It was thus I learned that the young stranger lived in Paris. Her
husband was an old man, who had rendered his name illustrious, at the
close of the last century, by many discoveries which held a high place
in the history of science. He had been struck with the beauty and
talent of this young girl, and had adopted her in order to bequeath to
her his name and fortune. She loved him as a father, wrote to him every
day, and sent him a journal of her feelings and impressions. Two years
ago she had fallen into a declining state, which had alarmed him. She
had been recommended to remove southward and try change of air, and her
husband, being too infirm to accompany her, had confided her to the
care of some friends from Lausanne, with whom she had travelled all
over Italy and Switzerland. The change had not restored her to health,
and a Genevese doctor, fearing a disease of the heart, had recommended
the baths of Aix; he was to come to fetch her, and take her back to
Paris at the beginning of the winter.
This was all I learned of a life already so dear. Still I persisted in
fancying that all these details were indifferent to me. I felt a tender
pity for this enchanting and beautiful being, blighted in the flower of
youth by a disease which, while it consumes life, renders the
sensations more acute and stimulates the flame which it is destined to
extinguish. When I met the stranger on the staircase, I sought to
discover the trace of her sufferings in the scarcely perceptible lines
of pain round her somewhat pale lips, or in the dark circle which want
of sleep had left round her beautiful blue eyes. I was interested by
her beauty, but still more by the shadow of death by which she was
overcast, and which made her appear more as a phantom of the night than
as a reality. This was all. Our lives rolled on; we continued to live
in close proximity as far as distance was concerned, but morally, as
widely separated as ever.