"
"What ingratitude and what profanation of yourself and of our
happiness!" I answered, walking slowly back with her towards the house,
upon the dry leaves, that rustled beneath our feet.
"Have I then ever, by a single word, or look, or by a single sigh,
shown that aught was wanting to my bitter but complete felicity? Cannot
you, in your angelic fancy, imagine for another Rousseau (if Nature
could have produced two) another Madame de Warens?--a Madame de Warens,
young and pure, angel, lover, sister, all at once, bestowing her whole
soul, her immaculate and immortal soul, instead of her perishable
charms; bestowing it on a brother who was lost and is found, who was
young, misled, and wandering too in this world, like the son of the
watch-maker; throwing open to that brother, instead of her house and
garden, the bright treasures of her affection, purifying him in her
rays, cleansing him from his first pollutions by her tears, deterring
him forever from any grosser pleasure than that of inward possession
and contemplation, teaching him to value his very privations far above
the sensual enjoyment that man shares with brutes, pointing out to him
his course through life, inciting him to glory and to virtue, and
rewarding his sacrifices by this one thought,--that fame, virtue, and
sacrifices were all taken into account in the heart of his beloved, all
accumulate in her love, are multiplied by her gratitude, and are added
to that treasure of tenderness which is ever increasing here below, to
be expended only in heaven?"
XLV.
Pages:
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171