want to know
what I did with it. I took it with me into my retreat.

My first day I suffered the deprivation but little; it was on the second
that I moved my mattress where I could concentrate all my attention on a
single wall of the four. On the third day I began to lose track of time.
I had feared much, but not the degree of suffering which the pains of
denial now piled upon me in an accumulating load.

Often I fell forward prostrate on the floor, squirming in my agony of
body and mind, while within me a battle went raging on between the
spirit and the flesh. My eyes would search for the packet of drugs lying
on the floor within my reach and rest upon the sight of it, staring as
mad persons must stare. It was my will that held my hand.

Can you imagine the eternal vacillation of such a contest? Then you will
know that desire fighting against reason now drove my will back step by
step until it was tottering on the brink of chaos, and again, in a
triumph of resistance, my determination swept everything before it until
I longed to rise, to throw my arms upward, fingers extended, and cry
aloud my victory.

On the other hand, a thousand moments came when, ready to yield to my
temptation, I have dropped on my knees on the boards and, with my eyes
fixed upon that wall, have prayed like mad, hour after hour, my lips
parched and blood running from my bare knees.

Voices whispered to me that I was a fanatic, pinning my faith to
superstition and the practices of savagery. I whispered back to them
that they should see me victorious at last.

"How long will you fight?" said they mockingly.

"Till desire is gone and the will has nothing to fight for," I answered
them.

"You are insane," they said, speaking like so many devils.

"We shall know better at the end," I replied softly.

These dialogues, the torture of which no one can know, went on
eternally. They were arguments, I knew, between my ingenious mind and
the will which was trying to reclaim its mastery of my thought.

Night and day became all one to me. I lost count of the hours, then of
the days. I became filled with the fear that three weeks would go by,
that you would return too soon, that interruption would come before my
fight had been determined one way or the other. This terror was enough
to weaken me. I felt it many times and on each occasion drew so near the
bare wall that I could throw my weight against it and lose all external
thoughts by staring at