eelings, intelligence, and
love bounded by that small spark which scarce outshines the glowworm of
a summer's evening! How often have I thus thought as I paced the
bridge, muffled in my cloak! How often have I exclaimed, as I gazed at
that oval window shining in the distance: Let all the fires of earth be
quenched, let all the luminous globes of the firmament be extinguished,
but may that feeble light--the mysterious star of our two lives--shine
on forever; its glimmering would illumine countless worlds, and suffice
my eyes through all eternity!

Alas, since then I have seen this star of my youth expire, this burning
focus of my eyes and heart extinguished! I have seen the shutters of
the window closed for many a long year on the funereal darkness of that
little room. One year, one day, I saw them once more opened. I looked
to see who dared to live where she had lived before; and then I saw, in
summer time, at that same window, bathed in sunshine and adorned with
flowers, a young woman whom I did not know playing and smiling with a
new-born child, unconscious that she played upon a grave, that her
smiles were turned to tears in the eyes of a passer-by, and that so
much life seemed as a mockery of death.... Since then, at night, I have
returned; and every year I still return, approach that wall with
faltering steps, and touch that door; and then I sit on the stone
bench, and watch the lights, and listen to the voices from above. I
sometimes fancy that I see the light reflected from her lamp; that I
hear the tones of her voice; that I can knock at that door; that she
expects me; that I can go in--...O Memory, art thou a gift from Heaven,
or pain of Hell!...But I resume my story, since you, my friend, desire
it.

LXXII.

The day after my arrival, Julie had introduced me to the old man, who
was to her a father, and whose latter days she brightened with the
radiance of her mind, her tenderness, and her beauty. He received me as
a son. He had learned from her our meeting in Savoy, our fraternal
attachment, our daily correspondence, and the affinity of our minds, as
shown by the conformity of our tastes, ages, and feelings. He knew the
entire purity of our attachment, and felt no jealousy, or any anxiety,
save for the life, the happiness, and reputation of his ward. He only
feared she might have been attracted and deceived by that first look,
which is sometimes a revelation, and sometimes a delusion of the young,
a