182 THE GREAT SECRET
hugh’. Thus it was laughter and happiness which Jesus came to promise mankind. The apostle Paul wrote to his converts, Rejoice evermore; sempr gaudire.’
The wise man weeps when he is happy and smiles bravely when he suffers. The ancient Church fathers contended against an eighth deadly sin and named it melancholy.
It is said that Solomon knew the secret virtues of stones and the properties of plants, but there was one secret he did not know when he wrote ‘Ecciesiastes’, a secret of felicity and life, a secret which drives boredom away by perpetuating well-being and hope:
THE SECRET OF NOT GROWING OLD!
Is there such a secret? Are there men who never grow old? Is Flamel’s elixir a reality? And must we perforce believe, like those who arc over-fond of the marvellous, that the celebrated alchemist of the rue des Ecrivains has cheated death and is still living with his wife Pernelle under an assumed name in rich solitude in the New World?
No, we do not believe in the immortality of man upon earth. But we believe and know that man can keep himself from growing old.
We are obliged to die when we have lived a century or thereabouts: it is always time then for the soul to lay aside its vestment, which is no longer in fashion; it is time, not to die, for as we have already said we do not believe in death, but to aspire to a second birth and to begin a new life.
Yet, up to one’s last breath, one may retain the simple joys of childhood, the poetic ecstasies of the young man, the enchusiams of maturity. Right to the end, one may intoxicate one’s spirit with flowers, with beauty and with smiles; one may ceaselessly recapture the past and always recover what has been lost. A real eternity can be found in the fine dream of life.
‘How can this be achieved?’ you will surely ask mc. Read attentively and meditate seriously on what I am going to tell you:
It is necessary to forget oneself and live only for others,
When Jesus said: ‘If anyone wishes to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and come after me,” did He mean us to bury ourselves in some lonely spot, He, who always lived among men, who took up little children and blessed them, who restored fallen women, despising neither their show of affection nor their
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