last year, on the Pont des Arts, one of my fellow members at the
Institute was lamenting before me over the ennui of becoming old.

"Still," Saint-Beuve replied to him, "it is the only way that has
yet been found of living a long time."

I have tried this way, and I know just what it is worth. The trouble
of it is not that one lasts too long, but that one sees all about
him pass away--mother, wife, friends, children. Nature makes and
unmakes all these divine treasures with gloomy indifference, and
at last we find that we have not loved, we have only been embracing
shadows. But how sweet some shadows are! If ever creature glided
like a shadow through the life of a man, it was certainly that
young girl whom I fell in love with when--incredible though it
now seems--I was myself a youth.

A Christian sarcophagus from the catacombs of Rome bears a formula
of imprecation, the whole terrible meaning of which I only learned
with time. It says: "Whatsoever impious man violates this sepulchre,
may he die the last of his own people!" In my capacity of
archaeologist, I have opened tombs and disturbed ashes in order to
collect the shreds of apparel, metal ornaments, or gems that were
mingled with those ashes. But I did it only through that scientific
curiosity which does not exclude feelings of reverence and of piety.
May that malediction graven by some one of the first followers of
the apostles upon a martyr's tomb never fall upon me! I ought not
to fear to survive my own people so long as there are men in the
world; for there are always some whom one can love.

But the power of love itself weakens and gradually becomes lost with