When I perceived the real nature of
his love, it became odious to me, and I blushed to think how I had been
deceived; I took back my heart, and wrapped myself once more in the
cold monotony of my happiness.
"The morning was spent in deep and engaging studies with my husband,
whose willing disciple I was. During the day we took long and solitary
walks in the woods of St. Cloud or of Meudon; and in the evening a few
grave, and for the most part elderly, friends would meet and discourse
on various topics, with all the freedom of intimacy. These cold but
indulgent hearts inclined toward my youth, from that natural bias which
makes the love of the aged descend on the youthful, as the streams of
snow-covered summits flow downwards to the plain. But these hoary heads
seemed to shed their snows on me, and my youth pined and wasted away in
the ungenial atmosphere of age. There lay too great a space of years
between their hearts and mine! Oh, what would I not have given to have
had one friend of my own age, by the contact of whose warm heart I
might have dissolved the thoughts that froze within me, as the dew of
morning congeals upon the plants that grow too near these mountain
glaciers!
"My husband often looked sadly at me, and seemed alarmed at my pale
face and languid voice.
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