the
artist, as well as that of the man, was captivated by her freshness, by
that springing of beautiful clear life, by that essence of youth that
glowed in her; and his heart, full of memories of his long intimacy with
the Countess, finding in the extraordinary resemblance of Annette to
her mother a reawakening of old feelings, of emotions sleeping since the
beginning of his love, had been startled perhaps by the sensation of an
awakening. An awakening? Yes. Was it that? This idea illumined his mind.
He felt that he had awakened after years of sleep. If he had loved the
young girl without being aware of it, he should have experienced near
her that rejuvenation of his whole being which creates a different man
as soon as the flame of a new desire is kindled within him. No, the
child had only breathed upon the former fire. It had always been the
mother that he loved, but now a little more than recently, no doubt,
because of her daughter, this reincarnation of herself. And he
formulated this decision with the reassuring sophism: "One loves but
once! The heart may often be affected at meeting some other being, for
everyone exercises on others either attractions or repulsions. All these
influences create friendship, caprices, desire for possession, quick
and fleeting ardors, but not real love. That this love may exist it is
necessary that two beings should be so truly born for each other, should
be linked together in so many different ways, by so many similar tastes,
by so many affinities of body, of mind, and of character, and so many
ties of all kinds that the whole shall form a union of bonds. That which
we love, in short, is not so much Madame X. or Monsieur Z.; it is a
women or a man, a creature without a name, something sprung from Nature,
that great female, with organs, a form, a heart, a mind, a combination
of attributes which like a magnet attract our organs, our eyes, our
lips, our hearts, our thoughts, all our appetites, sensual as well as
intellectual. We love a type, that is, the reunion in one single person
of all the human qualities that may separately attract us in others."

For him, the Comtesse de Guilleroy had been this type, and their
long-standing liaison, of which he had not wearied, proved it to him
beyond doubt. Now, Annette so much resembled physically what her mother
had been as to deceive the eye; so there was nothing astonishing in the
fact that this man's heart had been surprised, if even it had n