruins with which it strews the earth, I turned my eyes
away from the dreadful wounds which it exposes. And I wished, master,
to take you to a solitude where we might both live in God, far from the
world, forgotten by it. Ah, what torture, to long, to struggle, and not
to be satisfied!"

Softly, without speaking, he kissed her on both eyes.

"Then, master, do you remember again, there was the great moral shock on
the night of the storm, when you gave me that terrible lesson of life,
emptying out your envelopes before me. You had said to me already: 'Know
life, love it, live it as it ought to be lived.' But what a vast, what
a frightful flood, rolling ever onward toward a human sea, swelling it
unceasingly for the unknown future! And, master, the silent work within
me began then. There was born, in my heart and in my flesh, the bitter
strength of the real. At first I was as if crushed, the blow was so
rude. I could not recover myself. I kept silent, because I did not know
clearly what to say. Then, gradually, the evolution was effected. I
still had struggles, I still rebelled against confessing my defeat. But
every day after this the truth grew clearer within me, I knew well that
you were my master, and that there was no happiness for me outside of
you, of your science and your goodness. You were life itself, broad and
tole