her I do not know. You will not tell
me the story of your love for another! And I will whisper to you that not
long since I loved a terrible fellow who made me very unhappy; you will
reprove me and close my mouth, and we will agree never to speak of such
things."

When Brigitte spoke thus I experienced a feeling that resembled avarice;
I caught her in my arms and cried:

"Oh, God! I know not whether it is with joy or with fear that I tremble.
I am about to carry off my treasure. Die, my youth; die, all memories of
the past; die, all cares and regrets! Oh, my, good, my brave Brigitte!
You have made a man out of a child. If I lose you now, I shall never love
again. Perhaps, before I knew you, another woman might have cured me; but
now you alone, of all the world, have power to destroy me or to save me,
for I bear in my heart the wound of all the evil I have done you. I have
been an ingrate, blind and cruel. God be praised! You love me still. If
you ever return to that home under whose lindens I first met you, look
carefully about that deserted house; you will find a phantom there, for
the man who left it, and went away with you, is not the man who entered
it."

"Is it true?" said Brigitte, and her face, all radiant with love, was
raised to heaven; "is it true that I am yours? Yes, far from this odious
world in which you have grown old before your time, yes, my child, you
shall really love. I shall have you as you are, and, wherever we go you
will make me forget the possibility of a day when you will no longer love
me. My mission will have been accomplished, and I shall always be
thankful for it."

Finally we decided to go to Geneva and then choose some resting place in
the Alps. Brigitte was enthusiastic about the lake; I thought I could
already breathe the air which floats over its surface, and the odor of
the verdure-clad valley; already I beheld Lausanne, Vevey, Oberland, and
in the distance the summits of Monte Rosa and the immense plain of
Lombardy. Already oblivion, repose, travel, all the delights of happy
solitude invited us; already, when in the evening with joined hands, we
looked at each other in silence, we felt rising within us that sentiment
of strange grandeur which takes possession of the heart on the eve of a
long journey, the mysterious and indescribable vertigo which has in it
something of the terrors of exile and the hopes of pilgrimage. Are there
not in the human mind wings that flutter and sonor