proved the depth of her
affection by the study she had made of my nature during the last three
months. She penetrated the recesses of my heart, entering it with her
own; the tones of her voice were changeful and convincing; the words
fell from maternal lips, showing by their tone as well as by their
meaning how many ties already bound us to each other.

"If you knew," she said in conclusion, "with what anxiety I shall follow
your course, what joy I shall feel if you walk straight, what tears I
must shed if you strike against the angles! Believe that my affection
has no equal; it is involuntary and yet deliberate. Ah, I would that I
might see you happy, powerful, respected,--you who are to me a living
dream."

She made me weep, so tender and so terrible was she. Her feelings came
boldly to the surface, yet they were too pure to give the slightest hope
even to a young man thirsting for pleasure. Ignoring my tortured flesh,
she shed the rays, undeviating, incorruptible, of the divine love,
which satisfies the soul only. She rose to heights whither the prismatic
pinions of a love like mine were powerless to bear me. To reach her a
man must needs have won the white wings of the seraphim.

"In all that happens to me I will ask myself," I said, "'What would my
Henriette say?'"

"Yes, I will be the star and the sanctuary both," she said, alluding to
the dreams of my childhood.

"You are my light and my religion," I cried; "you shall be my all."

"No," she answered; "I can never be the source of your pleasures."

She sighed; the smile of secret pain was on her lips, the smile of the
slave who momentarily revolts. From that day forth she was to me, not
merely my beloved, but my only love; she was not IN my heart as a
woman who takes a place, who makes it hers by devotion or by excess
of pleasure given; but she was my heart itself,--it was all hers, a
something necessary to the play of my muscles. She became to me as
Beatrice to the Florentine, as the spotless Laura to the Venetian, the
mother of great thoughts, the secret cause of resolutions which saved
me, the support of my future, the light shining in the darkness like a
lily in a wood. Yes, she inspired those high resolves which pass through
flames, which save the thing in peril; she gave me a constancy like
Coligny's to vanquish conquerors, to rise above defeat, to weary the
strongest wrestler.

The next day, having breakfasted at Frapesle and bade adieu to my kind