We
carelessly threw on them an unheeding glance, which quickly fell to the
ground; our voices, when answering with their vain formulas of joy and
admiration, betrayed the hollowness of words and the absence of our
thoughts, which were elsewhere. It was in vain we sought a
resting-place to pass the long hours of this our last interview;
seating ourselves alternately beneath the most fragrant lilacs, or the
green branches of the loftiest cedars, on the fluted fragments of
columns half-buried in ivy, or by the side of those waters that lay
most still within their grassy banks, for scarcely had we chosen one of
these sites when some vague disquietude drove us away in search of
another. Here it was the shade, and there the light; further on, the
importunate murmur of the cascade, or the persisting song of the
nightingale over our heads,--that turned into bitterness all this
exuberance of joy, and made it odious in our eyes. When our heart is
sad within us, all creation jars upon our feelings, and it could but
have added fresh pangs to the grief of two lovers, had the garden of
Eden been the scene of their parting.
Pages:
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280