"le Cœur des cœurs, le centre brûlant de tout amour"

      "Even the elect do not learn to love all by themselves.  To get beyond the absurdities, the failings, and above all the stupidity of people, one must possess a secret of love which the world has forgotten.  So long as this secret is not rediscovered, you will change human conditions [(les conditions humaines)] in vain.
     "I thought that it was selfishness which made me aloof from everything that concerns the economic and the social; and it is true that I was a monster of seclusion and indifference; but there was also in me a feeling, an obscure certitude, that all this serves for nothing to revolutionise the face of the world.  The world must be touched at its heart.  I seek Him Who alone can achieve that victory; and He must Himself be the Heart of hearts, the burning centre of all love."

     Louis, in François Mauriac, Vipers' tangle, trans. Warre B. Wells, II.xviii (Garden City, NY:  Image Books, Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1957 [1932]), 177) =Le nœud de vipères:  roman (Paris:  Éditions Bernard Grasset, 1932), 274-275.