are
in me since last I stood there.

My heart deceived me not--she lived there; the first castle that I saw
on the slope of a hill was the dwelling that held her. As I sat beneath
my nut-tree, the mid-day sun was sparkling on the slates of her roof and
the panes of her windows. Her cambric dress made the white line which I
saw among the vines of an arbor. She was, as you know already without
as yet knowing anything, the Lily of this valley, where she grew for
heaven, filling it with the fragrance of her virtues. Love, infinite
love, without other sustenance than the vision, dimly seen, of which my
soul was full, was there, expressed to me by that long ribbon of water
flowing in the sunshine between the grass-green banks, by the lines of
the poplars adorning with their mobile laces that vale of love, by the
oak-woods coming down between the vineyards to the shore, which the
river curved and rounded as it chose, and by those dim varying horizons
as they fled confusedly away.

If you would see nature beautiful and virgin as a bride, go there of a
spring morning. If you would still the bleeding wounds of your heart,
return in the last days of autumn. In the spring, Love beats his wings
beneath the broad blue sky; in the autumn, we think of those who are no
more. The lungs diseased breathe in a blessed purity; the eyes will rest
on golden copses which impart to the soul their peaceful stillness. At
this moment, when I stood there for the first time, the mills upon
the brooksides gave a voice to the quivering valley; the poplars were
laughing as they swayed; not a cloud was in the sky; the birds sang,
the crickets chirped,--all was melody. Do not ask me again why I love
Touraine. I love it, not as we love our cradle, not as we love the oasis
in a desert; I love it as an artist loves art; I love it less than I
love you; but without Touraine, perhaps I might not now be living.

Without knowing why, my eyes reverted ever to that white spot, to the
woman who shone in that garden as the bell of a convolvulus shines amid
the underbrush, and wilts if touched. Moved to the soul, I descended
the slope and soon saw a village, which the superabounding poetry that
filled my heart made me fancy without an equal. Imagine three mills
placed among islands of graceful outline crowned with groves of trees
and rising from a field of water,--for what other name can I give to
that aquatic vegetation, so verdant, so finely colored, which carpete