the almost childish tone of her voice, a vague odor of heliotrope with
which her hair was perfumed; also the touch of her hand upon my arm.
I sometimes caught myself embracing myself in order to feel this last
sensation again, and then I could not help laughing at my thoughts, which
were worthy of a fifteen-year-old lover.

"I had felt so convinced of my powerlessness to love, that the thought of
a serious passion did not at first enter my mind. However, a remembrance
of my beautiful traveller pervaded my thoughts more and more, and
threatened to usurp the place of everything else. I then subjected
myself to a rigid analysis; I sought for the exact location of this
sentiment whose involuntary yoke I already felt; I persuaded myself,
for some time yet, that it was only the transient excitement of my brain,
one of those fevers of imagination whose fleeting titillations I had felt
more than once.

"But I realized that the evil, or the good--for why call love an evil?--
had penetrated into the most remote regions of my being, and I realized
the energy of my struggle like a person entombed who tries to extricate
himself. From the ashes of this volcano which I had believed to be
extinct, a flower had suddenly blossomed, perfumed with the most fragrant
of odors and decked with the most charming colors. Artless enthusiasm,
faith in love, all the brilliant array of the fresh illusions of my youth
returned, as if by enchantment, to greet this new bloom of my life; it
seemed to me as if I had been created a second time, since I was aided by
intelligence and understood its mysteries while tasting of its delights.
My past, in the presence of this regeneration, was nothing more than a
shadow at the bottom of an abyss. I turned toward the future with the
faith of a Mussulman who kneels with his face toward the East--I loved!