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60 But Maurice de Guérin had in him a power of enjoyment and of suffering which filled his life with profound emotions, and these emotions break like waves at our feet when we read the brief pages of his diary. There is the record of a single day at Le Val, so brimming with blessedness and beauty that it illustrates the lasting nature of pure earthly happiness; for such days are counted out like fairy gold, and we are richer all our lives for having grasped them once. There are passages of power and subtlety which show that nature took to her heart this trembling seeker after felicity, cast from him the chains of care and thought, and bade him taste for one keen hour "the noble voluptuousness of freedom." Then, breaking swiftly in amid vain dreams of joy, comes the bitter moment of awakening, and the sad voice of humanity sounds wailing in his ears.

"My God, how I suffer from life! Not from its accidents,—a little philosophy suffices for them,—but from itself, from its substance, from all its phenomena."

And ever wearing away his heart is the restlessness of a nature which craved beauty for