I had gone too far to maintain silence; I was obliged to speak. I described the sadness of my existence, my vague, remote chances for the future, the subservience in which my brothers held me within the family. I was thinking of a much worse subservience from which I hoped to deliver myself by leaving. I invested these shabby complaints with all the distress I would have put into another confession, which I could not make and which was the only thing that mattered to me. My mother kept silent; I realized that I had persuaded her. She rose to go to the door. She was weak and tired; I recognized how painful it had been for her that she had been unable to say no to me. It was as if she had lost a second child. It pained me not to be able to tell her the real cause of my importunity; she must have thought me very egotistical; I wish I could have told her I would not go. The next day she called me to her; we spoke about my departure as if it had always been agreed between us. My family was not rich enough to give me an allowance: I would have to work to live. In order to help me get started, my mother gave me, in strictest secrecy, some money taken from her own funds. It was not a large sum, yet it seemed so to both of us. I reimbursed her in part as soon as I was able; but my mother died too soon, and I was not able to discharge my debt altogether. My mother believed in my future. If I have ever desired any glory or fame, it is because I knew it would make her happy. Thus, insofar as those we have loved disappear, the reasons diminish for achieving a happiness that we can no longer share together.

I was about to be nineteen. It mattered to my mother that I should not leave until after my birthday; we therefore returned to Woroïno. During the few weeks I spent there, I had no deed to reproach myself with, and almost no desire. I was simply occupied with the preparations for my departure.