into that air, that light, that verdure; amid those
sprouting branches, in that flood of life and vegetation, which is even
now inundating the whole earth! Let us go, let us see if naught in the
works of his creation has grown old by the weight of an added day; if
naught in that enthusiasm, which sang and groaned, loved and lamented
within us, on the mountains and on the waters of Savoy, has been
lowered by one ripple or one note!" "Yes, let us go," said she. "We
shall neither feel more, nor love better, nor bless otherwise; but we
shall have made another sky and another spot of earth witness the
happiness of two poor mortals. That temple of our love which was in our
loved mountains only will then be wherever I shall have wandered and
breathed with you." The old man encouraged these excursions to the fine
forests around Paris. He hoped, and the doctors led him to expect, that
the air laden with life, the influence of the sun, which strengthens
all things, with moderate exercise in the open fields, might invigorate
the too sensitive delicacy of Julie's nerves and give elasticity to her
heart. Every sunny day, during the five weeks of early spring, I came
at noon to fetch her. We entered a close carriage in order to avoid the
inquisitive looks and light observations of any of her acquaintances
whom we might chance to meet, or the remarks that even strangers might
have made on seeing so young and lovely a woman alone with a man of my
age; for we were not sufficiently alike to pass for brother and sister.
We left the carriage on the skirts of the woods, at the foot of the
hills, or at the gates of the parks in the environs of Paris, and
sought out at Fleury, at Meudon, at Sevres, at Satory, and at Vincennes
the longest and most solitary paths, carpeted with turf and flowers,
untrodden by horses' hoofs, except perhaps on the day of a royal hunt.
We never met any one, save a few children or poor women busy with their
knives digging up endive. Occasionally a startled doe would rustle
through the leaves, and springing across the path, after a glance at
us, dive into the thicket. We walked in silence, sometimes preceding
each other, sometimes arm in arm, or we talked of the future, of the
delight it would be to possess one out of all these untenanted acres,
with a keeper's lodge under one of the old oaks. We dreamed aloud. We
picked violets and the wild periwinkle, which we interchanged as
hieroglyphics and preserved in the smoot