III.
The fountain leaps as if its nearest goal
Were sky, and shines as if its life were light.
No crystal prism flashes on our sight
Such radiant splendor of the rainbow's whole
Of color. Who would dream the fountain stole
Its tints, and if the sun no more were bright
Would instant fade to its own pallid white?
Who dream that never higher than the dole
Of its own source, its stream may rise?
Thus we
See often hearts of men that by love's glow
Are sudden lighted, lifted till they show
All semblances of true nobility;
The passion spent, they tire of purity,
And sink again to their own levels low!
The next time Willan Blaycke came to the Golden Pear he did not see
Victorine. This was by no device of hers, though if she had considered
beforehand she could not better have helped on the impression she had
made on him than by letting him go away disappointed, having come hoping
to see her. She was away on a visit at the home of Pierre Gaspard the
miller, whose eldest daughter Annette was Victorine's one friend in the
parish.
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