It occurred to me this morning how little we know of each other’s physical troubles; even those nearest and dearest to us know nothing of our conversations with the King of Terrors. There are thoughts which brook no confidant: there are griefs which cannot be shared. Consideration for others even bids us conceal them. We dream alone, we suffer alone, we die alone, we inhabit the last resting-place alone. But there is nothing to prevent us from opening our solitude to God. And so what was an austere monologue becomes dialogue, reluctance becomes docility, renunciation passes into peace, and the sense of painful defeat is lost in the sense of recovered liberty.
“Vouloir ce que Dieu veut est la seule science
Qui nous met en repos.”
None of us can escape the play of contrary impulse; but as soon as the soul has once recognized the order of things and submitted itself thereto, then all is well.
“Comme un sage mourant puissions nous dire en paix:
J’ai trop longtemps erré, cherché; je me trompais:
Tout est bien, mon Dieu m’enveloppe.”
January 28, 1881.—A terrible night. For three or four hours I struggled against suffocation and looked death in the face.... It is clear that what awaits me is suffocation—asphyxia. I shall die by choking.
I should not have chosen such a death; but when there is no option, one must simply resign one’s self, and at once.... Spinoza expired in the presence of the doctor whom he had sent for. I must familiarize myself with the idea of dying unexpectedly, some fine night, strangled by laryngitis. The last sigh of a patriarch surrounded by his kneeling family is more beautiful: my fate indeed lacks beauty, grandeur, poetry; but stoicism consists in renunciation. Abstine et sustine.
I must remember besides that I have faithful friends; it is better not to torment them. The last journey is only made more painful by scenes and lamentations: one word is worth all others—“Thy will, not mine, be done!” Leibnitz was accompanied to the grave by his servant only. The loneliness of the deathbed and the tomb is not an evil. The great mystery cannot be shared. The dialogue between the soul and the King of Terrors needs no witnesses. It is the living who cling to the thought of last greetings. And, after all, no one knows exactly what is reserved for him. What will be will be. We have but to say, “Amen.”
February 4, 1881.—It is a strange sensation that of laying one’s self down to rest with the thought that perhaps one will never see the morrow. Yesterday I felt it strongly, and yet here I am. Humility is made easy by the sense of excessive frailty, but it cuts away all ambition.
“Quittez le long espoir et les vastes pensées.”
A long piece of work seems absurd—one lives but from day to day.