March 31, 1833

The love which speaks, sings, and moans in one part of creation reveals itself in the other half in the form of flowers. All this flowering, so rich in forms, colors, perfumes, shining across the countryside, is the expression of love, is love itself celebrating its sweet mysteries within each flower. The flowering branch, the bird that comes to perch upon it and sing or build its nest, the man who watches the branch and the bird, are moved by the same principle at different degrees of perfection. I read in Herder that flowers perish as soon as they have been fertilized, that birds lose their song, their gaiety, and some of them the vivid colors of their plumage after the nesting season, that man declines rapidly toward old age after the age of passions. There is much to ponder in this law of decay, intimately bound to the law of love and reproduction.

April 2, 1833

The clouds have thrown rain upon us all day long. It fell now in violent showers, now in fine dews with a faint rustling. The blackbirds, the warblers, all the songbirds whistle, chirp, and sing like nightingales nevertheless. Sometimes the clouds leave great clearings in the sky, through which the sun pours torrents of light. Then the clouds along the edge light up; their successive ranks, fleeing into the distance, retreat one after another, but in shades weakened and diminished according to their distance, until at last the rays go to die upon an enormous mass standing motionless at the limits of the southeastern horizon, whitening its projections and leaving the recesses of its rugged contours in shadow.

April 4, 1833

An entirely rainy morning. Spring is taking a bad turn. Toward one o’clock the sky lost its frown and we had a few moments of serenity and penetrating warmth. Now the clouds are beginning their invasion again. I saw their gray heads rise above the horizon; in next to no time we shall have lost the blue. They are fleeing eastward. I am rather fond of this fugitive bearing of the clouds: some seem to look at one another as though challenging one another to a race.

April 5, 1833

A day as beautiful as one could wish. Clouds, but only enough to make a landscape in the sky. They are taking on their summer forms more and more. Their varied groups stand motionless beneath the sun like flocks of sheep in the pastures when it is very hot. I saw a swallow and heard bees buzzing over the flowers. Sitting in the sun to let divine spring penetrate me to the marrow, I felt some of my childhood impressions: for a moment I looked at the sky with its clouds, the earth with its woods, its songs, its buzzing, as I did then. This renewal of things’ first appearance, of the countenance one found in them at first sight, is, to my mind, one of the sweetest ways in which childhood acts upon the current of life.

My God, what is my soul doing, letting itself be caught by such fleeting sweetness on Good Friday, on this day wholly filled with your death and our redemption! There is within me some damnable spirit which arouses great aversions and drives me, so to speak, to rebel against the holy exercises and the soul’s inward stillness that should prepare us for the great solemnities of faith. We have been in retreat for two days, and I do nothing but grow bored, gnaw at myself with thoughts I cannot name, and even become embittered against the practices of retreat. Oh, I recognize there the old leaven of which I have not yet thoroughly cleansed my soul!

April 10, 1833

The great feast lies three days behind us. One fewer anniversary of the Savior’s death and resurrection. Each year carries away its solemnities: when, then, will the eternal feast arrive? — I witnessed something very moving; François brought us one of his friends whom he has won over to the faith. This convert followed the exercises of our retreat and, on Easter Day, received communion with us. François was in raptures. He has earned great merit in doing this. François is very young, scarcely twenty. M. de La M... is thirty and married. There is something very moving, almost innocent, in M. de La M... allowing himself to be led to God by so young a man; and this young friendship, turning apostle in François, is no less beautiful and moving. They are country neighbors, often work together, and exchange charming verses about events in their families or their friendship.

I read Lucrèce Borgia with the liveliest delight. Everything that comes from Hugo is, it goes without saying, remarkable and bears some forceful imprint. There is something so surprising, so brilliant, so overwhelming in the temper of his genius that, after reading his work, drama, ode, or novel, one remains quite astonished, one’s soul deeply stirred and one’s head greatly heated, at the very least. All his compositions set some of humanity’s innermost fibers vibrating, or plunge into some depth. Lucrèce Borgia has gone very far. Hugo is right when he says in the preface that this drama will mark the most important date in his literary life. Indeed, it seems to me that his genius has, as it were, become incarnate in this work. I find there, at the highest pitch of exaltation, the two spirits which possess his soul: one impetuous, bounding, excessive in its vehemence, delighting in strange, terrifying things, pursuing perilous and fantastic adventures in which blood will be shed and encounters will make the hair stand on end, fatalistic because its flights carry it too high into the ideal of humanity without bringing it near enough to God; the other calm, soothing, full of tenderness though little given to lament, seizing in man what is purest, loftiest, most fruitful in virtue and gentleness. Odes et Ballades, Notre-Dame de Paris, Hernani, Han d’Islande, Les Feuilles d’Automne all bear this double imprint. These contrasts within his soul tend to emerge more and more, to stand out more clearly. He has formulated them in the preface to his new drama and cast them into sublime creation in the drama itself. He will make magnificent things for us with this dualism; but he will do great harm if he wishes to make it a practice for anyone besides himself.

April 15, 1833

At last I have seen the Ocean. C... and I set out on Thursday at one o’clock, in fine weather and a cool wind. We had seven leagues to travel; but we were so delighted to find ourselves on the way to the sea that we gave little thought to the length of the road. C... gave a cry of joy: this walk reminded him of his journey through southern Germany and Switzerland, which he made on foot. He greatly enjoys this way of traveling: ‘In this humble guise,’ he told me, ‘the traveler mingles with the people; he enters inns to refresh himself or rest, sleeps in cottages, approaches travelers like himself, and these chance encounters in the dust of a highway, these men each going wherever God leads him, sometimes bring about moving confidences.’ Then he spoke to me with delight of the beautiful lakes and great mountains. At Châteauneuf, a charming little village, a lovely view unfolded: on one side, to the northwest, were tiers of wooded hills, each bearing its white house, and through the breaks in the hills the Rance spread broadly, dazzling as a mirror in the sun; on the other, to the east, a well-cultivated and rather open plain faded into the horizon. A few patches of early greenery gleamed here and there, and from the woods’ lively red color one could see that life and warmth were rising to nature’s brow, and that she was quite ready to blossom. This great spectacle, embellished by all the sun’s enchantments, led our conversation to the study and adoration of nature. I was delighted to hear C... express precisely what lies deep within my soul on that subject. He added: ‘This great mystery of God’s goodness, manifest to everyone, good and wicked alike, through this unfolding of natural beauties and riches, is, to my mind, a great reason to hope for men’s destiny in the other life.’ The thought of death, appearing to us through these reflections, seemed so sweet and consoling that we began to wish to die. We had taken from death that hideous mask which the fear of guilty consciences had plastered upon her face, and she smiled at us. Would it not be the same for everyone, if one were stirred by a little love for heavenly things, or even by a little curiosity alone? He also told me: ‘I have been showered with the greatest graces, I have abused them prodigiously, and yet I have such trust in God that I hold my salvation certain.’ We carried our conversation far into this field. Then we came to tell one another of our inward lives, our struggles, our way of taking life, and so forth. Little by little the talk turned toward poets and love. C... knows a great deal about Lamartine; he has the good fortune to be his friend. He knows much about love; he has loved long and deeply, and loves still, though with the beginnings of disenchantment. Lamartine, Hugo, Nodier, and the rest brought us to the gates of Saint-Malo, half lulling the cruel pain of my feet, crushed and torn in boots too narrow for them. A little after sunset we found ourselves facing the town. It appeared suddenly as we turned a street in Saint-Servan. What struck me first was a row of ships whose enormous hulls presented a black front, their shapes barely discernible in the shadow, but whose masts and rigging, rising into the sky, traced something like embroidery in the evening light. Behind these ships we could see a black mass encircled by ramparts. It was Saint-Malo, a true nest of seabirds; and farther away, though we could make out nothing, a great monotonous voice: it was the Ocean. We reached the town by the beach, taking advantage of the low tide; we took lodgings at the Hôtel de France, from which one has a view of the sea, and for the first time in my life I fell asleep with the Ocean two hundred paces from my bed, under the spell of that great wonder. The next morning, quickly to the sea. The tide was beginning to rise; nevertheless we had time to walk around the rock that bears Saint-Malo. What I felt as I plunged my gaze into that infinity would be rather difficult to put into words. The soul is unequal to this spectacle; it is bewildered by this great apparition and no longer knows where it is going. I remember, however, that I thought first of God, then of the Flood, of Columbus, of the continents beyond the abyss, of shipwrecks, of battles at sea, of Byron, of René, who embarked at Saint-Malo and, borne upon these same waves I was contemplating, kept his gaze fixed on the barred little window where the nun’s lamp shone. Besides, this first visit was so brief, and the impression so impetuous, so disordered, that nothing very definite or settled remained within my soul. After three hours which passed like an instant, we left in a small boat going up the Rance as far as Dinan, and completed our journey home on foot, our bodies a little sore, but our souls happy.