ed them all for a greater delight, a
greater sweetness, a greater glory. The profane love of woman presented
itself to my fancy, clothed, not only with all its own charms, but with
the sovereign and almost irresistible charms of the most dangerous of
all temptations--of that which the moralists call virginal
temptation--when the mind, not yet undeceived by experience and by sin,
pictures to itself in the transports of love a supreme and ineffable
delight immeasurably superior to all reality. Ever since I reached
manhood--that is to say, for many years past, for my youth was short--I
have scorned those delights and that beauty that were but the shadow and
the reflex of the archetypal beauty of which I was enamored, of the
supreme delight for which I longed. I have sought to die to myself, in
order to live in the beloved object, to free, not only my senses, but
even my soul itself, from every earthly affection, from illusions and
imaginings, in order to be able to say with truth that it is not I who
live, but Christ who lives in me. It may be, nay, it must be, that in
this I sinned through arrogance and self-confidence, and that God has
therefore wished to chastise me; and you came across my path, and
tempted me, and led me astray. Now you upbraid me, you deride me, you
accuse me of levity and of yielding easily to temptation; but in
upbraiding me and deriding me you insult yourself, for you thus imply
that any other woman might have had equal power over me. I do not wish,
when I ought to be humble, to fall into the sin of pride, by trying to
justify my fault. If God, in chastisement of my pride, has let me fall
from his grace, it is possible that any temptation, however slight,
might have made me waver and fall. Yet I confess that I do not think so.
It may be that I err in my judgment that this is but the consequence of
my undisciplined pride, but, I repeat, I do not think so. I can not
succeed in persuading myself that the cause of my fall had in it
anything either mean or base. Above all the dreams of my youthful
imagination, the reality, such as I beheld it in you, enthroned itself.
Above all the nymphs, queens, and goddesses of my fancy, you towered.
Above the ruins of my ideal creations, overthrown and shattered by
Divine love, there arose in my soul the faithful image, the exact
reproduction of the living beauty that adorns, that is the essence of
that body and of that soul. There may be even something mysterious,
s