Without directly attacking this pride, he prevented it from developing into hardness of heart; and without depriving me of my self-esteem, he made me less scornful of my neighbours.  By continually drawing my attention from the empty show, and directing it to the genuine sufferings concealed by it, he taught me to deplore the faults of my fellows and feel for their sufferings, to pity rather than envy them.  Touched with compassion towards human weaknesses through the profound conviction of his own failings, he viewed all men as the victims of their own vices and those of others; he beheld the poor groaning under the tyranny of the rich, and the rich under the tyranny of their own prejudices.  “Believe me,” said he, “our illusions, far from concealing our woes, only increase them by giving value to what is in itself valueless, in making us aware of all sorts of fancied privations which we should not otherwise feel.  Peace of heart consists in despising everything that might disturb that peace; the man who clings most closely to life is the man who can least enjoy it; and the man who most eagerly desires happiness is always most miserable.”

“What gloomy ideas!” I exclaimed bitterly.  “If we must deny ourselves everything, we might as well never have been born; and if we must despise even happiness itself who can be happy?” “I am,” replied the priest one day, in a tone which made a great impression on me.  “You happy!  So little favoured by fortune, so poor, an exile and persecuted, you are happy!  How have you contrived to be happy?” “My child,” he answered, “I will gladly tell you.”

Thereupon he explained that, having heard my confessions, he would confess to me.  “I will open my whole heart to yours,” he said, embracing me.  “You will see me, if not as I am, at least as I seem to myself.  When you have heard my whole confession of faith, when you really know the condition of my heart, you will know why I think myself happy, and if you think as I do, you will know how to be happy too.  But these explanations are not the affair of a moment, it will take time to show you all my ideas about the lot of man and the true value of life; let us choose a fitting time and a place where we may continue this conversation without interruption.”

I showed him how eager I was to hear him.  The meeting was fixed for the very next morning.  It was summer time; we rose at daybreak.  He took me out of the town on to a high hill above the river Po, whose course we beheld as it flowed between its fertile banks; in the distance the landscape was crowned by the vast chain of the Alps; the beams of the rising sun already touched the plains and cast across the fields long shadows of trees, hillocks, and houses, and enriched with a thousand gleams of light the fairest picture which the human eye can see.  You would have thought that nature was displaying all her splendour before our eyes to furnish a text for our conversation.  After contemplating this scene for a space in silence, the man of peace spoke to me.