tired, finding in the song that charmed her a sweetness forever new.
Dear and truthful image of what the soul experiences when, mute,
as respectful as a child and as ready of belief, it listens in the
universal silence to the voices that translate for it the things that
are eternal!

All those who have become voices have traveled this way. At Patmos or
in the desert, on Horeb or on Sinai, they have trembled with fright or
started with joy. But everything has its time. There comes a day when
all voices, soft or terrible, that man has heard, grow still, to let
henceforth only one be heard, which cries to him: "Go! go now and be
a witness of the things you have heard! Go! I send you forth as lambs
among wolves! Go! I send you toward men whose brow is harsh, whose
heart is wicked, but fear nothing, I shall embolden your face, I shall
give you a heart of brass and a forehead of diamond."

When that moment has come, one must, in order to remain faithful to
his mission, remember that after all he is only a voice. Truth
does not belong to us, it is we who belong to truth! Wo to him who
possesses it and treats it as something that belongs to himself. Happy
is he who is possest by it! No preference, no kinship, no sympathy
counts here. Alas! it is not thus that men understand it. It is for
this reason that they degrade truth and that it becomes without power
in their hands. Instead of winging its way heavenward in vigorous
flight, it crawls along the earth, like an eagle whose wings have been
broken. Nothing is sadder than to see how those who ought to lend
their voice to truth, turn it to their own uses and play with it. The
voice, human speech, that sacred organ, whose whole worth lies in
sincerity, has in all ages been the victim of odious profanations. But
in this age it is more than ever attainted. The evil from which it