The doctor took a deep and friendly interest in me. It seemed as if
Julie had imparted to him a portion of her tenderness. He understood my
complaint, though he concealed his knowledge from me, and was too
deeply read in human passion not to recognize its symptoms in us. He
ordered me to depart under penalty of death, and induced Julie herself
to enforce his commands by communicating to her his fears. He invoked
the tender authority of love to tear me from love. He tried to mitigate
the pang of separation by the allurement of hope, and ordered me to
breathe some time my native air, and then return to the baths of Savoy,
where Julie should join me, by his advice, in the beginning of autumn.
His principles did not seem startled by the symptoms of mutual passion
which he had not failed to perceive between us. Our pure flame was in
his eyes a fault, but it was also its own purification. His countenance
only expressed the indulgence of man, and the compassion of God. He
thus endeavored to save us by loosening the tie which threatened to
draw us to one common death. I at length consented to be the first to
depart, and Julie swore to follow me soon. Alas, her tears, her pale
face, and trembling lips said more than any vows! It was settled that I
should leave Paris as soon as my strength permitted me to travel. The
eighteenth of May was the day fixed for my departure.
When once we had resolved on our approaching separation we began to
reckon the minutes as hours, the hours as days. We would have amassed
and concentrated years into the short space of a second, to wrest from
time the happiness from which we were to be debarred during so many
months. These days were days of rapture, but they had their anguish and
their agony; the approaching morrow cast its gloom upon each interview,
each look and word, each pressure of the hand. Joys such as these are
not joys, but disguised pangs of love and tortures of the heart. We
devoted the whole day preceding my departure to our adieus. We wished
not to say our last farewell within the shadow of walls, which weigh
down the soul, or beneath the eyes of the indifferent, which throw back
the feelings on the heart, but beneath the sky, in the open air, in the
light, in solitude, and in silence. Nature sympathizes with all the
emotions of man; she understands, and, as an invisible confidant, seems
to share them. She garners them in heaven, and renders them divine.