at our feet, from the top of the dismantled tower of the old castle on
the borders of the lake, and which had saddened us as an omen. The dead
bird passed slowly before us, and the unruffled sheet of water rolled
and engulfed it in the deep darkness below the bridge. When the bird
had disappeared, we saw another swallow pass and repass a hundred times
beneath the bridge, uttering its little sharp cry of distress, and
dashing against the wooden beams of the arch. Involuntarily we looked
at each other; I cannot tell what our eyes expressed as they met, but
the despair of the poor bird found us with our eyelids so overcharged,
and our hearts so nearly bursting, that we both turned away at the same
moment, and throwing ourselves with our faces to the ground, sobbed
aloud. One tear called forth another tear, one thought another thought,
one foreboding another foreboding, each sob another sob. We often
strove to speak, but the broken voice of the one only made that of the
other still more inaudible, and we ended by yielding to nature, and
pouring forth in silence, during hours marked by the shadows alone, all
the tears that rose from their hidden springs. They fell on the grass,
sank into the earth, were dried by the winds of heaven, absorbed by the
rays of the sun,--God took them into account! No drop of anguish
remained in our hearts when we rose face to face though almost hidden
from each other by the tearful veil of our eyes. Such was our
farewell,--a funereal image, an ocean of tears, an eternal silence.
Thus we parted without another look, lest that look should strike us to
the earth. Never will the mark of my footsteps be again traced in that
desert scene of our love and of our parting.

XCII.

The next morning I was rolling along, sad and silent, wrapped in my
cloak, among the barren hills on the road that leads from Paris towards
the south. I was stowed away in a public coach, with five or six
unknown fellow-travellers who were gayly discussing the quality of the
wine and the price of the last dinner at the inn. I never once opened
my lips during that long, sad journey.

My mother received me with that serene and resigned tenderness which
might have made even misfortune happy in her company. Her diamond had
been spent in vain to advance my fortunes; and I returned home, with
shattered health and broken hopes, consumed with melancholy that she
attributed to my unoccupied youth and restless imagination, but