r among the feeble inventions of two centuries of our literature, nor
in any picture that Italy has produced, a representation of the feelings
that expanded all at once in my double nature. The view of the lake of
Bienne, some music of Rossini's, the Madonna of Murillo's now in
the possession of General Soult, Lescombat's letters, a few sayings
scattered through collections of anecdotes; but most of all the prayers
of religious ecstatics, and passages in our _fabliaux_,--these things
alone have power to carry me back to the divine heights of my first
love.

"Nothing expressed in human language, no thought reproducible in color,
marble, sound, or articulate speech, could ever render the force, the
truth, the completeness, the suddenness with which love awoke in me.
To speak of art, is to speak of illusion. Love passes through endless
transformations before it passes for ever into our existence and makes
it glow with its own color of flame. The process is imperceptible, and
baffles the artist's analysis. Its moans and complaints are tedious to
an uninterested spectator. One would need to be very much in love
to share the furious transports of Lovelace, as one reads _Clarissa
Harlowe_. Love is like some fresh spring, that leaves its cresses,
its gravel bed and flowers to become first a stream and then a river,
changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some
boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where
great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation.

"How can I dare to describe the hues of fleeting emotions, the nothings
beyond all price, the spoken accents that beggar language, the looks
that hold more than all the wealth of poetry? Not one of the mysterious
scenes that draw us insensibly nearer and nearer to a woman, but has
depths in it which can swallow up all the poetry that ever was written.
How can the inner life and mystery that stirs in our souls penetrate
through our glozes, when we have not even words to describe the visible
and outward mysteries of beauty? What enchantment steeped me for how
many hours in unspeakable rapture, filled with the sight of Her! What
made me happy? I know not. That face of hers overflowed with light at
such times; it seemed in some way to glow with it; the outlines of her
face, with the scarcely perceptible down on its delicate surface, shone
with a beauty belonging to the far distant horizon that melts into the
sunlight. The light