rue woman, the noble and angelic
being, veiled until now by flesh, arose in her place. Her great mind,
her knowledge, her attainments, her false loves had brought her face
to face with what? Ah! who would have thought it?--with the bounteous
mother, the comforter of troubled spirits, with the Roman Church, ever
kind to repentance, poetic to poets, childlike with children, and yet
so profound, so full of mystery to anxious, restless minds that they can
burrow there and satisfy all longings, all questionings, all hopes.
She cast her eyes, as it were, upon the strangely devious way--like the
tortuous rocky path before her--over which her love for Calyste had
led her. Ah! Calyste was indeed a messenger from heaven, her divine
conductor! She had stifled earthly love, and a divine love had come from
it.

After walking for some distance in silence, Calyste could not refrain,
on a remark of Beatrix about the grandeur of the ocean, so unlike the
smiling beauty of the Mediterranean, from comparing in depth, purity,
extent, unchanging and eternal duration, that ocean with his love.

"It is met by a rock!" said Beatrix, laughing.

"When you speak thus," he answered, with a sublime look, "I hear you, I
see you, and I can summon to my aid the patience of the angels; but when
I am alone, you would pity me if you could see me then. My mother weeps
for my suffering."

"Listen to me, Calyste; we must put an end to all this," said the
marquise, gazing down upon the sandy road. "Perhaps we have now reached
the only propitious place to say these things, for never in my life did
I see nature more in keeping with my thoughts. I have seen Italy, where
all things tell of love; I have seen Switzerland, where all is cool
and fresh, and tells of happiness,--the happiness of labor; where the
verdure, the tranquil waters, the smiling slopes, are oppressed by the
snow-topped Alps; but I have never seen anything that so depicts the
burning barrenness of my life as that little arid plain down there,
dried by the salt sea winds, corroded by the spray, where a fruitless
agriculture tries to struggle against the will of that great ocean.
There, Calyste, you have an image of this Beatrix. Don't cling to it. I
love you, but I will never be yours in any way whatever, for I have the
sense of my inward desolation. Ah! you do not know how cruel I am
to myself in speaking thus to you. No, you shall never see your idol
diminished; she shall never fall from th