I at length consented to be the first to
depart, and Julie swore to follow me soon. Alas, her tears, her pale
face, and trembling lips said more than any vows! It was settled that I
should leave Paris as soon as my strength permitted me to travel. The
eighteenth of May was the day fixed for my departure.
When once we had resolved on our approaching separation we began to
reckon the minutes as hours, the hours as days. We would have amassed
and concentrated years into the short space of a second, to wrest from
time the happiness from which we were to be debarred during so many
months. These days were days of rapture, but they had their anguish and
their agony; the approaching morrow cast its gloom upon each interview,
each look and word, each pressure of the hand. Joys such as these are
not joys, but disguised pangs of love and tortures of the heart. We
devoted the whole day preceding my departure to our adieus. We wished
not to say our last farewell within the shadow of walls, which weigh
down the soul, or beneath the eyes of the indifferent, which throw back
the feelings on the heart, but beneath the sky, in the open air, in the
light, in solitude, and in silence.
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