Le Val, December 7, 1833

After a year of perfect calm, apart from inward storms for which solitude must not be blamed, for it enveloped me in so much peace and silence that a soul less restless than mine would have fallen deliciously asleep; after a year, I say, of that complete calm, my fortune, which had let me enter the holy house to rest a little, knocked at the door to call me back; for she had not continued on her way, but had sat upon the threshold, waiting until I had recovered enough strength to resume my journey. ‘Your halt has been long enough,’ she said to me, ‘come, let us be off!’ And she took me by the hand, and there she is on her way again, like those poor women one meets upon the roads, leading a child who follows them with a desolate air. But what madness it is to complain, and are there no sufferings in the world besides mine to water with my tears? Henceforth I shall say to the springs of my tears: ‘Close yourselves’; and to the Lord: ‘Lord, do not listen to my complaints,’ whenever I am tempted to invoke the Lord and my tears on my own behalf; for it is good that I should suffer, I who can purchase nothing in heaven through the merit of my actions, and shall gain anything there only through the virtue of suffering, like all weak souls. These souls have no wings to rise to heaven, and the Lord, who nevertheless wishes them to come there, sends them help: he places them upon a pyre of thorns and brings down the fire of sorrow; the wood consumed, it soars toward heaven like a white vapor, like those doves which took flight among the dying flames of the martyrs’ pyres. It is the soul that has completed its sacrifice, and which the fire of tribulations has made light enough to rise to heaven like smoke. Wood is heavy and motionless; set it on fire, and part of it will rise to the clouds.

I am one of those souls, Lord; therefore I must not shed tears to put out my pyre. But I shall pour out tears in great streams for those who suffer and ought not to suffer. Above all I shall pour them out for him who is today prey to the deepest bitterness, and who has done so much good that he seemed already overflowing with merits, without needing to win new ones through the way of suffering. I shall weep over him and over those who do him harm, and who have harmed me too indirectly. Jesus Christ having poured the priceless virtue of his blood upon his executioners, it is surely the least that men should let their tears fall upon their enemies.

I shall consecrate these tears and the treasures of memory I carry from that blessed roof of La Chênaie, which sheltered for a year my life, hidden in the bosom of a priest whom men number among their glories on earth, and whom the saints claim as one of their own in heaven. Although my sorrow is very bitter, I shall not hang my harp upon the willows of the rivers, because the Christian, unlike the Israelite, must sing the song of the Lord and of the Lord’s man in the foreign land.

And see how full of goodness Providence is toward me! For fear that the sudden passage from the gentle, temperate air of religious life to the world’s torrid zone should try my soul too severely, she led me, on leaving the holy refuge, into a house raised upon the borders of the two regions, where, though one is not in solitude, one does not yet belong to the world; a house whose windows open on one side upon the plain where the tumult of men stirs, and on the other upon the wilderness where God’s servants sing. I wish to set down here the history of the stay I shall make there, for the days passing beneath this roof are full of happiness, and I know that in the future I shall often turn back to reread past felicities. — A pious man and poet, a woman whose soul fits his so well that one might call them a single soul divided in two; a child called Marie, like her mother, who lets the first rays of her love and intelligence shine through childhood’s white cloud like a star; a simple life in an ancient house; the Ocean coming morning and evening to bring us its harmonies; finally, a traveler descending from Carmel to make his way to Babylon, who has laid his staff and sandals at the door to sit at the hospitable table: there is material for a biblical poem, if I were as good at describing things as at feeling them.

December 8, 1833

Yesterday the west wind blew furiously. I saw the Ocean stirred, but this disorder, however sublime, is far from equaling, to my mind, the spectacle of the serene, blue sea. But why assert that one is not worth the other? Who could measure these two sublimities and say: ‘The second surpasses the first’? Let us say only: ‘My soul takes greater pleasure in serenity than in storm.’

Yesterday there was an immense battle upon the watery plains. Watching the waves leap, one might have thought of those countless cavalries of Tartars forever galloping across the plains of Asia. The entrance to the bay is, as it were, barred by a chain of granite islets: one had to see the breakers race to the assault and fling themselves madly against those masses with dreadful clamors; one had to see them take their run and compete to clear the black heads of the reefs. The boldest or nimblest leapt to the other side with a great cry; the others, heavier or clumsier, broke against the rock, throwing up dazzling white foam, and retreated with a deep, muffled growl, like mastiffs driven back by a traveler’s stick.

We witnessed these strange struggles from the top of a cliff, where we could scarcely keep our footing against the wind’s shocks. The sea’s immense tumult, the noisy racing of the waves, the no less swift but silent racing of the clouds, the seabirds floating in the sky, balancing their slender bodies between two curved wings of immeasurable span, all this gathering of wild and resounding harmonies converging upon the souls of two beings five feet tall, planted on a cliff’s crest, shaken like two leaves by the wind’s energy, and in that immensity no more visible than two birds perched on a clod of earth. Oh, it was something strange and admirable, one of those moments of sublime agitation and profound reverie together, when the soul and nature rise to their full height facing one another.

From the height we descended into a gorge offering a sea retreat, such as the ancients knew how to describe, to a few peaceful waves coming there to fall asleep with a murmur, while their mad brothers batter the reefs and struggle among themselves. Enormous blocks of gray granite, mottled with white moss, lie scattered in disorder upon the slope of the hill which hollowed itself to open this cove. So strangely are they placed, and so much do they lean toward falling, that one would say a giant amused himself one day by hurling them from the top of the shore and they stopped wherever they met an obstacle, some a few paces from their starting point, others halfway down; yet they seem suspended rather than stopped, or rather seem always to be rolling. The sound of winds and waves, pouring into this resonant hollow, produces the loveliest harmonies there. We made a rather long halt, leaning on our sticks and wholly amazed.

December 9, 1833

The moon was still shining with a few stars when the bell called us to Mass. I am particularly fond of this early Mass, said between the stars’ last glimmers and the sun’s first rays.

In the evening Hippolyte and I went along the coast. We wished to see what the Ocean is like at the end of a gray, calm December day. The mist veiled the distant waters, but gave the eye enough space to sense infinity. We were stationed on a point bearing a customs officer’s hut, and stood with our backs to the hut. To the right, a wood spread over the shore’s slope displayed in a pale glow its bare, slender branches, faintly whistling. To the left, far away, the tower of the Ébihens sometimes half disappeared, as though drowned in shadows, sometimes reappeared with a faint light upon its brow, when a furtive ray of twilight managed to elude the clouds. The sea’s sound was calm and dreamy as on the finest days; only it held something more plaintive. Our ears followed this sound as it unfolded along the whole length of the coast, and we took breath again only after the wave that had poured it out withdrew to make way for the next. It is, I believe, from the grave, deep voice carried by the breaking wave and the thin, stony sound of the departing wave, lightly rustling over the sand and shells, that this extraordinary tone of the sea’s song is born. But why break this music apart? I shall never say anything worthwhile about it, for I understand nothing of analysis; let us therefore return to feeling.

The darkness thickened around us, and we had no thought of leaving, for the sea’s harmony kept growing as everything on land fell silent and night unfolded its mysteries. Like those statues the ancients placed upon promontories, we remained motionless, as though fascinated and bound by the spell of the Ocean and the night. We gave no other sign of life than raising our heads when we heard the whistling wings of wild ducks passing.

The succession of my wandering fortunes brought me to a solitary cape in Brittany, to dream there for an entire autumn evening. There, for a few hours, all those inward noises fell silent which have never truly calmed since the first storm rose within my breast. There, all the sweet and heavenly melancholies entered my soul in a throng with the Ocean’s harmonies, and my soul wandered as though within a paradise of reveries. Oh, when I have left Le Val and poured my farewell tears into the bosom of your friendship, when I am in Paris, where there is neither valley nor Ocean nor souls like you, when I go alone with my sadness and my soul inclined to despair, oh, how many tears I shall shed at the memory of our evenings, for happiness is the fine, gentle rain that penetrates the soul, but afterward wells from it in springs of tears.