This conviction gave to my love all the security of immutability, the
calm of certainty, the overflowing ecstasy of joy that would never be
impaired. I took no note of time, knowing that I had before me hours
without end, and that each in succession would give me back her inward
presence. I might be separated from her during a century without
reducing by one day the eternity of my love. I went and came; sat down
and got up again. I ran, then stopped and walked on without feeling the
ground beneath my feet, like those phantoms which glide upon earth,
upheld by their impalpable, ethereal nature. I extended my arms to
grasp the air, the light, the lake; I would have clasped all Nature in
one vast embrace in thankfulness that she had become incarnate, for me,
in a being that united all her charms and splendor, power, and
delights. I knelt on the stones and briers of the ruins without feeling
them and on the brink of precipices without perceiving them. I uttered
inarticulate words, which were lost in the sound of the noisy waters of
the lake; I strove to pierce the vaults of heaven, and to carry my song
of gratitude, and my ecstasy of joy, into the very presence of God. I
was no longer a man, I was a living hymn of praise, prayer, adoration,
worship of overflowing, speechless thankfulness. I felt an intoxication
of the heart, a madness of the soul; my body had lost the consciousness
of its materiality and I no longer believed in time, or space, or
death. The new life of love which had gushed forth in my heart gave me
the consciousness, the anticipated enjoyment, of the fulness of
immortality.