There is no compensation for the personal suffering that we may experience. On the contrary, in a close and complete union with the sufferings of others is hidden a joy of mutual pain; an active desire to give aid impels to the beginning of a helpful act, provokes to so fervent a prayer for heavenly mercy that the heart no longer knows whether it lies prone in utter distress or has attained to a radiant phase of existence incomparably higher than its paltry estate as an isolated being. The word "love" presents itself to a soul thus irradiated without any sustaining form which might limit its character; it is without extent as without form; as to the source that feeds it, springing up no one knows where, one is convinced that there is no fear that it will ever be exhausted.
Odette often wept, but to-day it was with other tears. She took up one of Jean's photographs and found but one word to say to it:
"Forgive me!"
She understood neither what she felt nor what she was doing, but she was conscious of failing Jean. Not of failing Jean in favor of another, but for the sake of a multitude of others among whom no one man could be discerned. When she was able to formulate a thought, she said to herself: "I was pitying." She might have said: "Charity has taken possession of me."
[XXXII]
There was no sign that any event had occurred that evening. Odette had spent it alone in her little drawing-room. The chorus in the next apartment was stilled. But that evening was made up of the most important hours which the young wife had experienced since the death of her husband.
Odette was aware that something had been revealed within herself, but she was ill adapted to analyze herself, and the phenomenon was still wrapped in mist. It had manifested its reality only by a single act of hers—an act which she remembered, which abode with her: the prayer for forgiveness addressed to the picture of her beloved Jean. She returned continually to this material fact; she had seized the photograph and had kissed it as if she had been at fault. Thanks to this fact, the spiritual operations of which it was the conclusion were not arrested, did not vanish like smoke, and pursued her that night, on the morrow, and during the following days.
So sudden a burst of light might indeed have been ephemeral in character. We are all subject, especially under an exterior influence acting upon the senses, to similar spasms of enthusiasm, or to dreams of a like generosity which may be only a passing impulse. They die away and we return to a condition which we call reasonable, that is to say, lucid, calm, well-balanced, and tame.
With Odette this illumination had not the character of a sudden impulse, but was rather the outcome of a long and almost unconscious preparation. How many words, how many tidings, how many hints registered in her memory, how many puzzling suggestions, how many dramatic scenes, how many ideas had been as so many arrows of direction, guiding her toward the place where she had received the divine spark! How many books read, how many musings, apparently without result, had determined the direction that had brought her here! Odette was like a clay which during two and a half years had been continually receiving the touches of a thumb or chisel, powerless to give her the form which an invisible artist desired her to take, and the last touch, removing an encumbering bit, had produced precisely the shape desired.
Odette awoke next morning in the same condition in which she had fallen asleep, with the one difference that she no longer wept. But the tears of the evening had had their sweetness. She found herself in an almost grateful tranquillity. She went and came in the midst of Jean's photographs, and Jean did not reproach her for her new state of mind. His memory seemed to be in nowise outraged. And yet Odette did not forget that she had begged his forgiveness, as if it had been possible that she had failed him. This fact marked a well-determined date in the perturbations of her soul. But it seemed to her that she had received to her "Forgive me!" a gentle, calming reply, a loving approbation.