THE OLD, OLD STORY.
What thing is Love, which nought can countervail?
Nought save itself--even such a thing is Love.
SIR W. RALEIGH.
My acquaintance with Hortense Dufresnoy progressed slowly as, ever, and
not even the Froissart incident went far towards promoting it. Absorbed
in her studies, living for the intellect only, too self-contained to
know the need for sympathy, she continued to be, at all events for me,
the most inaccessible of God's creatures. And yet, despite her
indifference, I loved her. Her pale, proud face haunted me; her voice
haunted me. I thought of her sometimes till it seemed impossible she
should not in some way be conscious of how my very soul was centred in
her. But she knew nothing--guessed nothing--cared nothing; and the
knowledge that I held no place in her life wrought in me at times till
it became almost too bitter for endurance.
And this was love--real, passionate, earnest; the first and last love of
my heart. Did I believe that I ever loved till now? Ah! no; for now only
I felt the god in his strength, and beheld him in his beauty. Was I not
blind till I had looked into her eyes and drunk of their light? Was I
not deaf till I had heard the music of her voice? Had I ever truly
lived, or breathed, or known delight till now?
I never stayed to ask myself how this would end, or whither it would
lead me. The mere act of loving was too sweet for questioning. What
cared I for the uncertainties of the future, having hope to live upon in
the present? Was it not enough "to feed for aye my lamp and flames of
love," and worship her till that worship became a religion and a rite?
And now, longing to achieve something which should extort at least her
admiration, if not her love, I wished I were a soldier, that I might win
glory for her--or a poet, that I might write verses in her praise which
should be deathless--or a painter, that I might spend years of my life
in copying the dear perfection of her face. Ah! and I would so copy it
that all the world should be in love with it. Not a wave of her brown
hair that I would not patiently follow through all its windings. Not the
tender tracery of a blue vein upon her temples that I would not lovingly
render through its transparent veil of skin. Not a depth of her dark
eyes that I would not study, "deep drinking of the infinite." Alas!
those eyes, so grave, so luminous, so steadfast:--
"Eyes not down-dropt, not over-bright, but fed
With the clear-pointed flame of chastity,"
--eyes wherein dwelt "thought folded over thought," what painter need
ever hope to copy them?
And still she never dreamed how dear she had grown to me. She never
knew how the very air seemed purer to me because she breathed it. She
never guessed how I watched the light from her window night after
night--how I listened to every murmur in her chamber--how I watched and
waited for the merest glimpse of her as she passed by--how her lightest
glance hurried the pulses through my heart--how her coldest word was
garnered up in the treasure-house of my memory! What cared she, though
to her I had dedicated all the "book and volume of my brain;" hallowed
its every page with blazonings of her name; and illuminated it, for love
of her, with fair images, and holy thoughts, and forms of saints
and angels
"Innumerable, of stains and splendid dyes
As are the tiger-moth's deep damask'd wings?"
Ah me! her hand was never yet outstretched to undo its golden
clasps--her eye had never yet deigned to rest upon its records. To her I
was nothing, or less than nothing--a fellow-student, a fellow-lodger,
a stranger.
And yet I loved her "with a love that was more than love"--with a love
dearer than life and stronger than death--a love that, day after day,
struck its roots deeper and farther into my very soul, never thence to
be torn up here or hereafter.