han you wanted. You have destroyed precisely what would
have served you; for each of these suppressed powers, the will, the
mind, and the heart, which now are no more, would have been for you,
had they remained alive. But, alas! they are crushed, faded, and void.
The essence of existence once destroyed, no longer feels; it can
neither attach itself to anything, nor be captivated by anything. You
wanted to bind it fast, but you have stifled it. Now you would wish
her, whose life is annihilated, to be alive, or at least to revive.
That is a miracle beyond your power. The thing you see, is, and ever
will be, a cold shadow, without any life to answer you. Do what you
will, you will find no responsive throbbing. This will be your
despair. You can feign everything, and say everything, except one
word, which we defy you to pronounce without grief--the sacred name of
love.

Love! why, you have assassinated it! In order to love, you must have a
person; but what was a person you have made a thing. Proud man! you
who every day summon your Creator to descend upon the altar, you have
inverted the order of creation: you have destroyed a being.

You, who, out of a GRAIN OF CORN, can make a GOD, tell me, was it not
also a god that you held just now in that credulous and docile soul?
what have you done with that interior god of man, that we call liberty?
You have put yourself in its place; in the place of that power, by
which man is man, I see nonentity.

Well! that nonentity shall be your torment. You will probe it in vain;
however low you penetrate, you will find but a void, nothing, neither
_will_ nor _power_. There everything that could have loved has
perished.

[1] This postponing manoeuvre is admirably calculated to draw from a
woman a secret, that does not belong to confession, that she will not
tell, her husband's secret, her lover's _real name_, &c., &c. They
always get it out of her at last.

[2] This word Molinosism reminds us of an old forgotten system. In
practice, it is a thing of all times, an instinct, a blind belief,
which is natural to the weak, and which may be thus expressed:--with
the strong, everything is right; a saint cannot sin. See the patient,
if he is lucky enough to invite his physician to dinner with him: he
has recovered his assurance and boldness, and indulges in every dish
without being afraid. I believe, moreover, that real Molinosism is
always a powerful argument with the simp