This book is a drama, whose leading personage is the Infinite.
Man is the second.
Such being the case, and a convent having happened to be on our road,
it has been our duty to enter it. Why? Because the convent, which is
common to the Orient as well as to the Occident, to antiquity as well
as to modern times, to paganism, to Buddhism, to Mahometanism, as well
as to Christianity, is one of the optical apparatuses applied by man to
the Infinite.
This is not the place for enlarging disproportionately on certain
ideas; nevertheless, while absolutely maintaining our reserves, our
restrictions, and even our indignations, we must say that every time we
encounter man in the Infinite, either well or ill understood, we feel
ourselves overpowered with respect. There is, in the synagogue, in the
mosque, in the pagoda, in the wigwam, a hideous side which we execrate,
and a sublime side, which we adore. What a contemplation for the mind,
and what endless food for thought, is the reverberation of God upon the
human wall!