A poor woman made us some fire in Madame de Warens' room; accustomed to
the visit of strangers, and to their long conversations on the scene of
the early days of a celebrated man, she attended to her usual work in
the kitchen and in the yard, and left us at liberty to warm ourselves,
or to saunter backwards and forwards from the house to the garden. This
little sunny garden, surrounded by a wall which separated it from the
vineyards, and overrun with nettles, mallows, and weeds of all kinds,
resembled one of those village churchyards where the peasants assemble
to bask in the rays of the sun, leaning against the church-walls, with
their feet on the graves of the dead. The walks, so neatly gravelled
once, were now covered with damp earth and yellow moss, and showed the
neglect that had followed on absence. How we would have wished to
discover the print of the footsteps of Madame de Warens, when she used
to go, basket in hand, from tree to tree, from vine to vine, gathering
the pears of the orchard or the grapes of the vineyard, and indulging
in merry frolic with, the pupil or the confessor. But there is no trace
of them in their house, save their memory. That is enough; their name,
their remembrance, their image, the sun they saw, the air they
breathed, which seems still beaming with their youth, warm with their
breath, and filled with their voices, give one back the light, the
dreams, the sounds, which shed enchantment round their spring of life.
I saw by Julie's pensive countenance, and her silent thoughtfulness,
that the sight of this sanctuary of love and genius impressed her as
deeply as myself. At times she shunned me, and remained wrapped in her
own thoughts as if she feared to communicate them; she would go into
the house to warm herself when I was in the garden, and return to sit
on the stone bench in the arbor when I joined her at the fireside. At
length I went to her in the arbor; the last yellow leaves hung loosely
from the vine, and allowed the sun to penetrate and envelop her with
its rays.
"What is it you wish to think of without me?" I said in a tone of
tender reproach. "Do I ever think alone?" "Alas!" she answered, "you
will not believe me, but I was thinking, that I could wish to be Madame
de Warens for you, during one single season, even though I were to be
forsaken for the remainder of my days, and though shame were to attach
to my memory like hers; even though you proved yourself as ungrateful
and calumniating as Rousseau!.... How happy she was," she continued,
gazing up at the sky as though she sought the image of the strange
creature she envied,--"how happy she was! she sacrificed herself for
him she loved."
"What ingratitude and what profanation of yourself and of our
happiness!" I answered, walking slowly back with her towards the house,
upon the dry leaves, that rustled beneath our feet.
"Have I then ever, by a single word, or look, or by a single sigh,
shown that aught was wanting to my bitter but complete felicity? Cannot
you, in your angelic fancy, imagine for another Rousseau (if Nature
could have produced two) another Madame de Warens?--a Madame de Warens,
young and pure, angel, lover, sister, all at once, bestowing her whole
soul, her immaculate and immortal soul, instead of her perishable
charms; bestowing it on a brother who was lost and is found, who was
young, misled, and wandering too in this world, like the son of the
watch-maker; throwing open to that brother, instead of her house and
garden, the bright treasures of her affection, purifying him in her
rays, cleansing him from his first pollutions by her tears, deterring
him forever from any grosser pleasure than that of inward possession
and contemplation, teaching him to value his very privations far above
the sensual enjoyment that man shares with brutes, pointing out to him
his course through life, inciting him to glory and to virtue, and
rewarding his sacrifices by this one thought,--that fame, virtue, and
sacrifices were all taken into account in the heart of his beloved, all
accumulate in her love, are multiplied by her gratitude, and are added
to that treasure of tenderness which is ever increasing here below, to
be expended only in heaven?"