reen moss, soft as carpets of velvet... where all sing as they
wander among the fragrant groves." [Footnote: LETTRES D'UN VOYAGEUR]

She knew these unknown friends so well that after having again seen
them, "she could not dream of them without palpitations of the heart
during the whole day." She was initiated into the Hoffmannic world--"she
who had surprised such ineffable smiles upon the portraits of the dead;"
[Footnote: SPIRIDSON] who had seen the rays of the sun falling through
the stained glass of a Gothic window form a halo round loved heads,
like the arm of God, luminous and impalpable, surrounded by a vortex of
atoms;--she who had known such glorious apparitions, clothed with the
purple and golden glories of the setting sun. The realm of fantasy had
no myth with whose secret she was not familiar!

Thus she was naturally anxious to become acquainted with one who
had with rapid wing flown "to those scenes which it is impossible to
describe, but which must exist somewhere, either upon the earth, or in
some of the planets, whose light we love to gaze upon in the forests
when the moon has set." [Footnote: LETTRES D'UN VOYAGEUR] Such scenes
she had prayed never to be forced to desert--never desiring to bring
her heart and imagination back to this dreary world, too like the gloomy
coasts of Finland, where the slime and miry slough can only be escaped
by scaling the naked granite of the solitary rocks. Fatigued with the
massive statue she had sculptured, the Amazonian Lelia; wearied with
the grandeur of an Ideal which it is impossible to mould from the gross
materials of this earth; she was desirous to form an acquaintance with
the artist "the lover of an impossible so shadowy"--so near the starry
regions. Alas! if these regions are exempt from the poisonous miasmas
of our atmosphere, they are not free from its desolating melancholy!
Perhaps those who are transported there may adore the shining of new
suns--but there are others not less dear whose light they must see
extinguished! Will not the most glorious among the beloved constellation
of the Pleiades there disappear? Like drops of luminous dew the
stars fall one by one into the nothingness of a yawning abyss,
whose bottomless depths no plummet has ever sounded, while the soul,
contemplating these fields of ether, this blue Sahara with its wandering
and perishing oases,--is stricken by a grief so hopeless, so profound,
that neither enthusiasm nor love can ever soothe