as a woman, Etienne, because he
had suffered much and meditated much, passed quickly through the regions
occupied by common passions and went beyond it. Like all enfeebled
natures, they were quickly penetrated by Faith, by that celestial glow
which doubles strength by doubling the soul. For them their sun was
always at its meridian. Soon they had that divine belief in themselves
which allows of neither jealousy nor torment; abnegation was ever ready,
admiration constant.

Under these conditions, love could have no pain. Equal in their
feebleness, strong in their union, if the noble had some superiority of
knowledge and some conventional grandeur, the daughter of the physician
eclipsed all that by her beauty, by the loftiness of her sentiments, by
the delicacy she gave to their enjoyments. Thus these two white doves
flew with one wing beneath their pure blue heaven; Etienne loved, he was
loved, the present was serene, the future cloudless; he was sovereign
lord; the castle was his, the sea belonged to both of them; no vexing
thought troubled the harmonious concert of their canticle; virginity
of mind and senses enlarged for them the world, their thoughts rose
in their minds without effort; desire, the satisfactions of which are
doomed to blast so much, desire, that evil of terrestrial love, had
not as yet attacked them. Like two zephyrs swaying on the same
willow-branch, they needed nothing more than the joy of looking at each
other in the mirror of the limpid waters; immensity sufficed them;
they admired their Ocean, without one thought of gliding on it in the
white-winged bark with ropes of flowers, sailed by Hope.

Love has its moment when it suffices to itself, when it is happy in
merely being. During this springtime, when all is budding, the lover
sometimes hides from the beloved woman, in order to enjoy her more, to
see her better; but Etienne and Gabrielle plunged together into all the
delights of that infantine period. Sometimes they were two sisters in
the grace of their confidences, sometimes two brothers in the boldness
of their questionings. Usually love demands a slave and a god, but these
two realized the dream of Plato,--they were but one being deified. They
protected each other. Caresses came slowly, one by one, but chaste
as the merry play--so graceful, so coquettish--of young animals. The
sentiment which induced them to express their souls in song led them to
love by the manifold transformations of the