A sharp division had taken place in my nature.

By night, in arduous conflict, I led a strange mental life, known to myself alone; by day all this was forgotten, unless--and how rarely this happened--some conversation recalled it.
From my first step out of doors I belonged to life, to the corps, to pleasure.

What was individual existence, mortality, or the eternal life of the soul! Minerva's bird is an owl.

Like it, these learned questions belonged to the night.

They should cast no shadow on the brightness of my day.