This
latter feeling predominated at last in my heart, and in that of my
friend. We fell on our knees before the sofa, and kissed the end of the
black shawl which enveloped her feet. The verses seemed to her merely
an instantaneous and solitary expression of my feelings towards her;
she praised them, but never mentioned them again. She much preferred
our familiar discourse, or even our pensive silence in each other's
company, to these exercises of the mind which profane our feelings
rather than reveal them, Louis left us after a few days.
XXXIII.
In consequence of these first verses of mine, which were but one feeble
strophe of the perpetual hymn of my heart, she requested me to write an
ode for her, which she would address as a tribute of admiration, and as
a specimen of my talents, to one of the men of her Paris acquaintance,
for whom she felt the greatest respect and attachment, M. de Bonald. I
knew nothing of him but his name, and the well-deserved renown that
attached to it as that of a Christian, a philosopher, and a legislator.
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