“You asked for a lov­ing God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the “lord of ter­ri­ble aspect,” is present: not a senile benev­o­lence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold phil­anthropy of a con­sci­en­tious mag­is­trate, nor the care of a host who feels respon­si­ble for the com­fort of his guests, but the con­sum­ing fire Him­self, the Love that made the worlds, per­sis­tent as the artist’s love for his work and despotic as a man’s love for a dog, prov­i­dent and ven­er­a­ble as a father’s love for a child, jeal­ous, inex­orable, exact­ing as love between the sexes.”