May 26, 1834

Why trouble myself by asking endlessly: what shall I do with my life? I have applied it to many things, and it has gained a hold upon none; with an appearance of aptitude, I remain useless and suffer in a position almost without resources. But who knows whether, superfluous as I seem in society, God does not draw from me some good of which I am unaware, whether he has not given me, without my knowledge, some virtue, some secret influence for the good of men? Whenever I am pursued by that fatal thought of my uselessness and powerlessness, I shall take refuge in this one: that Providence draws some benefit from me and makes me serve a hidden purpose, requiring of me only my consent and my faith in this mission she has not wished to reveal to me. By this acquiescence of my will, I make fruitful the imperceptible good I accomplish; I sow in it merits which will germinate secretly and flower into heavenly rewards in the fields of a better world. The ways which lead creatures from earth to heaven are not alike: some seem to stray strangely, yet arrive at the common center; each has its turns, its bends, its mysterious labyrinths. Perhaps among all the paths which follow men there are more than is commonly believed which open into heaven, but I am persuaded that all are difficult. Be that as it may, I advance along mine, which is very dark, in full confidence. — This constant thought that I do not know the work of good to which the Lord applies me will dispose me to respect all creatures, to bow before all beings, to conduct myself upon earth as in a temple where all things fulfill a sacred ministry, where the atoms of dust are so many Levites whose innumerable legions prostrate themselves and pray in the cracks of the pavement.

June 10, 1834

When I begin a subject, my self-love imagines I am doing wonders, and when I finish I see only a bad pastiche made with remnants of color scraped from other people’s palettes and crudely mixed upon my own. But really, why torment myself endlessly with this thought? I do my best, I go as far as I can, and to the devil with what people will say. This philosophy is recent. For nearly eight days now I have made great progress in self-denial, resignation, the stripping away of every lofty thought. I have returned to my poor little shell and try to make myself as comfortable as I can within it, resolved never to leave it again. I mock my imagination, which wanted to travel through the air like the tortoise; I insult with relish my pretensions, timid though they are, which burst with vexation; I deride with delight the proud self which kicks vainly against the goad of inward sarcasm; I bite myself like the scorpion in the fire, to end it more quickly.

June 13, 1834

And am I not a laughingstock, a plaything, something little children pursue with their mockery, a being before whom the weakest stand tall, whom a ten-year-old boy’s foot crushes without my even being able to writhe like the worm beneath the wheel? All the children I meet have a kind of instinct by which they divine the feebleness of my character, and immediately they treat me as a master treats a slave; their first thought, as soon as they see me, is to make a toy of me, to tease me with the biting innocence of their age. I bear them no ill will: it is in their nature to turn everything weaker than their weak hands to their amusement.

At Le Parc (Eure-et-Loir), June 25, 1834

How can I express what I felt on plunging once more into solitude, and into a solitude which recalls the country of my sweetest dreams, Brittany? For this country inclines far toward the west, and one breathes here something like emanations from that good land. The fields look much the same: there are sunken roads covered with greenery, paths beside the grain, stiles, enclosures of gorse, broom, and stunted oaks; excellent butter is worked here, and cider flows quite abundantly. I enjoy this resemblance, I apply myself to studying it, I revive a multitude of charming memories, which to my mind is one of the soul’s sweetest pastimes. Yet the restless thought does not fall asleep; it spurs me and keeps me constantly on the alert, but its vexations are less sharp and less tormenting. Lightened of a burden of material anxieties which was stifling me, I rise more freely in my imaginings; but what does it matter? They are still cares, doubts, perplexities; only I go in search of them higher up, in a vaguer and less essential order. They are phantoms of the future which appear and vanish, inquiries into my destiny, fine hopes and failures of strength, a strange chain of all the thoughts which can hatch in a head not very fertile but always in motion, in an imagination which believes and does not believe in itself, which beats and caresses itself, which welcomes every dream, every impression without attaching itself to anything, and goes on asking for something new. When shall I subdue it, then, and come to good and simple reason? If I could yield to the wise counsels which come to me from every side, I would pack up all this baggage of foolish thoughts and, stripped of dreams but tranquil, fall in behind other men.

June 26, 1834

The gentlest hospitality, the intimacy of nature with whom I freely associate, the absence of every constraint, every subjection; the fulfillment of that happiness, half wild, half social, which I dreamed of so ardently in Paris, in my dark and stifling room: I possess all these blessings and cannot give myself wholly to their enjoyment. I imagined that as soon as I arrived here I would fall into the half-slumber of an even, free, natural life; but how little I know myself if I hope anywhere to taste complete repose and drowse to the gentle sound of that harmony one hears within when all the parts of the soul have come into accord! My faculties, intellectual as well as moral, are too uneven ever to reach equilibrium. Here I am sheltered from every outward shock. Freed from the tumult of society, beyond the reach of those blows which bruise, irritate, or utterly cast me down when I live in the thick of the world, good order would be restored within me if my affliction came entirely from society. Society has much to do with it, as I recognize by the great sense of deliverance I feel whenever I withdraw from it; but the nature of my soul also has a large share, as solitude proves to me as soon as I return to her. Then certain restless, stirring faculties awaken and, to torment me, revive the faculty of bitter suffering, the sourness, the concentrated vexations, the muffled angers which fall away and go to sleep beneath the powerful charm of the countryside. The caressing sensations which come in crowds in isolation, the vivid and penetrating influences of nature, flatter and tickle the surface of my soul; but as they penetrate within, they become irritants which increase the power of its dreaming and restless faculties.

July 16, 1834

I begin to notice within myself something which softens my inward miseries a little and may at last raise me in my own eyes: my soul’s progress in the love and understanding of liberty. It was in 1831 that my heart first trembled at that name. Until then, my soul’s weak and tardy temperament had left me insensible and ignorant of liberty’s delights. Its puberty finally declared itself, and the first impulses of this lively and powerful faculty turned toward this virgin; she stirred my soul at twenty-one as a young girl disturbed my heart at fourteen, with sensations wholly new, confused, and filled with a delicious agitation. For two and a half years I remained confined to the timid and vague reveries of a first love which does not know itself and needs little nourishment. But for some months now I have felt violent movements of the soul, and from time to time there come to me something like gusts of a powerful, intoxicating warmth which spreads within my breast. The indolent, uncertain dreams acquire substance and become active; imperceptibly they turn into strong and full thoughts. For every floating, lukewarm desire I once had, I now count a burning thirst. Instinct has become passion.

I am reaching a critical period of my inward life. In a strange stirring of my ideas, in the almost sudden growth of several of my faculties, in the quickening movement of my inward life, I recognize the approach of a revolution I have long called for. Until now I have left my faculties to the guidance of my whims and chance; I saw them as so feeble and so unpromising that I did not judge them worthy of other masters, but they have proved me wrong. These pale, frail children have gained strength and color; their uncertain and timid constitution has grown bold and, by a sudden, lively impulse, shaken off the languor of its long childhood. I must think of their destiny: the inward revolution is necessary; I am going to embrace the active life and bid farewell to my beloved indolences, sweet companions of my childhood and youth; alas! It will not be without a tear in my eye. At last, then, I shall exercise my faculties seriously, under the inspiration and fire of the thought, burning like a passion, which fills my soul: the thought of liberty, that is, of humanity’s greatest happiness and greatest progress. I shall be only an ant carrying a straw toward the building of the future; but however small my powers, they will nonetheless be animated by a broad and holy thought which never lets the soul it inhabits falter, which purifies it, enlarges it, and suffices for its happiness: a thought belonging to all and of which each is proud; the thought which drives the century before it, the most beautiful and powerful after the thought of God, the thought of liberty.

When I go out for a walk, in good spirits and free of every care, I feel, from the first few steps, a joy of an unaccustomed order and singular liveliness dawning in the depths of my soul. As I make my way into the countryside, it rises and spreads, sometimes progressing very rapidly, sometimes slowly, according to the turns of my course and the time I need to reach the loveliest part of my walk. As soon as I arrive there, as soon as I have placed myself as I please, always so as to receive directly and from every side the impressions of the horizon surrounding me, this growing feeling of an indefinable delight attains its fullness, spreads through my whole being, and fills it.