is truly our own till it faithfully follow us into the darkness and silence, why should the thing that has sprung to life there be less faithful in silence and darkness?  But we will pursue this no farther, for it leads to a wisdom of over-much theory.  For all that a brilliant exterior destiny is not indispensable, still should we always regard it as wholly desirable, and pursue it as keenly as though we valued it highly.  It behoves the sage to knock at the door of every temple of glory, of every dwelling where happiness, love, and activity are to be found.  And if his strenuous effort and long expectation remain unrewarded, if no door fly open, still may he find, perhaps, in the mere expectation and effort an equivalent for all the emotions and light that he sought.  “To act,” says Barres, “is to annex to our thoughts vaster fields of experience.”  It is also, perhaps, to think more quickly than thought, as more completely; for we no longer think with the brain alone, but with every atom of life.  It is to wrap round with dream the profoundest sources of thought, and then to confront them with fact.  But to act is not always to conquer.  To attempt, to be patient, and wait—­these, too, may be action; as also, to hear, to watch, and be silent.

If the lot of the woman we speak of had been cast in Athens, or Florence, or Rome, there had been, in her life, certain motives of grandeur, occasions for beauty and happiness, that she may well never meet with to-day.  And she is the poorer for lacking the efforts she might have put forth, the memory of what might have been done; for in these lies a force that is precious and vital, that often indeed will transform many more things within us, than a thought which is morally, mentally worth many thousand such efforts and memories.  And indeed it is therefore alone that we should desire a brilliant, feverish destiny; because it summons to life certain forces and feelings that would otherwise never emerge from the slumberous peace of an over-tranquil existence.  But from the moment we know, or even suspect, that these feelings lie dormant within us, we are already giving life to all that is best in those feelings; and it is as though we were, for one brief moment, looking down upon a glorious external destiny from heights such destiny shall only attain at the end of its days; as though we were prematurely gathering the fruit of the tree, which it shall itself still find barren until many a storm has passed.

95.  Last night, re-reading Saint-Simon—­with whom we seem to ascend a lofty tower, whence our gaze rests on hundreds of human destinies, astir in the valley below—­I understood what a beautiful destiny meant to the instinct of man.  It would doubtless have puzzled Saint-Simon himself to have told what it was that he loved and admired in some of his heroes, whom he enwraps in a sort of resigned, and almost unconscious, respect.  Thousands of virtues that he esteemed highly have ceased to exist