ey
perturb and rend individual souls. Men seek, feeling their way, a road
that seems to elude them. A crowd of spirits, by the very fact of
their contemporaneity, feel themselves distracted and agitated all
in the same way. Confusedly and provoked by the same sufferings they
elaborate the same ideal and formulate the same desires. But they all
wander along twilit paths on the side of the night where the light
seems to be breaking through, without, however, being able to
pierce the darkness. These are the preliminary agonies of the great
historical epochs. Then let a being more powerful, more vital, an
elect soul that has passed through this phase and conquered these
shadows, become incarnate in a voice! That is enough. The personal
word which expresses the soul of that epoch and responds to its
needs, is found. It sounds through the world like a new _fiat lux_!
Everywhere, in those who listen to it and feel secret affinities with
it in themselves, it constitutes a magnificent revelation of light and
life. All these hearts vibrate in unison with one; and, gathering up
all these scattered notes into a single harmony, he who expresses the
sentiments of all, renders an account of the wonderful power of which
he is the instrument. No, it is no longer a man that speaks: what
sounds upon his lips, is the whole soul of a people, is a whole epoch,
is a new world.

A voice is also that inimitable sigh, that pure sob which tells
of grief because it issues from a suffering heart. It is pity and
compassion, it is the angel of God arriving among us on the caressing
breath, a messenger of mercy, and pouring into the tortured depths of
our poor heart its healing dew. It is Jesus saying to Mary, and, in
her, to all those whom grief afflicts: "Why weepest thou?" It is David
singing: "Why art thou cast down, O my soul?" It is Isaiah crying:
"Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people; speak ye comfortably to
Jerusalem!"

A voice is, on the solitary path where our will strays, the faithful
shepherd calling his sheep; it is every sign, even tho it be made
by the hand of a child, which in the days of forgetfulness and
unrestraint, suddenly wakes us and warns us that our feet skirt the
abysses.

Then, after the work of education, of creation, of pity, comes the
work of severity, of punishment, of destruction. The voice has been
compared to a sword. Like it, it flames and punishes. A voice is
Nathan rising up before the criminal king and calling d