passed through
dark streets, she on her pony, I on foot, a small stick in my hand; thus
half conversing, half dreaming, we went from cottage to cottage. There
was a little bench near the edge of the wood where I was accustomed to
rest after dinner; we met here regularly, as though by chance. In the
morning, music, reading; in the evening, cards with the aunt as in the
days of my father; and she always there, smiling, her presence filling my
heart. By what road, O Providence! have you led me? What irrevocable
destiny am I to accomplish? What! a life so free, an intimacy so
charming, so much repose, such buoyant hope! O God! Of what do men
complain? What is there sweeter than love?

To live, yes, to feel intensely, profoundly, that one exists, that one is
a sentient man, created by God, that is the first, the greatest gift of
love. We can not deny, however, that love is a mystery, inexplicable,
profound. With all the chains, with all the pains, and I may even say,
with all the disgust with which the world has surrounded it, buried as it
is under a mountain of prejudices which distort and deprave it, in spite
of all the ordure through which it has been dragged, love, eternal and
fatal love, is none the less a celestial law as powerful and as
incomprehensible as that which suspends the sun in the heavens.

What is this mysterious bond, stronger and more durable than iron, that
can neither be seen nor touched? What is there in meeting a woman, in
looking at her, in speaking one word to her, and then never forgetting
her? Why this one rather than that one? Invoke the aid of reason, of
habit, of the senses, the head, the heart, and explain it if you can. You
will find nothing but two bodies, one here, the other there, and between
them, what? Air, space, immensity. O blind fools! who fondly imagine
yourselves men, and who reason of love! Have you talked with it? No, you
have felt it. You have exchanged a glance with a passing stranger, and
suddenly there flies out from you something that can not be defined, that
has no name known to man. You have taken root in the ground like the seed
concealed in the turf which feels the life within it, and which is on its
way to maturity.

We were alone, the window was open, the murmur of a little fountain came
to us from the garden. O God! would that I could count, drop by drop, all
the water that fell while we were sitting there, while she was talking
and I was answering. It was there tha