Chapter 10

Spite of my continual efforts and of the perpetual application of my young and ardent imagination to communicate to my letters the fire that consumed me, to create a language for my sighs, to pour my burning soul upon the paper and make it overleap the distance that divided us,--in this combat against the impotence of words, I was always surpassed by Julie. Her letters had more expression in one phrase than mine in their eight pages,--her heart breathed in the words; one saw her looks in the lines; the expressions seemed still warm from her lips. In her, nothing evaporated during that slow and dull transition of the feeling to the word which lets the lava of the heart cool and pale beneath the pen of man. Woman has no style, that is why all she says is so well said. Style is a garment, but the unveiled soul stands forth upon the lips or beneath the hand of woman. Like the Venus of speech, it rises from the depths of feeling in its naked beauty, wakes of itself to life, wonders at its own existence, and is adored ere it knows that it has spoken.

LVI.

What letters and what ardor! What tones and accents! What fire and purity combined, like light and transparency in a diamond, like passion and bashfulness on the brow of the young girl who loves! What powerful simplicity! What inexhaustible effusions! What sudden revivals in the midst of languor! What sounds and songs! Then there would be sadness, recurring like the unexpected notes at the end of an air; caressing words, which seemed to fan the brow like the breath of a fond mother bending over her smiling child; a voluptuous lulling of half-whispered words, and hushed and dreamy sentences, which wrapped one in rays and murmurs, stillness and perfume, and led one gently by the soft and soothing syllables to the repose of love, the still sleep of the soul, unto the kiss upon the page which said farewell! The farewell and the kiss both silently received, as the lips silently impressed them. I have seen those letters all again; I have read over, page by page, this correspondence, bound up and classed, after death, by the pious hand of friendship; one letter answering the other from the first note down to the last word written by the death-struck hand, to which love still imparted strength. I have read them o'er, and burned them with tears, in secret, as if I committed a crime, and snatching twenty times the half-consumed page from the flames to read it once again. Why did I thus destroy? Because their very ashes would have been too burning for this world, and I have scattered them to the winds of heaven.

LVII.

At length the day came when I could reckon the hours that still separated me from Julie. All the resources that I could command did not amount to a sufficient sum to keep me three or four months in Paris. My mother, who noticed my distress without guessing its cause, drew from the casket which her fondness had already nearly emptied a large diamond, mounted as a ring. Alas, it was the last remaining jewel of her youth! She slipped it secretly into my hand, with tears. "I suffer as much as you can, Raphael," she said with a mournful look, "to see your unprofitable youth wasted in the idleness of a small town, or in the reveries of a country life. I had always hoped that the gifts of God, that from your infancy I rejoiced to see in you, would attract the notice of the world, and open to you a career of fortune and honor. The poverty against which we have to struggle does not allow us to bring you forward. Hitherto such has been the will of God, and we must submit with resignation to his ways, which are always the best. Yet it is with grief I see you sinking into that moral languor which always follows fruitless endeavors. Let us try Fate once more. Go, since the earth here seems to burn beneath your feet,--go and live for awhile in Paris. Call, with reserve and dignity, on those old friends of your family who are now in power. Show the talents with which Nature and study have endowed you. It is impossible that those at the head of the Government should not strive to attract young men able, as you would be, to serve, support, and adorn the reign of the princes whom God has restored to us. Your poor father has much to do to bring up his six children, and not to fall below his rank in the distresses of our rustic life. Your other relations are good and kind, but they will not understand that breathing-space and action are necessary to the devouring activity of the mind at twenty. Here is my last jewel; I had promised my mother never to part with it save from dire necessity. Take it, and sell it; it will serve to maintain you in Paris a few weeks longer. It is the last token of my love, which I stake for you in the lottery of Providence. It must bring you good luck; for my solicitude, my prayers, my tenderness for you go with it." I took the ring, and kissed my mother's hand; a tear fell upon the diamond. Alas, it served not to allow me to seek or to await the favor of great men or princes who turned away from my obscurity, but to live three months of that divine life of the heart worth centuries of greatness. This sacred diamond was to me as Cleopatra's pearl dissolved in my cup of life, from which I drank happiness and love for a short time.

LVIII.

I completely altered my habits from that day, from respect for my poor mother's repeated sacrifices, and the concentration of all my thoughts in this one desire,--to see once more my love, and to prolong, as much as possible, by the strictest economy, the allotted time I was to spend with Julie. I became as calculating and as sparing of the little gold I took with me as an old miser. It seemed as though the most trifling sum I spent was an hour of my happiness, or a drop of my felicity that I wasted. I resolved to live like Jean Jacques Rousseau, on little or nothing, and to retrench from my vanity, my dress, or my food, all that I wished to bestow on the rapture of my soul. I was not, however, without an undefined hope of making some use of my talents in the cause of my love. These were as yet made known to a few friends only by some verses; but in the last three months I had written during my sleepless nights a little volume of poetry, amatory, melancholy, or pious, according as my imagination spoke to me in tender or in serious notes. The whole had been copied out with care in my best handwriting, and shown to my father, who was an excellent critic, though somewhat severe; a few friends, too, had favorably judged some fragments. I had bound up my poetical treasure in green, a color of good omen for my hopes of fame; but I had not shown it to my mother, whose chaste and pious purity of mind might have taken alarm at the more antique than Christian voluptuousness of some of my elegies. I hoped that the simple grace and the winged enthusiasm of my poetry might please some intelligent publisher, who would buy my volume, or at least consent to print it at his own expense; and that the public taste, attracted by the novelty of a style springing from the heart, and nursed in the woods, would, perhaps, confer on me a humble fortune and a name.

LIX.

I had no need to look for a lodging in Paris. One of my friends, the young Count de V----, who had just returned from his travels, was to spend the winter and the following spring there, and had offered to share with me a little _entresol_ that he occupied, over the rooms of the concierge in the magnificent hotel (since pulled down) of the Maréchal de Richelieu, in the Rue Neuve St. Augustin. The Count de V----, with whom I was in almost daily correspondence, knew all. I had given him a letter of introduction to Julie, that he might know the soul of my soul, and that he might understand, if not my delirium, at least my adoration for that woman. At first sight, he comprehended and almost shared my enthusiasm. In his letters, he always alluded, with tender pity and respect, to that fair vision of melancholy, which seemed hovering between life and death, and only detained on earth, he said, by the ineffable love she bore to me. He always spoke to me of her as of a heavenly gift, sent to my eyes and heart, and which would raise me above human nature as long as I remained enveloped in her radiance. V----, who was persuaded of the holy and superhuman nature of our attachment, considered it as a virtue, and felt no repugnance to being the mediator and confidant of our love. Julie, on her part, spoke of V---- as the only friend she considered worthy of me, and for whom she would have wished to increase my friendship, instead of detracting from it by a mean jealousy of the heart. Both urged me to come to Paris, but V----, alone, knew the secret motives, and the strictly material impossibility, which had detained me till then. Spite of his devoted friendship, of which he gave me, until his death, so many proofs during the troubles of my life, it was not in his power at that time to remove the obstacles that arrested me. His mother had exhausted her means to give him an education befitting his rank, and to allow him to travel through Europe. He was himself deep in debt, and could only offer me a corner in the apartment that his family provided for him. As to all the rest, he was, at that time of his life, as poor and as much enslaved as myself by the want so cruelly defined by Horace--_Res angustæ domi_.

I left M---- in a little one-horse jaunting car, consisting of a wooden seat on an axle-tree, and four poles which supported a tarpaulin to shelter us against the rain. These cars changed horses every four or five miles, and served to convey to Paris the masons from the Bourbonnais and from Auvergne, the weary pedestrians they met on the road, and soldiers lamed by their long marches who were glad to spare a day's fatigue for a few sous. I felt no shame or annoyance at this vulgar mode of conveyance; I would have travelled barefooted through the snow, and not have felt less proud or less happy, for I was thus saving one or two louis with which I could purchase some days of happiness. I reached the barrier of Paris without having felt a pebble of the road. The night was dark, and it was raining hard; I took up my portmanteau, and soon after knocked at the door of the humble lodging of the Count de V----.

He was waiting for me; he embraced me, and spoke of her. I was never wearied of questioning and listening to him. That same evening I was to see Julie. V---- was to announce my arrival, and prepare her for joy. When every visitor had retired from Julie's drawing-room, V---- was to leave last of all to join me at a little _café_ of the neighborhood where I was to wait for him, and give me notice that she was alone, and that I might throw myself at her feet. It was only after I had learned all these particulars that I thought of drying my clothes and taking some refreshment. I then took possession of the dark alcove of his ante-room, which was lighted by one round window, and heated by a stove. I dressed myself neatly and simply, so that she I loved might not blush for me before her friends.

At eleven o'clock V---- and I went out on foot; we proceeded together as far as the window which I knew so well. There were three carriages at the door. V---- went up, and I retired to wait for him at the appointed place. How long that hour seemed while I waited for him! How I execrated those visitors who, involuntarily importunate, came in their indifference to dispose of some idle hours, and delayed the reunion of two fond hearts who counted each second of their martyrdom by their palpitations! At last V---- appeared; I followed rapidly on his steps, he left me at the door, and I went up.

LX.

If I were to live a thousand times a thousand years, I should never forget that instant and that sight. She was standing up in the light, her elbow resting carelessly on the white marble of the chimney; her tall and slender figure, her shoulders, and her profile, were reflected in the glass; her face was turned towards the door, her eyes fixed on a little dark passage leading to the drawing-room, and her head was bent forward, and slightly inclined on one side, in the attitude of one listening for the sound of approaching footsteps. She was dressed in mourning, in a black silk dress trimmed with black lace round the neck and the skirt. This profusion of lace, rumpled by the cushions of the sofa to which her indolent and languid life confined her, hung around her like the black and clustering bunches of the elder, shedding its berries in the autumnal wind. The dark color of her gown left only her shoulders, neck, and face in light, and the mourning of her dress seemed completed by the natural mourning of her dark hair, which was gathered up at the back of her head. This uniformity of color added to her height, and showed to advantage her graceful and flexible figure. The reflection of the fire in the glass, the light of the lamp on the chimney-piece striking on her cheek, and the animation of impatient expectation and love, shed on her countenance a splendor of youth, bloom, and life, which seemed a transfiguration effected by love.

My first exclamation was one of joy and delighted surprise at seeing her thus, more living, lovely, and immortal, in my eyes, than I had ever seen her in the brightest days of Savoy. A feeling of deceitful security and eternal possession entered into my heart, as my eyes fell on her. She tried to stammer forth a few words on seeing me, but could not. Her lips trembled with emotion. I fell at her feet, and pressed my lips to the carpet upon which she trod. I then looked up to assure myself that her presence was not a dream. She laid one of her hands upon my hair, which thrilled beneath her touch, and holding by the other to the marble of the chimney-piece, she too fell on her knees before me. We gazed at each other at a distance. We sought words, and found none for our excess of joy. We remained silent, but that very silence and our kneeling posture was a language; I knelt full of adoration, she full of happiness, and our attitude seemed to say, They adore one another, but a phantom of Death stands between, and though their eyes drink rapture, they will never be clasped in each other's arms.

LXI.

I know not how many minutes we remained thus, nor how many thousand interrogations and answers, what floods of tears, and oceans of joy passed unexpressed between our mute and closed lips, between our moistened eyes, between her countenance and mine. Happiness had struck us motionless, and time had ceased to be. It was eternity in an instant.

There was a knock at the street door; a sound of feet on the stairs. I rose, and she resumed, with a faltering step, her place on the sofa. I sat down on the other side, in the shade, to hide my flushed cheeks and tearful eyes. A man of already advanced age, of imposing stature, with a benignant, noble, and beaming countenance, slowly entered the room. He approached the sofa without speaking, and imprinted a paternal kiss on Julie's trembling hand. It was Monsieur de Bonald. Spite of the painful awakening from ecstasy that the knock and arrival of a stranger had produced in me, I inwardly blessed him for having interrupted that first look in which reason might have been overpowered by rapture. There are times when the cold voice of reason is required to still with its icy tones the fever of the senses, and to strengthen anew the soul in its holy and energetic resolves.

LXII.

Julie introduced me to M. de Bonald as the young man whose verses he had read; he was surprised at my youth, and addressed me with indulgence. He conversed with Julie with the paternal familiarity of a man whose genius had rendered him illustrious; he had all the serenity of age, and sought in the company of a young and lovely woman merely a passing ray of beauty to enchant his eyes, and the charm of her society during the calm and conversational hours at the close of day. His voice was deep, as though it came from the heart, and his conversation flowed with the graceful, yet serious, ease of a mind which seeks to unbend in repose. Honesty was stamped on his brow, and spoke in the accents of his voice. As the conversation seemed likely to be prolonged, and the clock was on the point of striking twelve, I thought it right to take my leave first, so as to create no suspicion of too great familiarity in the mind of a friend and visitor of older standing than myself in the house. Silence and one single look were the only reward I received for my long and ardent expectation and my weary journey; but I bore away with me her image and the certainty of seeing her every day,--that was enough; it was too much. I wandered a long while on the quays, baring my breast to the night air, and inhaling it with my lips, to allay the fever of happiness which possessed me. On my return home, I found that V---- had been asleep many hours; as for me, it was daylight, and I had heard the cries of the venders in the streets of Paris before I closed my eyes.

* * * * *

My days were filled with one single thought, which I treasured up in my heart, and would not even allow my countenance to reveal, as a precious perfume of which one would fear to let a particle evaporate by exposing the vase that contains it to the outward air. I used to rise with the first rays of light, which always penetrated tardily into the dark alcove of the little ante-room where my friend gave me shelter like a mendicant of love. I always began the day by a long letter to Julie, which was but a calmer continuation of the conversation of the day before; in it I poured forth all the thoughts that had suggested themselves since I had left her. Love feels delightful remorse at its tender omissions; accuses, reproaches itself, and feels no rest till they have been repaired. They are gems fallen from the heart or the lips of the loved one, which cause the lover's thoughts to travel back over the past, to gather them up, and to increase the treasure of his feelings. Julie, when she awoke, received my letter, which made it appear to her as though the conversation of the preceding evening had not been interrupted, but had been kept up in whispered tones during her sleep. I always received her answer before noon.

My heart being thus appeased, after the agitation of the night, my next thought was to calm the impatience for the evening's interview, which began to take possession of me. I strove not to divert my heart from its one thought, but to interest my eyes and mind, and had laid down as a law to myself to spend several hours in reading and study, to occupy the interval between the time when I left Julie till we met again. I wished to improve myself not for others, but for her,--in order that he whom she loved should not disgrace her preference; and that those superior men who composed her society, and who sometimes saw me in her drawing-room standing at a corner of the fireplace, like a statue of contemplation, should discover in me, if by chance they spoke to me, a soul, an intelligence, a hope, or a promise, beneath my timid and silent appearance. Then I had vague dreams of shining exploits, of a stirring destiny, which Julie would watch from afar, and rejoice to see me struggling with men, rising in strength, in greatness, and in power; I thought she might one day glory secretly in having appreciated me before the crowd, and in having loved me before posterity.

LXIII.

All this, and still more, my forced leisure, the obsession of one besetting thought, my contempt for all besides, the want of money to procure other amusement, and the almost claustral seclusion in which I lived, disposed me to a life of more intense and eager study than I had yet led. I passed my whole day seated at a little writing-table, which was placed beneath the small round window opening on the yard of the Hôtel Richelieu. The room was heated by a Dutch stove; a screen enclosed my table and chair, and hid me from the observation of the young men of fashion who often came to see my friend. In the spacious yard below there were sounds of carriages, then silence, and now and then bright rays of winter sun struggling against the grovelling fog of the streets of Paris, which reminded me a little of the play of light, the sounds of the wind, and the transparent mists of our mountains. Sometimes I would see a sweet little boy six or eight years old playing there; he was the son of the concierge. There was something in his face which seemed that of a suffering angel; in his fair hair curled on his forehead, and in his intelligent and ingenuous countenance, that reminded me of the innocent faces of the children of my own province. Indeed, I discovered that his family had come originally from a village near that in which my father resided, had fallen into want, and had been transplanted to Paris. This child had conceived a fondness for me, from seeing me always at the window above the rooms his mother inhabited, and had of his own accord and gratuitously devoted himself to my service. He executed all my messages; brought me my bread, some cheese, or the fruit for my breakfast; and went every morning to purchase my little provisions at the grocer's. I used to take my frugal repast on my writing-table, in the midst of my open books or interrupted pages. The child had a black dog, which had been forgotten at the house by some visitor; this dog had ended like the child by attaching itself to me, and they could not be made to go down the little wooden stairs when once they had ascended them. During the greater part of the day, they lay and played together on the mat at my feet beneath my table. At a later period I took away the dog with me from Paris, and kept it many years, as a loving and faithful memento of those days of solitude. I lost him in 1820, not without tears, in traversing the forests of the Pontine Marshes between Rome and Terracina. The poor child is become a man, and has learned the art of engraving, which he practices ably at Lyons. My name having resounded since, even in his shop, he came to see me, and wept with joy at beholding me, and with grief at hearing of the loss of the dog. Poor heart of man! that ever requires what it has once loved, and that sheds tears of the same water, for the loss of an empire, or for the loss of an animal.

LXIV.