there were within me certain impulses that at times brought me
to myself. It was a breath of air which struck my face as I came from my
dungeon; it was a page of a book I read when, in my bitter days, I
happened to read something besides those modern sycophants called
pamphleteers, who, out of regard for the public health, ought to be
prevented from indulging in their crude philosophizings. Since I have
referred to these good moments, let me mention one of them, they were so
rare. One evening I was reading the Memoirs of Constant; I came to the
following lines:

"Salsdorf, a Saxon surgeon attached to Prince Christian, had his leg
broken by a shell in the battle of Wagram. He lay almost lifeless on the
dusty field. Fifteen paces distant, Amedee of Kerbourg, aide-de-camp (I
have forgotten to whom), wounded in the breast by a bullet, fell to the
ground vomiting blood. Salsdorf saw that if that young man was not cared
for he would die of suffusion; summoning all his powers, he painfully
dragged himself to the side of the wounded man, attended to him and saved
his life. Salsdorf himself died four days later from the effects of
amputation."

When I read these words I threw down my book, and melted into tears.

I do not regret those tears, for they were such as I could shed only when
my heart was right; I do not speak merely of Salsdorf, and do not care
for that particular instance. I am sure, however, that I did not suspect
any one that day. Poor dreamer! Ought I to remember that I have been
other than I am? What good will it do me as I stretch out my arms in
anguish to heaven and wait for the bolt that will deliver me forever?
Alas! it was only a gleam that flashed across the night of my life.

Like those dervish fanatics who find ecstasy in vertigo, so thought,
turning on itself, exhausted by the stress of introspection and tired of
vain effort, falls terror-stricken. So it would seem that man must be a
void and that by dint of delving unto himself he reaches the last turn of
a spiral. There, as on the summits of mountains and at the bottom of
mines, air fails, and God forbids man to go farther. Then, struck with a
mortal chill, the heart, as if impaired by oblivion, seeks to escape into
a new birth; it demands life of that which environs it, it eagerly drinks
in the air; but it finds round about only its own chimeras, which have
exhausted its failing powers and which, self-created, surround it like
pitiless spectres.