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STRAIT IS THE GATE 200

our excursion yesterday to Les Baux, or by reading, or by prayer. To-day I can write of nothing else; the curious melancholy from which I have been suffering ever since I arrived at Aigues-Vives has, perhaps, no other cause — and yet I feel it at such a depth within me that it seems to me now as if it had been there for a long time past, and as if the joy on which I prided myself did no more than cover it over.


27th May. Why should I lie to myself? It is by an effort of mind that I rejoice in Juliette's happiness. That happiness which I longed for so much, to the extent of offering my own in sacrifice to it, is painful to me , now that I see that she has obtained it without trouble, and that it is so different from what she and I imagined. How complicated it all is! Yes ... I see well enough that a horrible revival of egoism in me is offended at her having found her happiness elsewhere than in my sacrifice — at her not having needed my sacrifice in order to be happy. And now I ask myself, as I feel what uneas ness Jerome's silence causes me: Was that sacrifice really consummated in my heart? I am, as it were, humiliated, to feel that God no longer .

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