* * * * *
I returned to Vauclaire, for it seemed now my home; and there I
experienced a true, a deep repentance; and I humbled myself before my
Maker. And while in this state, sitting one bright day in front of the
monastery-gate, something said to me: 'You will never be a good man, nor
permanently escape Hell and Frenzy, unless you have an aim in life,
devoting yourself heart and soul to some great work, which will exact
all your science, your thought, your ingenuity, your knowledge of modern
things, your strength of body and will, your skill of head and hand:
otherwise you are bound to succumb. Do this, therefore, beginning, not
to-morrow nor this afternoon, but now: for though no man will see your
work, there is still the Almighty God, who is also something, in His
way: and He will see how you strive, and try, and groan: and perhaps,
seeing, He may have mercy upon you.'
* * * * *
In this way arose the idea of the Palace--an idea, indeed, which had
entered my brain before, but merely as a bombastic and visionary outcome
of my raving moods: now, however, in a very different way, soberly, and
soon concerning itself with details, difficulties, means, limitations,
and every kind of practical matter-of-fact; and every obstruction which,
one by one, I foresaw was, one by one, as the days passed, over-borne by
the vigour with which that thought, rapidly becoming a mania, possessed
me.
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