"This sky, this lake, these shores, these mountains, have been the
scene of my only real life here below. Swear to me to blend so
completely in your remembrance this sky, this lake, these shores, these
mountains, with my memory, that their image and mine may henceforward
be inseparable for you; that this landscape in your eyes, and I in your
heart, may make but one ... so that," she added, "when you return after
long days, to see once more this lonely spot, to wander beneath these
trees, on the margin of these waves, to listen to the breeze and
murmuring winds, you may see me once more, as living, as present, and
as loving as I am here!..."

She could say no more and burst into tears. Oh, how we wept! how long
we wept! The sound of our stifled sobs mingled with the sobbing of the
water on the sand. Our tears fell trickling in the water at our feet.
After a lapse of fifteen years, I cannot write it without tears, even
now.

O man! fear not for thy affections, and feel no dread lest time should
efface them. There is neither to-day nor yesterday in the powerful
echoes of memory; there is only always. He who no longer feels has
never felt. There are two memories,--the memory of the senses, which
wears out with the senses, and in which perishable things decay; and
the memory of the soul, for which time does not exist, and which lives
over at the same instant every moment of its past and present
existence; it is a faculty of the soul, which, like the soul, enjoys
ubiquity, universality, and immortality of spirit. Fear not, ye who
love! Time has power over hours, none over the soul.