Her diamond had
been spent in vain to advance my fortunes; and I returned home, with
shattered health and broken hopes, consumed with melancholy that she
attributed to my unoccupied youth and restless imagination, but of
which I carefully concealed the real cause, for fear of adding an
irremediable sorrow to all her other griefs.
I spent the summer alone in an almost deserted valley enclosed between
barren hills, where my father had a little farm, which was worked by a
poor family. My mother had sent me there, and commended me to the care
of these good people, that I might have a change of air and the benefit
of milk diet. My whole occupation was to reckon the days which must
intervene before I could join Julie in our dear Alpine valley. Her
letters, received and replied to daily, confirmed me in my security,
and dispelled, by their sportive gayety and caressing words, the gloomy
and sinister forebodings our last farewell had raised in my heart. Now
and then some desponding word or expression of sadness which seemed to
have unguardedly escaped, or been involuntarily overlooked among her
vistas of happiness, as a dry leaf in the midst of the foliage of
spring, struck me as being in contradiction with the calm and blooming
health she spoke of.
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