It seemed to me that in
placing the lines referring to her in a book for the trade I should
be acting with as much impropriety as if I sent a portrait of her for
sale to an auction room. The pamphlet in question will not, therefore,
be reprinted until after my death, appended to it, very possibly being
several of her letters selected by me beforehand. The natural sequence
of this book, which is neither more nor less than the sequence in the
various periods of my life, brings about a sort of contrast between
the anecdotes of Brittany and those of the Seminary, the latter
being the details of a darksome struggle, full of reasonings and
hard scholasticism, while the recollections of my earlier years are
instinct with the impressions of childlike sensitiveness, of candour,
of innocence, and of affection. There is nothing surprising about
this contrast. Nearly all of us are double. The more a man develops
intellectually, the stronger is his attraction to the opposite pole:
that is to say, to the irrational, to the repose of mind in absolute
ignorance, to the woman who is merely a woman, the instinctive being
who acts solely from the impulse of an obscure conscience. The fierce
school of controversy, in which the mind of Europe has been involved
since the time of Abelard, induces periods of mental drought and
aridity. The brain, parched by reasoning, thirsts for simplicity, like
the desert for spring water. When reflection has brought us up to the
last limit of doubt, the spontaneous affirmation of the good and of
the beautiful which is to be found in the female conscience delights
us and settles the question for us.
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