And he spoke to God quietly.
"My soul is an evil place, sordid and infamous; till now it has loved only perverse ways; it has exacted from my wretched body the tithe of illicit pleasures and unholy joys, it is worth little, it is worth nothing, and yet down there near Thee, if Thou wilt succour me, I think that I shall subdue it, but if my body be sick, I cannot force it to obey me; this is worse than all, I am disarmed if Thou do not come to my aid.
"Take count of this, O Lord; I know by experience that when I am ill-fed, I have neuralgia; humanly, logically speaking, I am certain to be horribly ill at Notre Dame de l'Atre; nevertheless, if I can get about at all, the day after to-morrow, I will go all the same.
"In default of love, this is the sole proof I can give that I truly desire Thee, that truly I hope and believe in Thee, but then, O Lord, aid me."
He added sadly, "Ah! indeed I am no Lidwine or Catherine Emmerich, who when Thou didst strike them cried out, More, more!—Thou dost scarce touch me, and I protest; but what wouldest Thou? Thou dost know better than I; physical suffering breaks me down, drives me to despair."
He went to sleep at last to kill the day in bed; slumbering to wake again suddenly from frightful nightmares.
The next day his head seemed empty and his heart feeble, but his neuralgia was less violent. He rose, saying to himself that he must eat, though he was not hungry, for fear his pain should return. He went out and wandered in the Luxembourg, saying to himself that he must arrange his time, that after breakfast he would visit St. Severin, then he would go home and pack, and afterwards finish the day at Notre Dame des Victoires.
The walk did him good, his head was lighter, and his heart free. He went into a restaurant, where because of the early hour nothing was ready; he spent the time before a newspaper, on a bench. How often he had held papers thus without reading them, how many evenings he had waited in cafés with his nose in an article, thinking of other matters, at those times especially when he was striving with his vices; when Florence appeared to him, still keeping the clear smile of a little girl on her way to school, her eyes cast down, her hands in the pockets of her apron.
Suddenly the child changed into a ghoul who whirled round him wildly, and made him silently understand the horror of his desires....
All that was now far distant; almost in one day the charm was broken, without any real strife or true effort, without inward struggles; he had abstained from seeing her, and now when she roused his memory again she was no more in fact than a recollection odious and sweet.