This is the way he had loved and suffered by the whole world and God had so often changed his heart that he had difficulty remembering who had made him suffer or where it was that he had loved. But those moments when anticipation had enthralled one of those years in his life which seemed to be for ever imminent and which he would have liked to hold onto beyond the grave, he could not find any more trace of it in his memory the following year than children who cannot find any trace of the castles they defended with such passion, against the next tide. Just like the sea time carries away everything, eradicates everything, along with our passions, not carried by its waves but beneath its calm surface, the unconscious and sure ascent of its billows like a children's game. And when he was suffering too much from jealousy God himself separated him from the one through whom he would have wished to suffer all his life, if he could not have been happy through her. But God did not want to be like Him, because He had instilled in him the gift of song and had no wish for him to be destroyed by sorrow. He also placed desirable creatures in his path and Himself recommended infidelity. Because He did not permit swallows, albatrosses or other small songbirds to die of suffering and cold in the land where they lived. But when the cold came to assail them He placed in their heart the desire to migrate so that they would not disobey their law which is not to be wholly faithful to the soil but to sing.
Created 14.11.19