The Best Works of Balzac. Оноре де Бальзак

my peace of mind. Let me know whether I really grieved my Pauline,

       or whether some uncertain expression of her countenance misled me.

       I could not bear to have to reproach myself after a whole life of

       happiness, for ever having met you without a smile of love, a

       honeyed word. To grieve the woman I love—Pauline, I should count

       it a crime. Tell me the truth, do not put me off with some

       magnanimous subterfuge, but forgive me without cruelty."

      FRAGMENT

      "Is so perfect an attachment happiness? Yes, for years of

       suffering would not pay for an hour of love.

       "Yesterday, your sadness, as I suppose, passed into my soul as

       swiftly as a shadow falls. Were you sad or suffering? I was

       wretched. Whence came my distress? Write to me at once. Why did I

       not know it? We are not yet completely one in mind. At two

       leagues' distance or at a thousand I ought to feel your pain and

       sorrows. I shall not believe that I love you till my life is so

       bound up with yours that our life is one, till our hearts, our

       thoughts are one. I must be where you are, see what you feel, feel

       what you feel, be with you in thought. Did not I know, at once,

       that your carriage had been overthrown and you were bruised? But

       on that day I had been with you, I had never left you, I could see

       you. When my uncle asked me what made me turn so pale, I answered

       at once, 'Mademoiselle de Villenoix had has a fall.'

       "Why, then, yesterday, did I fail to read your soul? Did you wish

       to hide the cause of your grief? However, I fancied I could feel

       that you were arguing in my favor, though in vain, with that

       dreadful Salomon, who freezes my blood. That man is not of our

       heaven.

       "Why do you insist that our happiness, which has no resemblance to

       that of other people, should conform to the laws of the world? And

       yet I delight too much in your bashfulness, your religion, your

       superstitions, not to obey your lightest whim. What you do must be

       right; nothing can be purer than your mind, as nothing is lovelier

       than your face, which reflects your divine soul.

       "I shall wait for a letter before going along the lanes to meet

       the sweet hour you grant me. Oh! if you could know how the sight

       of those turrets makes my heart throb when I see them edged with

       light by the moon, our only confidante."

       IV

      "Farewell to glory, farewell to the future, to the life I had

       dreamed of! Now, my well-beloved, my glory is that I am yours, and

       worthy of you; my future lies entirely in the hope of seeing you;

       and is not my life summed up in sitting at your feet, in lying

       under your eyes, in drawing deep breaths in the heaven you have

       created for me? All my powers, all my thoughts must be yours,

       since you could speak those thrilling words, 'Your sufferings must

       be mine!' Should I not be stealing some joys from love, some

       moments from happiness, some experiences from your divine spirit,

       if I gave my hours to study—ideas to the world and poems to the

       poets? Nay, nay, my very life, I will treasure everything for you;

       I will bring to you every flower of my soul. Is there anything

       fine enough, splendid enough, in all the resources of the world,

       or of intellect, to do honor to a heart so rich, so pure as yours

       —the heart to which I dare now and again to unite my own? Yes,

       now and again, I dare believe that I can love as much as you do.

       "And yet, no; you are the angel-woman; there will always be a

       greater charm in the expression of your feelings, more harmony in

       your voice, more grace in your smile, more purity in your looks

       than in mine. Let me feel that you are the creature of a higher

       sphere than that I live in; it will be your pride to have

       descended from it; mine, that I should have deserved you; and you

       will not perhaps have fallen too far by coming down to me in my

       poverty and misery. Nay, if a woman's most glorious refuge is in a

       heart that is wholly her own, you will always reign supreme in

       mine. Not a thought, not a deed, shall ever pollute this heart,

       this glorious sanctuary, so long as you vouchsafe to dwell in it

       —and will you not dwell in it for ever? Did you not enchant me by

       the words, 'Now and for ever?' Nunc et semper! And I have written these words of our ritual below your portrait—words worthy of you, as they are of God. He is nunc et semper, as my love is. "Never, no, never, can I exhaust that which is immense, infinite, unbounded—and such is the feeling I have for you; I have imagined its immeasurable extent, as we measure space by the dimensions of one of its parts. I have had ineffable joys, whole hours filled with delicious meditation, as I have recalled a single gesture or the tone of a word of yours. Thus there will be memories of which the magnitude will overpower me, if the reminiscence of a sweet and friendly interview is enough to make me shed tears of joy, to move and thrill my soul, and to be an inexhaustible wellspring of gladness. Love is the life of angels! "I can never, I believe, exhaust my joy in seeing you. This rapture, the least fervid of any, though it never can last long enough, has made me apprehend the eternal contemplation in which seraphs and spirits abide in the presence of God; nothing can be more natural, if from His essence there emanates a light as fruitful of new emotions as that of your eyes is, of your imposing brow, and your beautiful countenance—the image of your soul. Then, the soul, our second self, whose pure form can never perish, makes our love immortal. I would there were some other language than that I use to express to you the ever-new ecstasy of my love; but since there is one of our own creating, since our looks are living speech, must we not meet face to face to read in each other's eyes those questions and answers from the heart, that are so living, so penetrating, that one evening you could say to me, 'Be silent!' when I was not speaking. Do you remember it, dear life? "When I am away from you in the darkness of absence, am I not reduced to use human words, too feeble to express heavenly feelings? But words at any rate represent the marks these feelings leave in my soul, just as the word God imperfectly sums up the notions we form of that mysterious First Cause. But, in spite of the subtleties and infinite variety of language, I have no words that can express to you the exquisite union by which my life is merged into yours whenever I think of you. "And with what word can I conclude when I cease writing to you, and yet do not part from you? What can farewell mean, unless in death? But is death a farewell? Would not my spirit be then more closely one with yours? Ah! my first and last thought; formerly I offered you my heart and life on my knees; now what fresh blossoms of feelings can I discover in my soul that I have not already given you? It would be a gift of a part of what is wholly yours. "Are you my future? How deeply I regret the past! I would I could have back all the