In the meantime her health improved daily. Happiness, solitude with a
beloved companion (that paradise of tender souls), and the daily
discovery on her part of some new mystery of thought in me which
corresponded to her own nature; the autumnal air in the mountains,
which, like stoves heated during summer, preserve the warmth of the sun
until the winter snows; our distant excursions to the chalets, or on
the waters; the motion of the boat, or the gentle pace of the mules;
the milk brought frothing from the pastures in the wooden cups the
shepherds carve; and above all, the gentle excitement, the peaceful
revery, the continual infatuation of a heart which first love upheld as
with wings and led on from thought to thought, from dream to dream,
through a new-found heaven,--all seemed to contribute visibly to her
recovery. Every day seemed to bring fresh youth; it was as a
convalescence of the soul which showed itself on the features. Her
face, which had been at first slightly marked round the eyes with those
dark and bluish tints which seem like the impress of the fingers of
Death, gradually recovered the roundness of the cheek, the mantling
blood, the soft down, and blooming complexion of a young girl who has
been on the mountains, and whose cheek has been visited by the first
cold bracing winds from the glaciers. Her lips had recovered their
fulness, her eyes their brightness; the lid no longer drooped, and the
eye itself seemed to swim in that continual and luminous mist which
rises like a vapor from the burning heart, and is condensed into tears
on the eye, whose fire absorbs these tears, that always rise, and never
flow. There was more strength in her attitudes, more pliancy in her
movements; her step was light and lively as a child's. Whenever we
entered the yard of the house on our return from our rambles, the old
doctor and his family would express their surprise at the prodigious
change that a day had wrought in her appearance, and wonder at the life
and light that she seemed to shed around her.
In truth, happiness seemed to encompass her with a radiant atmosphere,
in which she not only walked herself, but enveloped all those who
looked upon her. This radiance of beauty, this atmosphere of love, are
not, as many think, only the fancies of a poet; the poet merely sees
more distinctly what escapes the blind or indifferent eye of other men.
It has often been said of a lovely woman, that she illumines the
darkness of night; it might be said of Julie that she warmed the
surrounding air. I lived and moved, enveloped in this warm emanation of
her reviving beauty; others but felt it as they passed.