beside the woman he adores, before the face of Nature, and beneath the
eye of God, e'er felt the limits of existence, or of his power of life
and love? O Love! the base may fear thee, and the wicked proscribe
thee! Thou art the high priest of this world, the revealer of
Immortality, the fire of the altar; and without thy ray man would not
even dimly comprehend Eternity!




XXIX.


These six weeks were to me as a baptism of fire which transfigured my
soul, and cleansed it of all the impurities with which it had been
stained. Love was the torch which, while it fired my heart, enlightened
all nature, heaven, and earth, and showed me to myself. I understood
the nothingness of this world when I felt how it vanished before a
single spark of true life. I loathed myself as I looked back into the
past, and compared it with the purity and perfection of the one I
loved. I entered into the heaven of my soul, as my heart and eyes
fathomed the ocean of beauty, tenderness, and purity which expanded
hourly in the eyes, in the voice, and in the discourse, of the heavenly
creature who had manifested herself to me. How often did I kneel before
her, my head bowed to the earth in the attitude and with the feeling of
adoration! How often did I beseech her, as I would a being of another
order, to cleanse me in her tears, absorb me in her flame, or to inhale
me in her breath,--so that nothing of myself should be left in me, save
the purifying water with which she had cleansed me, the flame that had
consumed me, or the new breath that she had infused into my new being;