join them. It is
already quite a long time since I became an old man. One day last
year, on the Pont des Arts, one of my fellow-members at the Institute
was lamenting before me over the _ennui_ of becoming old.

"Still," Sainte-Beuve replied to him, "it is the only way that has yet
been found of living a long time."

I have tried this way, and I know just what it is worth. The trouble
of it is not that one lasts too long, but that one sees all about him
pass away--mother, wife, friends, children. Nature makes and unmakes
all these divine treasures with gloomy indifference, and at last we
find that we have not loved,--we have only been embracing shadows. But
how sweet some shadows are! If ever creature glided like a shadow
through the life of a man, it was certainly that young girl whom I
fell in love with when--incredible though it now seems--I was myself a
youth.

A Christian sarcophagus from the catacombs of Rome bears a formula of
imprecation, the whole terrible meaning of which I only learned with
time. It says:--"_Whatsoever impious man violates this sepulchre, may
he die the last of his own people!_" In my capacity of archaeologist I
have opened tombs and disturbed ashes, in order to collect the shreds
of apparel, metal ornaments, or gems that were mingled with those
ashes. But I did it only through that scientific curiosity which does
not exclude the feelings of reverence and of piety. May that
malediction graven by some one of the first followers of the Apostles
upon a martyr's tomb never fall upon me! I ought not to fear to
survive my own people so long as there are men in the world; for there
are always some whom one can love.

But the power of love itself weakens and gradually becomes lost with
age, like all the other energies of man. Example proves it; and it is
this which terrifies me. Am I sure that I have not myself already
suffered this great loss? I should surely have felt it, but for the
happy meeting which has rejuvenated me. Poets speak of the Fountain of
Youth: it does exist; it gushes up from the earth at every step we
take. And one passes by without drinking of it!

The young girl I loved, married of her own choice to a rival, passed,
all gray-haired, into the eternal rest. I have found her daughter--so
that my life, which before seemed to me without utility, now once more
finds a purpose and a reason for being.

To-day I "take the sun," as they say in Provence; I take it on the
terrace o