Does not the celestial fire,
which night and day burns so rapturously within me, consume all dross
of vulgar desire? Am I aught but flame? A flame as pure and holy as the
rays of your soul which first kindled it, and now feed it unceasingly
through your beaming eye! Ah, Julie, estimate yourself more worthily,
and weep not over sorrows which you imagine you inflict on me! I do not
suffer. My life is one perpetual overflow of happiness, filled by you
alone,--a repose of sense, a sleep of which you are the dream. You have
transformed my nature. I suffer? Oh, would that I could sometimes
suffer, that I might have somewhat to offer unto God, were it but the
consciousness of a privation, the bitterness of a tear, in return for
all he has given me in you! To suffer for you, might, perchance, be the
only thing which could add one drop to that cup of happiness which it
is given me to quaff. To suffer thus, is it to suffer, or to enjoy? No;
thus to live, is, in truth, to die, but it is to die some years earlier
to this wretched life, to live beforehand of the life of heaven.
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