seemed to encompass her with a radiant atmosphere,
in which she not only walked herself, but enveloped all those who
looked upon her. This radiance of beauty, this atmosphere of love, are
not, as many think, only the fancies of a poet; the poet merely sees
more distinctly what escapes the blind or indifferent eye of other men.
It has often been said of a lovely woman, that she illumines the
darkness of night; it might be said of Julie that she warmed the
surrounding air. I lived and moved, enveloped in this warm emanation of
her reviving beauty; others but felt it as they passed.

XXXII.

When I was obliged to leave her for a short time, and returned to my
room, I felt, even at mid-day, as if I had been immured in a dungeon
without air or light. The brightest sun afforded me no light, unless
its rays were reflected by her eyes. I admired her more, the more I saw
her; and could not believe she was a being of the same order as myself.
The divine nature of her love had become a part of the creed of my
imagination; and in spirit I was ever prostrate before the being who
appeared to me too tender to be a divinity--too divine to be a woman! I
sought a name for her, and found none. I called her Mystery, and under
that vague and indefinite title, offered her worship which partook of
earth by its tenderness, of a dream by its enthusiasm, of reality by
her presence, and of heaven by my adoration.

She had obliged me to confess that I had sometimes written verses, but
I had never shown her any. She did not much like that artificial and
set form of speech, which, when it does not idealize, generally impairs
the simplicity of feeling and expression. Her nature was too full of
impulse, too feeling, and too serious, to bend itself to all the
precision, form, and delay of written poetry. She was Poetry without a
lyre--true as the heart, simple as the untutored thought, dreamy as
night, brilliant as day, swift as lightning, boundless as space! No
rules of harmony could have bounded the infinite music of her mind; her
very voice was a perpetual melody, that no cadence of verse could have
equalled. Had I lived long with her, I should never have read or
written poetry. She was the living poem of Nature and of myself; my
thoughts were in her heart, my imagery in her eyes, and my harmony in
her voice.

She had in her room a few volumes of the principal poets of the end of
the eighteenth century, and of the Empire, such as Delille