I wanted to go before the Easter season, which brings too many strangers into the region. On the last evening, I said goodbye to my mother. We separated without any ado. There is something reprehensible about acting too emotionally when one goes away, as if one wanted to make oneself missed. Then, too, sensuous kisses cause us to forget the other kind: one no longer knows how to give the other kind, or one no longer dares. I wanted to leave the next morning very early without disturbing anyone. I spent the night in my room in front of my open window, trying to imagine my future. It was an immense and bright night. The park was separated from the main road only by a fence; some people returning late passed down the road in silence; I heard their heavy footsteps grow distant. Suddenly a sad song floated up from them. It is possible that these poor people thought and suffered only dimly, like inanimate objects. But their song contained whatever soul they were capable of. They sang merely to lighten their road; they were unaware of what they were expressing. I recall the voice of the woman, so limpid it could have flown indefatigably, indefinitely up to God. I thought it not impossible that the whole of life itself might become a similar ascension; I solemnly promised that to myself. It is not hard to cultivate admirable thoughts when the stars are out. It is much harder to keep them intact in the paltriness of the day. It is so much harder to be to others what we are to God.

I arrived in Vienna. My mother had inculcated me with all the Moravian prejudices against Austria; the first week I spent there was so painful that I would prefer to say nothing about it. I took a room in a rather poor house. I was full of good intentions; I remember that I believed I could methodically arrange my desires and anguishes, the way one arranges objects in a drawer. There is, in the renunciations of a twenty-year-old, a bitter intoxication. I had read, I forget in which book, that at a specific time of adolescence certain troubles are not rare; I antedated my memories to prove to myself that there had been merely some very banal incidents limited to a period of life I had gone beyond. I did not even dream of other forms of happiness; I therefore had to choose between my penchants, which I judged criminal, and complete renunciation, which is perhaps not human. I chose. I condemned myself, at the age of twenty, to an absolute isolation of the senses and the heart. Thus began a number of years of struggle, obsession, and severity. I cannot say that my efforts were admirable; one can only say that they were senseless. In any case, it is something to have made them; they allow me today to accept myself more honorably. Precisely because I would have been able to find, in this unknown town, easier opportunities, I felt obliged to repulse them all; I did not wish to betray the confidence which had been shown me in allowing me to leave home. Yet it is strange to see how quickly we become habituated to ourselves; I found it admirable to renounce what, several months earlier, I believed I was horrified by.