In Cologne I came upon traces of the Gagins; I found out they had
gone to London; I pushed on in pursuit of them; but in London all my
researches were in vain. It was long before I would resign myself, for
a long while I persevered, but I was obliged, at last, to give up all
hope of coming across them.
And I never saw them again--I never saw Acia. Vague rumours reached
me about him, but she had vanished for ever for me. I don’t even know
whether she is alive. One day, a few years later, in a railway carriage
abroad, I caught a glimpse of a woman, whose face vividly recalled
those features I could never forget … but I was most likely deceived
by a chance resemblance. Acia remained in my memory a little girl such
as I had known her at the best time of my life, as I saw her the last
time, leaning against the back of a low wooden chair.
But I must own I did not grieve over-long for her; I even came to the
conclusion that fate had done all for the best, in not uniting me to
Acia; I consoled myself with the reflection that I should probably not
have been happy with such a wife. I was young then--and the future,
the brief, swiftly-passing future seemed boundless to me then. Could
not what had been be repeated, I thought, and better, fairer still?… I
got to know other women--but the feeling Acia had aroused in me, that
intense, tender, deep feeling has never come again. No! no eyes have
for me taken the place of those that were once turned with love upon
my eyes, to no heart, pressed to my breast, has my heart responded
with such joyous sweet emotion! Condemned as I have been to a solitary
life, without ties or family, I have led a dreary existence; but I keep
as sacred relics, her little notes and the dry geranium, the flower
she threw me once out of the window. It still retains a faint scent,
while the hand that gave it, the hand I only once pressed to my lips,
has perhaps long since decayed in the grave.… And I myself, what has
become of me? What is left of me, of those blissful, heart-stirring
days, of those winged hopes and aspirations? The faint fragrance of an
insignificant plant outlives all man’s joys and sorrows--outlives man
himself.
1857.
Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty at the
Edinburgh University Press