n into a
room bruise their own wings against the walls, while announcing to the
poor inhabitants of dismal garrets the approach of April and its sunny
days. The perfume of the flowers penetrated to our hearts, and our
thoughts were brought back, under the impression of their fragrance and
the images it evoked, to that Nature in the midst of which we had been
so isolated and so happy. We had forgotten her while the days were
dark, the sky gloomy, and the horizon bounded. Shut up in a small room
where we were all in all to each other, we never thought that there was
another sky, another sun, another nature beyond our own. These fine,
sunny days, glimpses of which we caught from among the roofs of an
immense city, recalled them to our minds. They agitated and saddened
us; they inspired us with an invincible desire to contemplate and to
enjoy them in the forests and solitudes which surround Paris. It seemed
to us while indulging these irresistible longings, and projecting
distant walks together in the woods of Fontainebleau, Vincennes, St.
Germain, and Versailles, that we should be again, as it were, amid the
woods and waters of our Alpine valleys, that at least we should see the
same sun and the same shade and recognize the harmonious sighing of the
same winds in the branches.

Spring, which was restoring to the sky its transparency and to the
plants their sap, seemed also to give new youth and pulsation to
Julie's heart. The tint upon her cheeks was brighter; her eyes more
blue, their rays more penetrating. There was more emotion in the tone
of her voice; the languor of her frame was relieved by more frequent
sighs; there was more elasticity in her walk, more youthfulness in her
attitudes; even in the stillness of her chamber, a pleasant though
feverish agitation produced a petulant movement of her feet, and sent
the words more hurriedly to her lips. In the evening Julie would undraw
the curtains, and frequently lean forth from her window to take in the
freshness of the water, the rays of the moon, and the breath of the
fragrant breeze which swept along the valley of Meudon, and was wafted
even into the apartments on the quay.

"Oh, let us give," said I, "a joyous holiday to our hearts amid all our
happiness! Of all God's creatures for whom he reanimates his earth and
his heavens, let not us, the most feeling and the most grateful, be the
only beings for whom they shall have been reanimated in vain! Let us
together dive