Chapter XXXVI

What is love? The need of coming out of one's self.

Man is an animal of worship. To worship is to sacrifice one's self and to prostitute one's self.

Thus all love is prostitution.

The most prostituted being is the being beyond compare, is. God, since he is the soul supreme for every individual, since he is the common, inexhaustible reservoir of love.

PRAYER

Do not chastise me in my mother, you chastise my mother because of me.--I commend to you the souls of my father and Mariette.--Give me each day strength to perform the present duty and thus to become a hero and a saint.