double poesy. Words, tuned to the
diapason of nature, disclosed mysterious graces; looks were impassioned
rays sharing the light shed broadcast by the sun on the glowing meadows.
The river was a path along which we flew. Our spirit, no longer kept
down by the measured tread of our footsteps, took possession of the
universe. The abounding joy of a child at liberty, graceful in its
motions, enticing in its play, is the living expression of two freed
souls, delighting themselves by becoming ideally the wondrous being
dreamed of by Plato and known to all whose youth has been filled with
a blessed love. To describe to you that hour, not in its indescribable
details but in its essence, I must say to you that we loved each other
in all the creations animate and inanimate which surrounded us; we felt
without us the happiness our own hearts craved; it so penetrated our
being that the countess took off her gloves and let her hands float in
the water as if to cool an inward ardor. Her eyes spoke; but her mouth,
opening like a rose to the breeze, gave voice to no desire. You know the
harmony of deep tones mingling perfectly with high ones? Ever, when I
hear it now, it recalls to me the harmony of our two souls in this one
hour, which never came again.

"Where do you fish?" I asked, "if you can only do so from the banks you
own?"

"Near Pont-de-Ruan," she replied. "Ah! we now own the river from
Pont-de-Ruan to Clochegourde; Monsieur de Mortsauf has lately bought
forty acres of the meadow lands with the savings of two years and the
arrearage of his pension. Does that surprise you?"

"Surprise me?" I cried; "I would that all the valley were yours." She
answered me with a smile. Presently we came below the bridge to a place
where the Indre widens and where the fishing was going on.

"Well, Martineau?" she said.

"Ah, Madame la comtesse, such bad luck! We have fished up from the mill
the last three hours, and have taken nothing."

We landed near them to watch the drawing in of the last net, and all
three of us sat down in the shade of a "bouillard," a sort of poplar
with a white bark, which grows on the banks of the Danube and the Loire
(probably on those of other large rivers), and sheds, in the spring
of the year, a white and silky fluff, the covering of its flower. The
countess had recovered her august serenity; she half regretted the
unveiling of her griefs, and mourned that she had cried aloud like Job,
instead of weeping li