at I
had just heard Edmee do justice to my disinterestedness. The thought of
coupling two ends so entirely distinct as my passion and my interests
was still more repugnant to me. I roamed about the park a prey to a
thousand doubts, and then wandered into the open country unconsciously.
It was a glorious night. The full moon was pouring down floods of soft
light upon the ploughed lands, all parched by the heat of the sun.
Thirsty plants were straightening their bowed stems--each leaf seemed
to be drinking in through all its pores all the dewy freshness of the
night. I, too, began to feel a soothing influence at work. My heart was
still beating violently, but regularly. I was filled with a vague hope;
the image of Edmee floated before me on the paths through the meadows,
and no longer stirred the wild agonies and frenzied desires which had
been devouring me since the night I first beheld her.

I was crossing a spot where the green stretches of pasture were here and
there broken by clumps of young trees. Huge oxen with almost white skins
were lying in the short grass, motionless, as if plunged in peaceful
thought. Hills sloped gently up to the horizon, and their velvety
contours seemed to ripple in the bright rays of the moon. For the first
time in my life I realized something of the voluptuous beauty and divine
effluence of the night. I felt the magic touch of some unknown bliss.
It seemed that for the first time in my life I was looking on moon and
meadows and hills. I remembered hearing Edmee say that nothing our eyes
can behold is more lovely than Nature; and I was astonished that I had
never felt this before. Now and them I was on the point of throwing
myself on my knees and praying to God: but I feared that I should not
know how to speak to Him, and that I might offend Him by praying badly.
Shall I confess to you a singular fancy that came upon me, a childish
revelation, as it were, of poetic love from out of the chaos of my
ignorance? The moon was lighting up everything so plainly that I could
distinguish the tiniest flowers in the grass. A little meadow daisy
seemed to me so beautiful with its golden calyx full of diamonds of
dew and its white collaret fringed with purple, that I plucked it, and
covered it with kisses, and cried in a sort of delirious intoxication:

"It is you, Edmee! Yes, it is you! Ah, you no longer shun me!"

But what was my confusion when, on rising, I found there had been a
witness of my fol