4 April 1881 – 10 April 1881

Visit to ——. She read over to me letters of 1844 to 1845—letters of mine. So much promise to end in so meager a result! What creatures we are! I shall end like the Rhine, lost among the sands, and the hour is close by when my thread of water will have disappeared. Afterward I had a little walk in the sunset. There was an effect of scattered rays and stormy clouds; a green haze envelops all the trees— “Et tout renaît, et déjà l’aubépine A vu l’abeille accourir à ses fleurs,” —but to me it all seems strange already. Later.—What dupes we are of our own desires!... Destiny has two ways of crushing us—by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them. But he who only wills what God wills escapes both catastrophes. “All things work together for his good.”