No illumination or help from elsewhere. Slowly, gropingly, by great effort, I arrive at lukewarm moments in which it is as though my head were leaning on my heart. Am I going to know at last and make up my mind? But when I put my hand on my breast, everything collapses and I have to begin all over again.
It is because there is an empty past which rings to the touch like an empty bowl, a lack of practice which benumbs your arms, a sort of shame.... You don't attain to your real truth at the first attempt.
And then above all—you must be honest with yourself—you don't seek your true self with a constant heart; far oftener you try to distract your mind from the thought of it. About me on the ground are patches of light, and I am simply bent upon catching them. I stretch out my hand, stoop down, put my cheek to them, they quiver and vanish; in their place a piercing warmth steals dancing over my face.
Then, without my having done anything and without my being worthy of it, the sacred mood of revolt returns, lifts me up, and forces me to my knees; I hear the rising breath of a sudden call....
Is it my life, O God? Whither does it go—answer!—when it develops in a deep breast, and you approach, again and again, as I am now approaching, something infinite whose name you seek to know?
II
Will the noise never stop? But there are walls to shut it out.
Let them hop about, shout, dance, amuse themselves. As for me, I have left them, I am alone in my room, I don't want to see or hear them any more.
I burrow my head desperately in the dark depths of the cushions. In vain. The eddying music follows its implacable course, drapes its arabesques of melody about me, and when I stop my ears, still keeps whirling round and round.
A mazurka. Who was it begged for a mazurka? Ah yes, I remember. When I left the group of young girls sitting on the watch, a quivering basket of artificial flowers, one of them was saying: "After the mazurka, I'll take him out into the garden, where I'll manage to make him kiss me."