ss each other
because you like the landscape.'

"And his words froze me to the heart. It seems to me that when people
love each other, they ought to feel more moved by love than ever, in the
presence of beautiful scenes.

"In fact, I was brimming over with poetry which he kept me from
expressing. I was almost like a boiler filled with steam and
hermetically sealed.

"One evening (we had for four days been staying in a hotel at Fluelen)
Robert, having one of his sick headaches, went to bed immediately after
dinner, and I went to take a walk all alone along the edge of the lake.

"It was a night such as one reads of in fairy tales. The full moon
showed itself in the middle of the sky; the tall mountains, with their
snowy crests, seemed to wear silver crowns; the waters of the lake
glittered with tiny shining ripples. The air was mild, with that kind of
penetrating warmth which enervates us till we are ready to faint, to
be deeply affected without any apparent cause. But how sensitive, how
vibrating the heart is at such moments! how quickly it beats, and how
intense is its emotion!

"I sat down on the grass, and gazed at that vast, melancholy, and
fascinating lake, and a strange feeling arose in me; I was seized with
an insatiable need of love, a revolt against the gloomy dullness of my
life. What! would it never be my fate to wander, arm in arm, with a man
I loved, along a moon-kissed bank like this? Was I never to feel on
my lips those kisses so deep, delicious, and intoxicating which lovers
exchange on nights that seem to have been made by God for tenderness?
Was I never to know ardent, feverish love in the moonlit shadows of a
summer's night?

"And I burst out weeping like a crazy woman. I heard something stirring
behind me. A man stood there, gazing at me. When I turned my head round,
he recognized me, and, advancing, said:

"'You are weeping, madame?'

"It was a young barrister who was travelling with his mother, and whom
we had often met. His eyes had frequently followed me.

"I was so confused that I did not know what answer to give or what to
think of the situation. I told him I felt ill.

"He walked on by my side in a natural and respectful manner, and began
talking to me about what we had seen during our trip. All that I
had felt he translated into words; everything that made me thrill he
understood perfectly, better than I did myself. And all of a sudden he
repeated some verses of Alfred de Musset.