r own faces, and so warm, that
as we drew our fingers through them, we felt but a voluptuous caress of
the waters. We were separated from the boatmen by a small curtain, as
in the gondolas of Venice. She was lying on one of the benches of the
boat, as on a couch, with her elbow resting upon a cushion; she was
enveloped in shawls to protect her from the damp of evening, and my
cloak was placed in several folds upon her feet; her face, at times in
shade, was at others illumined by the last rosy tints of the sun, which
seemed suspended over the dark firs of the Grande Chartreuse. I was
lying on a heap of nets at the bottom of the boat; my heart was full,
my lips were mute, my eyes were fixed on hers. What need had we to
speak, when the sun, the hour, the mountains, the air and water, the
voluptuous balancing of the boat, the light ripple of the murmuring
waters as we divided them, our looks, our silence, and our hearts,
which beat in unison,--all spoke so eloquently for us? We rather seemed
to fear instinctively that the least sound of voice or words would jar
discordantly on such enchanting silence. We seemed to glide from the
azure of the lake to the azure of the horizon, without seeing the
shores we left, or the shores on which we were about to land.

I heard one longer and more deep-drawn sigh fall slowly from her lips,
as though her bosom, oppressed by some secret weight, had at one breath
exhaled the aspirations of a long life. I felt alarmed. "Are you in
pain?" I inquired, sadly. "No," she said; "it was not pain, it was
thought." "What were you thinking of so intensely?" I rejoined. "I was
thinking," she answered, "that if God were at this instant to strike
all nature with immobility; if the sun were to remain thus, its disk
half hidden behind those dark firs, which seem the fringed lashes of
the eye of heaven; if light and shade remained thus blended in the
atmosphere, this lake in its same transparency, this air as balmy,
these two shores forever at the same distance from this boat, the same
ray of ethereal light on your brow, the same look of pity reflected
from your eyes in mine, this same fulness of joy in my heart,--I should
comprehend what I have never comprehended since I first began to think,
or to dream." "What?" said I, anxiously. "Eternity in one instant, and
the Infinite in one sensation!" she exclaimed, half leaning over the
edge of the boat, as if to look at the water and to spare me the
embarrassment