She bent over me, as if to contemplate her sun on my brow, her
light in my eyes; an expression of deep, calm, and ineffable happiness
was diffused over her features, and gave to her beauty a radiance and
splendor which was in harmony with the surrounding glory of the sky.
Suddenly I saw her turn pale and withdraw her arms from the side of the
boat and from my shoulder; she started up as if awaked from sleep,
covered for one instant her face with her two hands, and remained in
deep and silent thought; then withdrawing her hands, which were wet
with tears, she said, in a tone of calm and serene determination, "Oh,
let us die! ..."
After these words she remained silent for an instant, then resumed:
"Yes, let us die, for earth has nothing more to give, and Heaven
nothing more to promise!" She gazed at the sky and mountain, the lake
and its translucid waves around us. "Seest thou," she said (it was the
first and the last time that she ever used that form of speech which is
tender or solemn, according as we address God or man),--"seest thou
that all is ready around us for the blessed close of our two lives?
Seest thou the sun of the brightest of our days which sets, not to rise
for us perhaps to-morrow? Seest thou the mountains glass themselves for
the last time in the lake? They stretch out their long shadows towards
us, as if to say, Wrap yourselves in this shroud which I extend towards
you! See! the deep and clear, the silent waves have prepared for us a
sandy couch from which no man shall wake us and tell us to be gone! No
human eye can see us.
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