Every happiness is an innocence. I must, even if I shock you, repeat this word which always seems so miserable, for nothing better demonstrates our misery than the importance of happiness. During several weeks, I lived with my eyes closed. I had not abandoned music; on the contrary, I felt its great capacity for moving me. You know that weightlessness one experiences in the depths of dreams. It seemed that the early morning moments liberated me from my body for the rest of the day. My impressions at that time, varied though they were, are all one in my memory. One would have said that my sensibility, no longer restricted to myself, had expanded out into everything. The emotions of the morning extended into the musical phrases of the evening. Certain nuances of the season, a certain odor, an old melody I was taken with then, have remained for me eternal temptresses, because they speak to me of another person. Then, one morning, he came no more. My fever subsided: it was as if I had awakened. I can only compare it to the wonder created by the silence when music has ceased.

I had to reflect on what had happened. Naturally, I could only judge myself according to the accepted ideas of my world. I would have found it even more abominable not to be horrified by my sin than to have committed it; hence, I condemned myself severely. What frightened me above all else was to have been able to live in this way, to have been happy for several weeks before I was struck with the idea of sin. I tried to recall the circumstances of the act; I could not manage to; they overwhelmed me far more than at the moment in which I was living them, because in those moments I was not watching myself live. I pretended I had given in to a passing folly; I failed to see that my examinations of conscience had rapidly led me into a much worse folly: for I was too scrupulous not to attempt to become the most unhappy person I could.