Can you imagine the eternal vacillation of such a contest? Then you will know that desire fighting against reason now drove my will back step by step until it was tottering on the brink of chaos, and again, in a triumph of resistance, my determination swept everything before it until I longed to rise, to throw my arms upward, fingers extended, and cry aloud my victory.
On the other hand, a thousand moments came when, ready to yield to my temptation, I have dropped on my knees on the boards and, with my eyes fixed upon that wall, have prayed like mad, hour after hour, my lips parched and blood running from my bare knees.
Voices whispered to me that I was a fanatic, pinning my faith to superstition and the practices of savagery. I whispered back to them that they should see me victorious at last.
“How long will you fight?” said they mockingly.
“Till desire is gone and the will has nothing to fight for,” I answered them.
“You are insane,” they said, speaking like so many devils.
“We shall know better at the end,” I replied softly.
These dialogues, the torture of which no one can know, went on eternally. They were arguments, I knew, between my ingenious mind and the will which was trying to reclaim its mastery of my thought.
Night and day became all one to me. I lost count of the hours, then of the days. I became filled with the fear that three weeks would go by, that you would return too soon, that interruption would come before my fight had been determined one way or the other. This terror was enough to weaken me. I felt it many times and on each occasion drew so near the bare wall that I could throw my weight against it and lose all external thoughts by staring at the blank surface, with all but one purpose banished from my mind.
I have eaten merely to live, slept only to repair my strength. Each morsel of food has added to my bodily anguish, each falling asleep has meant a horrible awakening to new, exquisite torture of the body. My hands have become black by resting on the bare boards, my nails torn by scratching over the covering of my mattress. My hair is matted. My throat, dry with prayers, is almost voiceless, my lips are cracked like old leather.