"And yet I believed that I could unite myself to God!"
"Ah! madness! madness! Is the fault mine? Prayer has become intolerable to me! My heart is dry as a rock! Once, it was wont to overflow with love!...
"The sand used to smoke of mornings like the odourous dust of a censer;--at sunset flowers of fire used to bloom upon the cross; and in the middle of the night, it often seemed as though all beings and all things, lying under the same awful silence, were adoring the Lord with me. O charms of prayer, felicities of ecstasy, gifts of heaven,--what have become of you?
"I remember a voyage I made with Ammon in search of a solitary place suited for the establishment of a monastery. It was the last evening; we hastened our steps, walked side by side, murmuring hymns, without conversing. As the sun sank, the shadows of our bodies lengthened like two obelisks, continually growing taller, and moving before us. Here and there we planted crosses, made with fragments of our sticks, to mark the site of a future cell. Night was tardy in her coming; and waves of darkness overspread the earth, even while a vast rose-coloured light still glowed in heaven.
"When I was a child, I used to amuse myself by building hermitages with pebbles. My mother sitting beside me would watch me so attentively!
"Will she not have cursed me for having abandoned her?--will she not have plucked out her white hair by handfuls in the despair of her grief? And her corpse remains lying on the floor of the hut, under the roof of reeds, between the crumbling walls. Through an orifice a hyena, snuffing, thrusts his head, advances his mouth ... horror! horror!"
"No: Ammonaria will not have abandoned her! Where is she now,--Ammonaria?
"Perhaps at the further end of a bathroom, she removes her garments one after the other: first the mantle, then the girdle, then the first tunic, the second lighter tunic, all her necklaces,--and the vapour of cinnamon envelops her naked limbs. At last she lies down upon the tepid mosaic. Her long hair spreading below the curve of her hips, seems like a sable fleece; and the oppressiveness of the heated air causes her to pant; her waist arched, her breasts standing out ... What! my flesh rebels again! Even in the midst of grief am I tortured by concupiscence. To be subjected thus unto two tortures at once is beyond endurance! I can no longer bear myself!"