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."