When I left her presence I felt myself good, and thought myself
pure. Once more I felt enthusiasm, prayer, inward piety, and the warm
tears which flow not from the eyes, but well out like a secret spring
from beneath our apparent aridity, and cleanse the heart without
enervating it. I vowed never to descend from the celestial but by no
means giddy heights to which I had been raised by her tender
reproaches, her voice, her single presence. It was as a second
innocence of my soul, imparted by the rays of the eternal innocence of
her love.
I could not say whether there was most piety, or fascination in the
impression I received, so much did passion and adoration mingle in
equal portions, and in my thoughts change, a thousand times in one
minute, love into worship, or worship into love. Oh, is not that the
height, the very pinnacle of love,--enthusiasm in the possession of
perfect beauty, and rapture in supreme adoration?... All she had said
seemed to me eternal; all she had looked on appeared to me sacred. I
envied the earth on which she had trodden; the sunshine which had
enveloped her during our walks appeared to me happy to have touched
her.
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