childhood. She had renewed in me all my early feelings of piety. I
composed prayers for her,--calm, yet ardent prayers, that ascend like
flames to Heaven, but like flames that no wind can cause to vacillate.
I begged her to pronounce these prayers at certain hours of the day and
night, when I would repeat them also, so that our two minds, united by
the same words, might be elevated at the same hour in one
invocation.... All these were wet with my tears, that left their traces
on my words, and were doubtless more powerful and more eloquent than
they. I used to go and throw into the post by stealth these letters,
the very marrow of my bones; and felt relieved on my return, as if I
had thrown off a part of the weight of my own heart.

LV.

Spite of my continual efforts and of the perpetual application of my
young and ardent imagination to communicate to my letters the fire that
consumed me, to create a language for my sighs, to pour my burning soul
upon the paper and make it overleap the distance that divided us,--in
this combat against the impotence of words, I was always surpassed by
Julie. Her letters had more expression in one phrase than mine in their
eight pages,--her heart breathed in the words; one saw her looks in the
lines; the expressions seemed still warm from her lips. In her, nothing
evaporated during that slow and dull transition of the feeling to the
word which lets the lava of the heart cool and pale beneath the pen of
man. Woman has no style, that is why all she says is so well said.
Style is a garment, but the unveiled soul stands forth upon the lips or
beneath the hand of woman. Like the Venus of speech, it rises from the
depths of feeling in its naked beauty, wakes of itself to life, wonders
at its own existence, and is adored ere it knows that it has spoken.

LVI.

What letters and what ardor! What tones and accents! What fire and
purity combined, like light and transparency in a diamond, like passion
and bashfulness on the brow of the young girl who loves! What powerful
simplicity! What inexhaustible effusions! What sudden revivals in the
midst of languor! What sounds and songs! Then there would be sadness,
recurring like the unexpected notes at the end of an air; caressing
words, which seemed to fan the brow like the breath of a fond mother
bending over her smiling child; a voluptuous lulling of half-whispered
words, and hushed and dreamy sentences, which wrapped one in rays and