such vows should have been whispered to your ear and your tenderness have
blushed its reply. The passion concealed in darkness was revealed in
danger; and the love, which in life was forbidden, was our comfort amidst
the terrors of death! And that long and holy kiss, the first, the only
moment in which our lips shared the union of our souls!--do not tell me
that it is wrong to recall it!--do not tell me that I sin, when I own to
you the hours I sit alone, and nurse the delirium of that voluptuous
remembrance. The feelings you have excited may render me wretched, but
not guilty; for the love of you can only hallow the heart--it is a fire
which consecrates the altar on which it burns. I feel, even from the
hour that I loved, that my soul has become more pure. I could not
believe that I was capable of so unearthly an affection, or that the love
of woman could possess that divinity of virtue which I worship in yours.
The world is no fosterer of our young visions of purity and passion:
embarked in its pursuits, and acquainted with its pleasures, while the
latter sated me with what is evil, the former made me incredulous to what
is pure. I considered your sex as a problem which my experience had
already solved. Like the French philosophers, who lose truth by
endeavouring to condense it, and who forfeit the moral from their regard
to the maxim, I concentrated my knowledge of women into aphorism and
antitheses; and I did not dream of the exceptions, if I did not find
myself deceived in the general conclusion. I confess that I erred; I
renounce from this moment the colder reflections of my manhood,--the
fruits of a bitter experience,--the wisdom of an inquiring yet agitated
life. I return with transport to my earliest visions of beauty and love;
and I dedicate them upon the altar of my soul to you, who have embodied,
and concentrated, and breathed them into life!