xistence, but its future
state, deciphering, from the very first day, in its instinct and
sentiment, what will be its thoughts on the morrow. He, therefore,
truly knows this heart, both by sight and foresight. This rare science
would remain inexplicable without a word in explanation. If it knows
its subject to this degree, it is because it is its own work. The
director creates the directed; the latter is his work, and becomes in
time one and the same man. How is it possible the former should not
know the ideas and wishes which he himself has inspired, and which are
his own? A transfusion takes place between the two in this incessant
action, in which the inferior, receiving everything from the other,
goes on gradually losing his personality. Growing weaker and more idle
every day, he thinks himself happy in no longer having a will of his
own, and is glad to see that troublesome will, which has caused too
many sufferings, die away and be lost. Even so a wounded man sees his
blood, his life-blood flowing away, and feels himself the easier.

But who is to make good within you, and fill up the void left by this
draining away of moral personality, by which you escape from
yourself?--In two letters--_he_.

_He_, the patient, cunning man, who, day by day, taking from you a
little of yourself, and substituting a little of himself, has gently
subtilised the one, and put the other in its place. The soft and weak
nature of women, almost as yielding as that of children, is well
adapted for this transfusion. The same woman seeing ever the same man,
takes without knowing it, his turn of mind, his accent, his language,
nay more, something of his gait and physiognomy. She speaks as he
does, and walks in the same manner as he. In only seeing her pass by,
a person of any penetration would see that _she is he_.

But this outward similarity is but a weak sign of the profound change
within. What has been transformed is the intimate, most intimate part.
A great mystery has been effected, that which Dante calls
_transhumanation_; when a human person, melting away without knowing
it, has assumed (substance for substance) another humanity; when the
superior replacing the inferior, the agent the patient, no longer needs
to direct him, but becomes his being. _He_ is, the other is not;
unless we consider him as an accident, a quality of this being, a pure
phenomenon, an empty shadow, a nothing.

Why did we just now speak of influe