14 March 1881 – 20 March 1881

I have finished Mérimée’s letters to Panizzi. Mérimée died of the disease which torments me—“Je tousse, et j’étouffe.” Bronchitis and asthma, whence defective assimilation, and finally exhaustion. He, too, tried arsenic, wintering at Cannes, compressed air. All was useless. Suffocation and inanition carried off the author of “Colomba.” Hic tua res agitur. The gray, heavy sky is of the same color as my thoughts. And yet the irrevocable has its own sweetness and serenity. The fluctuations of illusion, the uncertainties of desire, the leaps and bounds of hope, give place to tranquil resignation. One feels as though one were already beyond the grave. It is this very week, too, I remember, that my corner of ground in the Oasis is to be bought. Everything draws toward the end. Festinat ad eventum.

The “Journal” is full of details of the horrible affair at Petersburg. How clear it is that such catastrophes as this, in which the innocent suffer, are the product of a long accumulation of iniquities. Historical justice is, generally speaking, tardy—so tardy that it becomes unjust. The Providential theory is really based on human solidarity. Louis XVI. pays for Louis XV., Alexander II. for Nicholas. We expiate the sins of our fathers, and our grandchildren will be punished for ours. A double injustice! cries the individual. And he is right if the individualist principle is true. But is it true? That is the point. It seems as though the individual part of each man’s destiny were but one section of that destiny. Morally we are responsible for what we ourselves have willed, but socially, our happiness and unhappiness depend on causes outside our will. Religion answers—“Mystery, obscurity, submission, faith. Do your duty; leave the rest to God.”

A wretched night. A melancholy morning.... The two stand-bys of the doctor, digitalis and bromide, seem to have lost their power over me. Wearily and painfully I watch the tedious progress of my own decay. What efforts to keep one’s self from dying! I am worn out with the struggle. Useless and incessant struggle is a humiliation to one’s manhood. The lion finds the gnat the most intolerable of his foes. The natural man feels the same. But the spiritual man must learn the lesson of gentleness and long-suffering. The inevitable is the will of God. We might have preferred something else, but it is our business to accept the lot assigned us.... One thing only is necessary— “Garde en mon coeur la foi dans ta volonté sainte, Et de moi fais, ô Dieu, tout ce que tu voudras.” Later.—One of my students has just brought me a sympathetic message from my class. My sister sends me a pot of azaleas, rich in flowers and buds;——sends roses and violets: every one spoils me, which proves that I am ill.

Distaste—discouragement. My heart is growing cold. And yet what affectionate care, what tenderness, surrounds me!... But without health, what can one do with all the rest? What is the good of it all to me? What was the good of Job’s trials? They ripened his patience; they exercised his submission. Come, let me forget myself, let me shake off this melancholy, this weariness. Let me think, not of all that is lost, but of all that I might still lose. I will reckon up my privileges; I will try to be worthy of my blessings.