إنها مناظر جميلة للغاية، ويؤلمني ألا نراها معا. - Romain Rolland

İnsan hayatında öyle bir yaşa gelir ki, insan o yaşta haksız olmaya, kendisine öğretilmiş bütün hayranlıkları ve saygıları içinden söküp atmaya -yalan ya da gerçek- her şeyi, kendince doğrulanmamış her şeyi inkar etmeye cesaret etmelidir. Bütün eğitimiyle, bütün çevresinde görüp işittikleriyle çocuk, hayatın temel hakikatleriyle birlikte o kadar çok yalan ve budalalık yutar ki, sağlıklı bir insan olmak istiyorsa, ilk ödevi bunları kusmaktır.

They tried still to see each other in secret. But it was impossible for them to regain the carelessness of their old relation. Their frankness was spoiled. The two boys who loved each other with a tenderness so fearful that they had never dared exchange a fraternal kiss, and had imagined that there could be no greater happiness than in seeing each other, and in being friends, and sharing each other's dreams, now felt that they were stained and spotted by the suspicion of evil minds. They came to see evil even in the most innocent acts: a look, a hand-clasp — they blushed, they had evil thoughts. Their relation became intolerable.

But Melchior was one of those men who always do the opposite of what is expected of them and of what they expect of themselves. It is not that they are not warned — a man who is warned is worth two men, says the proverb. They profess never to be the dupe of anything, and that they steer their ship with unerring hand towards a definite point. But they reckon without themselves, for they do not know themselves. In one of those moments of forgetfulness which are habitual with them they let go the tiller, and, as is natural when things are left to themselves, they take a naughty pleasure in rounding on their masters. The ship which is released from its course at once strikes a rock, and Melchior, bent upon intrigue, married a cook. And yet he was neither drunk nor in a stupor on the day when he bound himself to her for life, and he was not under any passionate impulse; far from it. But perhaps there are in us forces other than mind and heart, other even than the senses — mysterious forces which take hold of us in the moments when the others are asleep; and perhaps it was such forces that Melchior had found in the depths of those pale eyes which had looked at him so timidly one evening when he had accosted the girl on the bank of the river, and had sat down beside her in the reeds — without knowing why — and had given her his hand.