IX
One must not, at first sight, say that a man is uninteresting and that his face is expressionless. One might as well say that the water of a river is empty when it swarms with vegetable and animal life.
In one’s manner of listening to a man there may be prejudice and suspicion, there must not be indifference or indolence. The soul has, in its arsenal, lenses, microscopes, and powerful sources of light for exploring objects to their depths, through their transparencies, into the innermost recesses of their organs.
At the beginning of the war I lived for two years with a comrade who was invariably silent and indolent; his handsome face remained always so gloomy, his actions remained so devoid of purpose and significance, that I despaired of ever making him my prey; I was simply never touched with a desire to get hold of him.
Then a day came when I heard him greet some happening with a word, pronounced in such a challenging tone that I decided to undertake the expedition. I spent days and days at it, with the pickaxe, mattock, and little lantern of the miner. I have thought of him ever since with stupefaction, as of those subterranean, half-explored chasms where one finds rivers, colonnades, domes, blind animals and terrible shapes of stone.
The nature of the object should not discourage one’s interest. The viper is a dangerous and vindictive creature. The naturalists who have been able to study it have only been able to do so because they have studied with passion, that is to say, with love.
So much to tell you that that sort of zoological curiosity you may bring to the study of your neighbor no more authorizes cruelty than it allows you to dispense with affection.
Extreme attention resembles affection. Contemplation is pure love.