nstantly a series of the most singular sensations attacked me. It
seemed as if I had suddenly gone blind. The luminous sphere was still
before me, but my daylight had vanished. What caused this sudden
disappearance? Had she a lover or a husband? Yes, that was the solution!
Some signal from a happy fellow-being had vibrated through the avenues
of the forest, and she had obeyed the summons.
The agony of my sensations, as I arrived at this conclusion, startled
me. I tried to reject the conviction that my reason forced upon me. I
battled against the fatal conclusion--but in vain. It was so. I had no
escape from it. I loved an animalcule.
It is true that, thanks to the marvelous power of my microscope, she
appeared of human proportions. Instead of presenting the revolting
aspect of the coarser creatures, that live and struggle and die, in
the more easily resolvable portions of the water-drop, she was fair and
delicate and of surpassing beauty. But of what account was all that?
Every time that my eye was withdrawn from the instrument it fell on a
miserable drop of water, within which, I must be content to know, dwelt
all that could make my life lovely.
Could she but see me once! Could I for one moment pierce the mystical
walls that so inexorably rose to separate us, and whisper all that
filled my soul, I might consent to be satisfied for the rest of my life
with the knowledge of her remote sympathy.
It would be something to have established even the faintest personal
link to bind us together--to know that at times, when roaming through
these enchanted glades, she might think of the wonderful stranger who
had broken the monotony of her life with his presence and left a gentle
memory in her heart!
But it could not be. No invention of which human intellect was capable
could break down the barriers that nature had erected. I might feast my
soul upon her wondrous beauty, yet she must always remain ignorant
of the adoring eyes that day and night gazed upon her, and, even when
closed, beheld her in dreams. With a bitter cry of anguish I fled from
the room, and flinging myself on my bed, sobbed myself to sleep like a
child.
VI
I arose the next morning almost at daybreak, and rushed to my
microscope, I trembled as I sought the luminous world in miniature that
contained my all. Animula was there. I had left the gas-lamp, surrounded
by its moderators, burning when I went to bed the night before. I found
the sylph b
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