eave home to attend a German prince who
required his care, and that he sent in his stead a respectable,
trustworthy man, who would accompany her to Paris and act as her
courier on the road. This man had arrived, and her departure was fixed
for the day after the morrow.

Although this news had been long foreseen, it affected us as though it
had been quite unexpected. We passed a long evening and nearly half the
night in silence, leaning opposite to one another on the little table,
and neither daring to look at each other, or to speak, for fear of
bursting into tears. We strove to interrupt the speechless agony of our
hearts by a few unconnected words, but these were said in a deep and
hollow voice, which resounded in the room like tear-drops on a coffin.
I had instantly determined to go also.

XXXVII.

The next day was the eve of our separation. The morning, as if to mock
us, rose more bright and warm than in the fairest days of October.

While the trunks were being packed, and the carriage got ready, we
started with the mules and guides. We visited both hill and valley, to
say farewell, and to make, as it were, a pilgrimage of love to all the
spots where we had first seen each other, then met and walked; where we
had sat, and talked, and loved, during the long and heavenly
intercourse between ourselves and lonely Nature. We began by the lovely
hill of Tresserves which rises like a verdant cliff between the valley
of Aix and the lake; its sides, that rise almost perpendicularly from
the water's edge, are covered with chestnut-trees, rivalling those of
Sicily, through their branches, which overhang the water, one sees
snatches of the blue lake or of the sky, according as one looks high or
low. It was on the velvet of the moss-covered roots of these noble
trees, which have seen successive generations of young men and women
pass like ants beneath their shade, that we in our contemplative hours
had dreamed our fairest dreams. From thence we descended by a steep
declivity to a small solitary chateau called Bon Port. This little
castle is so embosomed in the chestnut-trees of Tresserves on the land
side, and so well hidden on the water side in the deep windings of a
sheltered bay, that it is difficult to see it either from the mountain
or from the little sea of Bourget. A terrace with a few fig-trees
divides the chateau from the sandy beach, where the gentle waves
continually come rippling in, to lick the shore and