Hope Is A Risk That Must Be

Like All Truly Pure Souls She [chantal] Quickly Resigned Herself To Past Faults, Thought Only Of How To Repair Whatever Harm They Had Done. "of All My Daughters, You Are Certainly The Least Bothered By Scruples Of Conscience," Abbé Chevance Used To Say.... Even Sin, Once The Will Is Detached And No Longer Nourishes It, Withers And Dies Sterile. It Is In The Secret Of Intentions, Like In A Decomposing Humus, In The Dark Forest Of Future Sins, Unpardoned Sins, Half Dead, Half Living, That New Poisons Are Distilled.

...the Most Dangerous Shortsightedness Consists In Underestimating The Mediocre.

Chantal's Only Ruse ... Was Her Shattering Simplicity. While A Weak Man Or An Imposter Is Always More Complicated Than The Problem He Is Trying To Solve, And Thinking To Encompass His Adversary, Merely Keeps Prowling Interminably Around Himself, The Heroic Nature Will Throw Itself Into The Heart Of The Danger To Turn It To Its Own Use, Just As Captured Artillery Is Turned About And Aimed At The Backs Of The Fleeing Enemy.

Appearances Are Nothing.... And First Of All They Should Not Be Feared, They Are Only Dangerous To The Weak.

A Man Given To Vice Is Always An Idealist.