The Village Rector by Honoré de Balzac
page 44 of 328 (13%)
page 44 of 328 (13%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
town inspire me with that taste, so that I may rush to my
greenhouse with eager feet, as you go to yours to watch the development of your plants, to bud and bloom with them, to admire what you create,--the new colors, the unexpected varieties, which expand and grow beneath your eyes by the virtue of your care. "My greenhouse, the one I watch, is filled with suffering souls. The miseries I try to lessen sadden my heart; and when I take them upon myself, when, after finding some young woman without clothing for her babe, some old man wanting bread, I have supplied their needs, the emotions their distress and its relief have caused me do not suffice my soul. Ah, friend, I feel within me untold powers --for evil, possibly,--which nothing can lower, which the sternest commands of our religion are unable to abase! Sometimes, when I go to see my mother, walking alone among the fields, I want to cry aloud, and I do so. It seems to me that my body is a prison in which some evil genius is holding a shuddering creature while awaiting the mysterious words which are to burst its obstructive form. "But that comparison is not a just one. In me it seems to be the body that seeks escape, if I may say so. Religion fills my soul, books and their riches occupy my mind. Why, then, do I desire some anguish which shall destroy the enervating peace of my existence? "Oh, if some sentiment, some mania that I could cultivate, does not come into my life, I feel I shall sink at last into the gulf where all ideas are dulled, where character deteriorates, motives slacken, virtues lose their backbone, and all the forces of the soul are scattered,--a gulf in which I shall no longer be the |
|