lley bottom, its ray of light and
its drop of dew. Listen!--If there is anguish in the voice of poor
humanity, there are in great nature profound words of soothing, of
hope. Look at the flower in the fields, listen to the birds in the
skies! After the distrest voices that perturb you, you shall know the
voices that relieve and console. There shall befall you that which
befell the nun whose memory is preserved for us in the old legends.
Listening to the forest voices she had gone, following them always, as
far as the thick solitudes where nothing any longer comes to trouble
the collected soul. There, in the shade of a tree where she had seated
herself, she heard a song till then unknown to her ears. It was the
song of the mystic bird. This song said, in marvelous modulations, all
that man thinks and feels, all that he suffers, all that he seeks, all
that falls short of fulfilment for him. It summed up in harmonies the
destinies of living beings and the immense pity that is at the root
of things. Softly, on light, strong wings, it lifted the soul to the
heights where it looks upon reality. And the nun, her hands clasped,
listened, listened without end, forgetting earth, sky, time,
forgetting herself. She listened for centuries without ever growing
tired, finding in the song that charmed her a sweetness forever new.
Dear and truthful image of what the soul experiences when, mute,
as respectful as a child and as ready of belief, it listens in the
universal silence to the voices that translate for it the things that
are eternal!

All those who have become voices have traveled this way. At Patmos or
in the desert, on Horeb or on Sinai, they have trembled with fright or
started with joy. But everything has its time. There comes a day when
all voices, soft or terrible, that man has heard, grow still, to let
henceforth only one be heard, which cries to him: "Go! go now and be
a witness of the things you have heard! Go! I send you forth as lambs
among wolves! Go! I send you toward men whose brow is harsh, whose
heart is wicked, but fear nothing, I shall embolden your face, I shall
give you a heart of brass and a forehead of diamond."

When that moment has come, one must, in order to remain faithful to
his mission, remember that after all he is only a voice. Truth
does not belong to us, it is we who belong to truth! Wo to him who
possesses it and treats it as something that belongs to himself. Happy
is he who is possest by it! N