Most generally we used to travel back over the past, step by step, and
recall with scrupulous minuteness every place, circumstance, and hour
which had brought on, or marked the beginning of our love,--like some
young girl who has scattered by the way the unstrung pearls of her
precious necklace, and returns upon her steps, her eyes bent upon the
ground, to find and gather them up, one by one. We would not lose the
recollection of one of those places, or one of those hours, for fear of
losing at the same time the hoarded memory of a single joy. We
remembered the mountains of Savoy; the valley of Chambéry; the torrents
and the lake; the mossy ground, sometimes in shade and sometimes
dappled with light, beneath the outstretched arms of the
chestnut-trees; the rays between the branches, the glimpse of sky
through the leafy dome above our heads, the blue expanse and the white
sails at our feet; our first unsought meetings in the mountain paths;
our mutual conjectures; our encounters on the lake before we knew each
other, sailing in our boats in contrary directions, her dark hair
waving in the wind, my indifferent attitude; our looks averted from the
crowd; the double enigma that we were to each other, of which the
answer was to be eternal love; then the fatal day of the tempest, and
her fainting; the mournful night of prayers and tears; the waking in
heaven; our return together by moonlight through the avenue of poplars,
her hand in mine; her warm tears which my lips had drunk, the first
words in which our souls had spoken; our joys, our parting,--we
remembered all.
We never wearied of these details. It was as though we had related some
story which was not our own. But what was there henceforth in the
universe save ourselves? O inexhaustible curiosity of love, thou art
not only a childish delight of the hour, thou art love itself, which
never tires of contemplating what it possesses, treasures up every
impression, each hair, each thrill, each blush, each sigh of the loved
one, as a reason for loving more, as a means of feeding anew with each
memory the flame of enthusiasm, in which it joys to be consumed!