THE EQUINOX
and it is precisely that which the old ascetic writers called
the power of discerning spirits.
You are cruel consolers, said Job to his pretended friends.
It is, in fact, the vicious that afflict rather than console.
They have a prodigious tact for finding and choosing the
most desperate banalities. Are you weeping for a broken
affection? How simple you are! they were playing with you,
they did not love you. You admit sorrowfully that your
child limps; in friendly fashion they bid you remark that he
is a hunchback. If he coughs and that alarms you, they
conjure you tenderly to take great care of him, perhaps he is
consumptive. Has your wife been ill for along time? Cheer
up, she will die of it!
Hope and work is the message of Heaven to us by the
voice of all good souls. Despair and die, Hell cries to us in
every word and movement, even in all the friendly acts and
caresses of imperfect or degraded beings.
Whatever the reputation of any one may be, and what-
ever may be the testimonies of friendship that that person
may give you, if, on leaving him, you feel yourself less
well disposed and weaker, he is pernicious for you: avoid
him.
Our double magnetism produces in us two sorts of
sympathies. We need to absorb and to radiate turn by turn.
Our heart loves contrasts, and there are few women who have
loved two men of genius in succession.
One finds peace through the protection which one’s own
weariness of admiration gives; it is the law of equilibrium;
but sometimes even sublime natures are surprised in caprices
of vulgarity. Man, said the Abbé Gerbet, is the shadow of
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