ey had their anguish and
their agony; the approaching morrow cast its gloom upon each interview,
each look and word, each pressure of the hand. Joys such as these are
not joys, but disguised pangs of love and tortures of the heart. We
devoted the whole day preceding my departure to our adieus. We wished
not to say our last farewell within the shadow of walls, which weigh
down the soul, or beneath the eyes of the indifferent, which throw back
the feelings on the heart, but beneath the sky, in the open air, in the
light, in solitude, and in silence. Nature sympathizes with all the
emotions of man; she understands, and, as an invisible confidant, seems
to share them. She garners them in heaven, and renders them divine.

XCI.

In the morning, a carriage, which I had hired for the day, conveyed us
to Monceau. The windows were down, the blinds closed. We traversed the
almost deserted streets of the more elevated parts of Paris, leading to
the high walls of the park. This garden was at that time almost
exclusively reserved for their own use by the princes to whom it
belonged, and could only be entered on presenting tickets of admission,
which were very parsimoniously distributed to a few foreigners or
travellers desirous of admiring its wonderful vegetation. I had
obtained some of these tickets, through one of my mother's early
friends who was attached to the prince's household. I had selected this
solitude because I knew its owners were absent, that no admissions were
then given, and that the very gardeners would be away enjoying the
leisure of a holiday.

This magnificent desert, studded with groves of trees, interspersed
with meadows, and traversed by limpid streams, is also embellished by
monuments, columns, and ivy-covered ruins, imitations of time in which
art has copied the old age of stone. That day we knew it would be
visited only by the bright sunbeams, the insects, the birds, and us.
Alas, never were its leaves and its green turf to be watered by so many
tears!

The warm and glowing sky, the light and shade dancing fitfully on the
grass driven by the summer breeze, as the shadow of the wings of one
bird pursuing another; the clear note of the nightingale ringing
through the sonorous air; the distinctness with which the lilies of the
valley, the daisies, and the blue periwinkles which carpeted the
sloping banks of the clear waters, were reflected in their polished
mirror,--all this gladness of Nature sad