follow them, with unsteady steps, as if intoxicated with joy. Oh, who
can describe what I experienced, as I felt the weight of her pliant but
exhausted frame hanging delightfully on my arm, as though she wished to
feel, and make me feel, that I was henceforward her only support in
weakness, her only trust in sorrow, the only link by which she held to
earth! Methinks I hear even now, though fifteen years have passed since
that hour, the sound of the dry leaves as they rustled beneath our
tread; I see our two long shadows blended into one, which the sun cast
on the left side on the grass of the orchard, and which seemed, like a
living shroud tracking the steps of youth and love, to develop them
before their time. I feel the gentle warmth of her shoulder against my
heart, and the touch of one of the tresses of her hair, which the wind
of the lake waved against my face, and which my lips strove to retain
and to kiss. O Time, what eternities of joy thou buriest in one such
minute, or rather, how powerless art thou against memory; how impotent
to give forgetfulness!




XXI.


The evening was as warm and peaceful as the preceding day had been cold
and stormy. The mountains were bathed in a soft purple light which made
them appear larger and more distant than usual, and they seemed like
huge floating shadows through whose transparency one could perceive the
warm sky of Italy which lay beyond. The sky was mottled with small
crimson clouds, like the ensanguined plumes which fall from the wing of
the wounded swan, struggling in the grasp of an eagle.