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And I?
I, the normal man? What have I done on earth? I have bent the knee to the forces which glitter, without seeking to know whence they came and whither they guide. How have the eyes availed me that I had to see with, the intelligence that I had to judge with?
Borne down by shame, I sobbed, "I don't know," and I cried out so loudly that it seemed to me I was awaking for a moment out of slumber. Hands are holding and calming me; they draw my shroud about me and enclose me.
It seems to me that a shape has leaned over me, quite near, so near; that a loving voice has said something to me; and then it seems to me that I have listened to fond accents whose caress came from a great way off:
"Why shouldn't you be one of them, my lad,—one of those great prophets?"
I don't understand. I? How could I be?
All my thoughts go blurred. I am falling again. But I bear away in my eyes the picture of an iron bed where lay a rigid shape. Around it other forms were drooping, and one stood and officiated. But the curtain of that vision is drawn. A great plain opens the room, which had closed for a moment on me, and obliterates it.
Which way may I look? God? "Miserere——" The vibrating fragment of the Litany has reminded me of God.
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