st your
own heart while that heart yet loves the God who made it. Is it your
youth that gives you pause? And would you spare those youthful locks?
Never allow them to whiten if they are not white to-night.

"And then what would you do in the world? If you go away, where will you
go? What can you hope for if you remain? Ah! in looking at that woman you
seem to have a treasure buried in your heart. It is not merely that you
lose her; it is less what has been than what might have been. When the
hands of the clock indicated such and such an hour, you might have been
happy. If you suffer why do you not open your heart? If you love, why do
you not say so? Why do you die of hunger, clasping a priceless treasure
in your hands? You have closed the door, you miser; you debate with
yourself behind locks and bolts. Shake them, for it was your hand that
forged them.

"O fool! who desired and have possessed your desire, you have not thought
of God! You play with happiness as a child plays with a rattle, and you
do not reflect how rare and fragile a thing you hold in your hands; you
treat it with disdain, you smile at it and you continue to amuse yourself
with it, forgetting how many prayers it has cost your good angel to
preserve for you that shadow of daylight! Ah! if there is in heaven one
who watches over you, what is he doing at this moment? He is seated
before an organ; his wings are half-folded, his hands extended over the
ivory keys; he begins an eternal hymn; the hymn of love and immortal
rest, but his wings droop, his head falls over the keys; the angel of
death has touched him on the shoulder, he disappears into the Nirvana.

"And you, at the age of twenty-two, when a noble and exalted passion,
when the strength of youth might perhaps have made something of you when
after so many sorrows and bitter disappointments, a youth so dissipated,
you saw a better time shining in the future; when your life, consecrated
to the object of your adoration, gave promise of new strength, at that
moment the abyss yawns before you! You no longer experience vague
desires, but real regrets; your heart is no longer hungry, it is broken!
And you hesitate? What do you expect? Since she no longer cares for your
life, it counts for nothing! Since she abandons you, abandon yourself!

"Let those who have loved you in your youth weep for you! They are not
many. If you would live, you must not only forget love, but you must deny
that it exists; not o