All the stoics have drawn up rules of virtue. Not one has suggested the means that will give us the strength to apply them. For the wish is not enough. The gift is necessary, that secret impulse which is grace itself.
VI
Praise be to thee, divine world, that hast delivered me from anger by revealing to me in time that trembling blossom of the convolvulus!
Praise be to thee, divine world, that, at the very limit of my fatigue, in the midst of my perils, hast chosen mysterious ways to light me with an inner smile!
Millions of unhappy men who are suffering at this moment on the fields of distracted Europe are aware that at the blackest moment of distress a strange consolation can penetrate them; it is as if the fingers clutching one’s heart suddenly relaxed their grip. There are some who call this God. Many others give no name to the miracle, but long for it on their knees all the same.
The voice no longer speaks from the burning bush. Sometimes it is the sound of last year’s leaves still rustling in the branches of an oak. Sometimes there is no sound; only the speaking glance of a veronica in ecstasy among the April fields.
I am quite willing to bear, but I do not wish to forbear. I do not wish not to meet grace halfway, not to seek for it in the night flooded with frosty perfumes, in the tossing forest where two interlocked branches groan through the long hours, on the plateau haunted with thistles that labor with feverish piety to perpetuate their innumerable lineage.
I ask only to be allowed to interrogate the earth like those who seek minerals and water-courses, and to experience every morning the green ascent of the spring-time over the rocky slopes.
I do not know by what path joy will come; I ask only to be permitted, none the less, to go to meet it, for truly I cannot sit here by this mile-post at the cross-roads, and placidly await it.
One joy has come to me during the war, one that is undoubtedly the greatest joy of my life: that of having a child. My reason did not revolt at it, it did not dare to tell me that it was foolhardy to desire a child at a time when the human world was left without defense against confusion, disorder and crime. Yes, I rejoiced to have a man-child born to me now when the future of men seems to be corrupted for long years to come. I even hailed the child as a savior. You see, the paths of joy are as unknown to us as those of grace.