t with any one else before or
after. Thus, as he says, there was equally love on both sides, though it
was not reciprocal. "We were both of us intoxicated with passion, she
for her lover, I for her; our sighs and sweet tears mingled. Tender
confidants, each of the other, our sentiments were of such close kin
that it was impossible for them not to mix; and still she never forgot
her duty for a moment, while for myself, I protest, I swear, that if
sometimes drawn astray by my senses, still"--still he was a paragon of
virtue, subject to rather new definition. We can appreciate the author
of the New Heloisa; we can appreciate the author of Emilius; but this
strained attempt to confound those two very different persons by
combining tearful erotics with high ethics, is an exhibition of
self-delusion that the most patient analyst of human nature might well
find hard to suffer. "The duty of privation exalted my soul. The glory
of all the virtues adorned the idol of my heart in my sight; to soil its
divine image would have been to annihilate it," and so forth.[273]
Moon-lighted landscape gave a background for the sentimentalist's
picture, and dim groves, murmuring cascades, and the soft rustle of the
night air, made up a scene which became for its chief actor "an immortal
memory of innocence and delight." "It was in this grove, seated with her
on a grassy bank, under an acacia heavy with flowers, that I found
expression for the emotions of my heart in words that were worthy of
them. 'Twas the first and single time of my life; but I was sublime, if
you can use the word of all the tender and seductive things that the
most glowing love can bring into the heart of a man. What intoxicating
tears I shed at her knees, what floods she shed in spite of herself! At
length in an involuntary transport, she cried out, 'Never was man so
tender, never did man love as you do! But your friend Saint Lambert
hears us, and my heart cannot love twice.'"[274] Happily, as we learn
from another source, a breath of wholesome life from without brought the
transcendental to grotesque end. In the climax of tears and
protestations, an honest waggoner at the other side of the park wall,
urging on a lagging beast launched a round and far-sounding oath out
into the silent night. Madame d'Houdetot answered with a lively
continuous peal of young laughter, while an angry chill brought back the
discomfited lover from an ecstasy that was very full of peril.[275]

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