Читать книгу Madeleine: One of Love's Jansenists онлайн

2 страница из 60

Thus, in this book, Madeleine sees the trivial, disorderly happenings of her life as a momentous battle waged between a kindly Power who had written on tablets of gold before the world began that she should win her heart’s desire, and a sterner and mightier Power who had written on tablets of iron that all her hopes should be frustrated, so that, finally, naked and bleeding, she might turn to Him. And having this conception of life all her acquaintances become minor daimones, friendly or hostile, according as they seem to serve one power or the other.

The other way is to turn from time to time upon the action the fantastic limelight of eternity, with a sudden effect of unreality and the hint of a world within a world. My plot—that is to say, the building of the shell—takes place in this inner world and is summed up in the words that dog the dreams of Madeleine—per hunc in invisibilium amorem rapiamur. In the outer world there is nothing but the ceaseless, meaningless drip of circumstances, in the inner world—a silent, ineluctable march towards a predestined climax.