Chapter 5

"The morning was spent in deep and engaging studies with my husband, whose willing disciple I was. During the day we took long and solitary walks in the woods of St. Cloud or of Meudon; and in the evening a few grave, and for the most part elderly, friends would meet and discourse on various topics, with all the freedom of intimacy. These cold but indulgent hearts inclined toward my youth, from that natural bias which makes the love of the aged descend on the youthful, as the streams of snow-covered summits flow downwards to the plain. But these hoary heads seemed to shed their snows on me, and my youth pined and wasted away in the ungenial atmosphere of age. There lay too great a space of years between their hearts and mine! Oh, what would I not have given to have had one friend of my own age, by the contact of whose warm heart I might have dissolved the thoughts that froze within me, as the dew of morning congeals upon the plants that grow too near these mountain glaciers!

"My husband often looked sadly at me, and seemed alarmed at my pale face and languid voice. He would have desired, at any cost, to give air and motion to my heart. He continually tried to induce me to mingle in diversions which might dispel my melancholy, and would use gentle force to oblige me to appear at balls and theatres, in the hope that the natural pride which my youth and beauty might have given me would have made me share in the pleasure of those around me. The next morning, as soon as I was awake, he would come into my room and make me relate the impression I had produced, the admiration I had attracted, and even speak of the hearts that I had seemed to touch. 'And you,' would he say, in a tone of gentle interrogation, 'do you share none of these feelings that you inspire? Is your young heart at twenty as old as mine? Oh, that I could see you single out from among all these admirers one superior being, who might one day, by his love, render your happiness complete, and when I am gone, continue my affection for you under a younger and more tender form!' 'Your affection suffices me,' I would answer; 'I feel no pain; I desire nothing; I am happy!' 'Yes,' he would rejoin, 'you are happy, but you are growing old at twenty! Oh, remember that it is your task to close my eyes! Live and love! oh, do but live, that I may not survive you!

"He called in one doctor after another; they wearied me with questions, and all agreed in saying that I was threatened with spasm of the heart. The fainting fits, incident to the disease, had begun to show themselves. I required, it was said, to break through the usual routine of my life, to relinquish for some time my sedentary habits, and seek a complete change of air and scene, in order to give me that stimulus and energy that my tropical nature required, and which it had lost in the cold and misty atmosphere of Paris. My husband did not hesitate one moment between the hope of prolonging my life and the happiness of keeping me near him. As he could not, by reason of his age and occupations, accompany me, he confided me to the care of friends who were travelling in Switzerland and Italy, with two daughters of my own age. I travelled with that family two years; I have seen mountains and seas that reminded me of those of my native land; I have breathed the balmy and stimulating air of the waves and glaciers; but nothing has restored to me the youth that has withered in my heart, although it sometimes appears to bloom on my face, so as to deceive even me. The doctors of Geneva have sent me here, as the last resource of their art; they have advised me to prolong my stay as long as one ray of sun lingers in the autumnal sky; then I shall rejoin my husband. Alas, that I could have shown him his daughter, once more young, and radiant with health and hope! But I feel that I shall return only to sadden his latter days, and perhaps to expire in his arms! Well," she rejoined in a resigned and almost joyful tone, "I shall not now leave earth without having seen my long-expected brother,--the brother of the soul, that some secret instinct taught me to expect, and whose image, foreshadowed in my fancy, had made me indifferent to all real beings. Yes," she said, covering her eyes with her rosy taper fingers between which I saw one or two tears trickle; "oh, yes, the dream of all my nights was embodied in you this morning, when I awoke! ... Oh, if it were not too late to live on, I would wish to live for centuries, to prolong the consciousness of that look, which seemed to weep over me, of that heart that pitied me, of that voice," she added, unveiling her eyes which were raised to heaven,--"of that voice that called me sister! ... That tender name will never more be taken from me," she added with a look and tone of gentle interrogation, "during life, or after death?"

XX.

I sank at her feet overpowered with felicity, and pressed my lips to them without saying a word. I heard the step of the boatmen, who came to tell us that the lake was calm, and that there was but just sufficient daylight left to cross over to the Savoy shore. We rose to follow them, with unsteady steps, as if intoxicated with joy. Oh, who can describe what I experienced, as I felt the weight of her pliant but exhausted frame hanging delightfully on my arm, as though she wished to feel, and make me feel, that I was henceforward her only support in weakness, her only trust in sorrow, the only link by which she held to earth! Methinks I hear even now, though fifteen years have passed since that hour, the sound of the dry leaves as they rustled beneath our tread; I see our two long shadows blended into one, which the sun cast on the left side on the grass of the orchard, and which seemed, like a living shroud tracking the steps of youth and love, to develop them before their time. I feel the gentle warmth of her shoulder against my heart, and the touch of one of the tresses of her hair, which the wind of the lake waved against my face, and which my lips strove to retain and to kiss. O Time, what eternities of joy thou buriest in one such minute, or rather, how powerless art thou against memory; how impotent to give forgetfulness!

XXI.

The evening was as warm and peaceful as the preceding day had been cold and stormy. The mountains were bathed in a soft purple light which made them appear larger and more distant than usual, and they seemed like huge floating shadows through whose transparency one could perceive the warm sky of Italy which lay beyond. The sky was mottled with small crimson clouds, like the ensanguined plumes which fall from the wing of the wounded swan, struggling in the grasp of an eagle.

The wind had subsided as evening came on; the silvery rippling waves threw a slight fringe of spray around the rocks, from which the dripping branches of the fig-trees depended. The smoke from the cottages, which lay scattered on the Mont du Chat, rose here and there, and crept upward along the mountain sides, while the cascades fell into the ravines below, like a smoke of waters. The waves of the lake were so transparent, that as we leaned over the side of the boat, we could see the reflection of the oars and of our own faces, and so warm, that as we drew our fingers through them, we felt but a voluptuous caress of the waters. We were separated from the boatmen by a small curtain, as in the gondolas of Venice. She was lying on one of the benches of the boat, as on a couch, with her elbow resting upon a cushion; she was enveloped in shawls to protect her from the damp of evening, and my cloak was placed in several folds upon her feet; her face, at times in shade, was at others illumined by the last rosy tints of the sun, which seemed suspended over the dark firs of the Grande Chartreuse. I was lying on a heap of nets at the bottom of the boat; my heart was full, my lips were mute, my eyes were fixed on hers. What need had we to speak, when the sun, the hour, the mountains, the air and water, the voluptuous balancing of the boat, the light ripple of the murmuring waters as we divided them, our looks, our silence, and our hearts, which beat in unison,--all spoke so eloquently for us? We rather seemed to fear instinctively that the least sound of voice or words would jar discordantly on such enchanting silence. We seemed to glide from the azure of the lake to the azure of the horizon, without seeing the shores we left, or the shores on which we were about to land.

I heard one longer and more deep-drawn sigh fall slowly from her lips, as though her bosom, oppressed by some secret weight, had at one breath exhaled the aspirations of a long life. I felt alarmed. "Are you in pain?" I inquired, sadly. "No," she said; "it was not pain, it was thought." "What were you thinking of so intensely?" I rejoined. "I was thinking," she answered, "that if God were at this instant to strike all nature with immobility; if the sun were to remain thus, its disk half hidden behind those dark firs, which seem the fringed lashes of the eye of heaven; if light and shade remained thus blended in the atmosphere, this lake in its same transparency, this air as balmy, these two shores forever at the same distance from this boat, the same ray of ethereal light on your brow, the same look of pity reflected from your eyes in mine, this same fulness of joy in my heart,--I should comprehend what I have never comprehended since I first began to think, or to dream." "What?" said I, anxiously. "Eternity in one instant, and the Infinite in one sensation!" she exclaimed, half leaning over the edge of the boat, as if to look at the water and to spare me the embarrassment of an answer. I was awkward enough to reply by some commonplace phrase of vulgar gallantry, which unfortunately rose to my lips, instead of the chaste and ineffable adoration which inundated my heart. It was something to the effect that such happiness would not suffice me, if it were not the promise of another and a greater felicity. She understood me but too well, and blushed, on my account rather than her own. She turned to me with all the emotion of profaned purity depicted on her face, and in accents as tender, but more solemn and heartfelt than any that had yet fallen from her lips: "You have given me pain," she said in a low voice; "come hither, nearer to me, and listen; I know not if what I feel for you, and what you appear to feel for me, be what is termed love, in the obscure and confused language of this world in which the same words serve to express feelings that bear no resemblance to each other, save in the sound they yield upon the lips of man. I do not wish to know it; and you--oh, I beseech you, never seek to know it! But this I know, that it is the most supreme and entire happiness that the soul of one created being can draw from the soul, the eyes, and the voice of another being like to herself, of a being who till now was wanting to her happiness, and of whom she completes the existence. Besides this boundless happiness, this mutual response of thought to thought, of heart to heart, of soul to soul, which blends them in one indivisible existence, and makes them as inseparable as the ray of yonder setting sun, and the beam of yonder rising moon, when they meet in this same sky, and ascend in mingled light in the same ether--is there another joy, gross image of the one I feel, as far removed from the eternal and immaterial union of our souls as dust is from these stars, or a minute from eternity? I know not! and I will not, cannot know!" she added in a tone of disdainful sadness. "But," she resumed, with a confiding look and attitude, which seemed to make her wholly mine, "what do words signify? I love you! All nature would say it for me, if I did not; or rather, let me proclaim it first, for both: We love each other!"

"Oh, say, say it once more, say it a thousand times," I exclaimed, rising like a madman, and walking backwards and forwards in the boat, which shook beneath my feet. "Let us say it together, say it to God and man, say it to heaven and earth, say it to the mute, unheeding elements! Say it eternally, and let all nature repeat it eternally with us!" ... I fell on my knees before her, with my hands clasped, and my disordered hair falling over my face. "Be calm," she said, placing her fingers on my lips, "and let me speak without interruption to the end." I sat down and remained silent.

"I have said," she resumed, "or rather I have not said, I have called out to you from the depths of my soul, that I love you! I love with all the accumulated power of the expectations, dreams, and impatient longings of a sterile life of eight-and-twenty years, passed in watching and not seeing, in seeking and not finding, what some presentiment taught me to expect, and you have revealed to me. But, alas, I have known and loved you too late, if you understand love as most men do, and as you seemed to comprehend it, when you spoke just now, those light and profane words. Listen to me once more," she added, "and understand me; I am yours, wholly yours. I belong to you as I do to myself, and I may say so without wronging the adoptive father, who never considered me but as a daughter. I am wholly yours, and of myself I only keep back what you wish me to retain. Do not be surprised at this language, which is not that of the women of Europe; they love and are beloved tamely, and would fear to weaken the sentiments they inspire by avowing a secret that they wish to have wrested from them. I differ from them by my country, by my feelings, and by my education. I have lived with a philosopher in the society of free-thinkers, unshackled by the belief and observances of the religion they have undermined, and have none of the superstitions, weaknesses and scruples which make ordinary women bow before another judge than their conscience. The God of their childhood is not my God. I believe in the God who has written his symbol in Nature, his law in our hearts, his morality in our reason. Reason, feeling and conscience are the only Revelation in which I believe. Neither of these oracles of my life forbid me to be yours, and the impulse of my whole soul would cast me into your arms, if you could only be happy at that price. But shall you or I place our happiness in a fugitive delirium of the senses, which cannot give half the enjoyment that its voluntary renunciation would afford our hearts? Shall we not more fully believe in the immateriality and eternity of our love, if it remains, like a pure thought, in those regions which are inaccessible to change and death, than if it were degraded and profaned by unworthy delights? If ever," she added, after a short silence, and blushing deeply, "if ever, in a moment of frenzy and incredulity, you exacted from me such a proof of abnegation, the sacrifice would not only be one of dignity, but of existence; in robbing my love of its innocency, you would rob me of life; when you thought to embrace happiness, you would clasp only death in your arms; I am but a shade, and in one sigh I may exhale my soul!..."

We remained silent for some time. At last, with a deep-drawn sigh, I said, "I understand you, and in my heart I had sworn the eternal innocency of my love, before you had done speaking, or required it of me."

XXII.

My resigned tone seemed to delight her, and to redouble the confiding charm of her manner. Night had spread over all, the stars glassed themselves in the lake, and the silence of Nature lulled the earth to rest. The winds, the trees and waves were hushed, to let us listen to all the fugitive impressions of feeling and of thought that whisper in the hearts of the happy. The boatmen sang snatches of their drawling and monotonous chants, which seem like the noted modulations of the waves on the shore. I was reminded of her voice, which seemed ever to sound in my ear, and I exclaimed, "Oh, that you would mark this enchanting night for me, by some sweet tones addressed to these winds and waves, so that they may be forever full of you!" I made a sign to the boatmen to be silent, and to stifle the sound of their oars, from which the drops came trickling back into the lake like a musical accompaniment of silvery notes. She sang a Scotch ballad, half naval and half pastoral, in which a young girl, whose sailor lover has left her to seek wealth beyond the seas, relates how her parents, wearied of waiting his return, had induced her to marry an old man, with whom she might have been happy, but for the remembrance of her early love. The ballad begins thus:

"When the sheep are in the fauld and the ky at hame, And a' the weary warld to rest are gane, The waes of my heart fa' in showers frae my e'e, While my gude-man lies sound by me."

After each verse there is a long revery, sung in vague notes, without words, which lulls the heart with unspeakable melancholy, and brings tears into the eyes and voice. Each succeeding verse takes up the story in the dull and distant tone of memory, weeping, regretting, yet resigned. If the Greek strophes of Sappho are the very fire of love, these Scotch notes are the very life's blood and tears of a heart stricken to death by Fate. I know not who wrote the music, but whoever he may be, thanks be to him for having found in a few notes, and in the mournful melody of a voice, the expression of infinite human sadness. I have never since then heard the first measures of that air without flying from it as one pursued by a spirit; and when I wish to soften my heart by a tear, I sing within myself the plaintive burden of that song, and feel ready to weep,--I, who never weep!

XXIII.

We reached the little mole that stretches out into the lake where the boats are moored; it is the harbor of Aix, and is situated at about half a league from the town. It was midnight, and there were no longer any carriages or donkeys on the pier to convey strangers to the town. The distance was too great for a delicate suffering woman to walk, and after knocking fruitlessly at the doors of one or two cottages in the vicinity of the lake, the boatmen proposed carrying the lady to Aix. They cheerfully slipped their oars from the rings which fastened them to the boat, and tied them together with the ropes of their nets; then they placed one of the cushions of the boat on these ropes, and thus formed a soft and flexible kind of litter for the stranger. Four of them then took up the oars, and each placing one end on his shoulder, they set off with the palanquin, to which they imparted no other motion than that of their steps. I would have wished to have my share in the pleasure of bearing their precious burden, but was repulsed by them with jealous eagerness. I walked beside the litter with my right hand in hers, so that she might cling to me when the movement of her conveyance was too rough. I thus prevented her slipping off the narrow cushion on which she was stretched. We walked in this manner slowly and silently in the moonlight down the long avenue of poplars. Oh, how short that avenue seemed to me, and how I wished that it could have led us on thus to the last step of both our lives! She did not speak, and I said nothing, but I felt the whole weight of her body trustingly suspended to my arm; I felt both her cold hands clasp mine, and from time to time an involuntary pressure, or a warmer breath upon them, made me feel that she had approached her lips to my hand to warm it. Never was silence so eloquent in its mute revealings. We enjoyed the happiness of a century in one hour. By the time we arrived at the old doctor's house, and had deposited the invalid at her chamber door, the whole world that lay between us had disappeared. My hand was wet with her tears; I dried them with my lips, and threw myself without undressing on my bed.

XXIV.

In vain I tossed and turned on my pillow; I could not sleep. The thousand impressions of the preceding days were traced so vividly on my mind that I could not believe they were past, and I seemed to hear and see over again all I had seen or heard the previous day. The fever of my soul had extended to my body. I rose and laid down again without finding repose. At last I gave it up. I tried by bodily motion to calm the agitation of my mind; I opened the window, turned over the leaves of books which I did not understand as I read them, paced up and down, and changed the position of my table and my chair a dozen times, without finding a place where I could bear to spend the night. All this noise was heard in the adjoining room; and my steps disturbed the poor invalid, who, doubtless, was as wakeful as I was. I heard a light step on the creaking floor approach the bolted oak door which separated her sitting-room from my bedroom; I listened with my ear close to the door, and heard a suppressed breathing, and the rustle of a silk gown against the wall. The light of a lamp shone through the chinks of the door, and streamed from beneath it on my floor. It was she! she was there listening too, with her ear perhaps close to my brow; she might have heard my heart beat. "Are you ill?" whispered a voice, which I should have recognized by a single sigh. "No," I answered, "but I am too happy! Excess of joy is as exciting as excess of anguish. The fever I feel is one of life; I do not wish to dispel it, or to fly from it, but I am sitting up to enjoy it." "Child that you are!" she said, "go and sleep while I watch; it is now my turn to watch over you." "But you," whispered I, "why are you not sleeping?" "I never wish to sleep more," she replied; "I would not lose one minute of the consciousness of my overwhelming bliss. I have but little time in which to enjoy my happiness, and do not like to give any portion of it to forgetfulness in sleep. I came to sit here in the hopes of hearing you, or at any rate to feel nearer to you." "Oh, why still so far?" I murmured. "Why so far? Why is this wall between us?" "Is there only this door between us then," she said, "and not our will and our vow? There! if you are only restrained by this material obstacle, it is removed!" and I heard her withdraw the bolt on her side. "Yes," she continued, "if there be not in you some feeling stronger than love itself to subdue and master your passion, you can pass. Yes," she added with an accent at once more solemn and more impassioned, "I will owe nothing but to yourself,--you may pass; you will meet with love equal to your own, but such love would be my death...."

I was overcome by the violence of my feelings, the impetuous impulse of my heart that impelled me towards that voice, and the moral violence that repulsed me; and I fell as one mortally wounded on the threshold of that closed door. As to her, I heard her sit down on a cushion which she had taken from a sofa, and thrown on the floor. During the greater part of the night we continued to converse in a low tone, through the intervals between the floor and the rough wood-work of the door. Who can describe the outpourings of our hearts, the words unused in the ordinary language of men that seemed to be wafted like night-dreams between heaven and earth, and were interrupted by silence in which our hearts and not our lips communed revealed their unutterable thoughts? At length the intervals of silence became longer, the voices grew faster and, overcome with fatigue, I fell asleep, with my hand clasped on my knees, and my cheek leaning against the wall.

XXV.