I was, however, often recalled harshly from my dreamy region by the cruel penury of my home, which was partly attributable to the unavailing expense incurred for me. Crops had failed during successive years, and reverses of fortune had changed the humble mediocrity of my parents into comparative want. When on Sundays I went to see my mother, she spoke of her distress, and before me shed tears that she concealed from my father and my sisters. I, too, was reduced to extreme destitution. I lived at the little farm on brown bread, milk, and eggs, and had in secret sold successively in the neighboring town all the books and clothes I had brought from Paris, to procure wherewithal to pay the postage of Julie's letters, for which I would have sold my life's blood.
The month of September was drawing to a close. Julie wrote me that her anxiety on the score of her husband's daily declining health (O pious fraud of love to conceal her own sufferings and lighten my cares) would detain her longer in Paris than she had expected. She pressed me to start at once, and await her in Savoy, where she would join me without fail towards the end of October. The letter was one of tender advice, as that of a sister to a beloved brother. She implored and ordered me, with the sovereign authority of love, to beware of that insidious disease which lurks beneath the flowery surface of youth, and often withers and consumes us at the very moment we think that we have overcome its power. Enclosed, she sent a consultation and a prescription from good Dr. Alain, ordering me in the most imperative terms, and with most alarming threats, to remain during a long season at the baths of Aix. I showed this prescription to my mother, to account for my departure, and she was so disquieted by it that she added her entreaties to the injunctions of the doctor to induce me to go. Alas! I had in vain applied to a few friends as poor as myself, and to some pitiless usurers, to obtain the trifling sum of twelve louis required for my journey. My father had been absent six months, and my mother would on no account have aggravated his distress and anxiety by asking him for money. In borrowing he would have exposed his poverty, by which he was already too much humbled. I had made up my mind to start with two or three louis only in my purse, in the hope of borrowing the remainder from my friend L——, at Chambéry; when, a few days before my departure, my mother, during a sleepless night, had found in her heart a resource that a mother's heart could alone have furnished.
In one of the comers of the little garden that surrounded our house there stood a cluster of trees, comprising a few evergreen oaks, two or three lime trees, and seven or eight twisted elms, which were the remains of a wood, planted centuries ago, and had, doubtless, been respected as thelocal Geniuswhen the hill had been cleared, the house built, and the garden first walled in. These lofty trees in summer time served as a family saloon, in the open air. Their buds in spring, their tints in autumn, and their dry leaves in winter, which were succeeded by the hoar frost hanging from their branches like white hair, had marked the seasons for us. Their shadows, rolled back upon their very feet, or stretched out to the grassy border around, told us the hours better than a dial. Beneath their foliage our mother had nursed us, lulled us to rest, and taught us our first steps. My father sat there, book in hand, when he returned from shooting; his shining gun suspended from a branch, his panting dogs crouching beneath the bench. I, too, had spent there the fairest hours of my boyhood, with Homer or Telemachus lying open on the grass before me. I loved to lie flat on the warm turf, my elbows resting on the volume, of which a passing fly or lizard would sometimes hide the lines. The nightingales among the branches sang for our home, though we could never find their nest, or even see the branch from which their song burst forth. This grove was the pride, the recollection, the love of all. The idea of converting it into a small bag of money, which would leave no memory in the heart, no perpetual joy and shade, would have occurred to no one, save to a mother, trembling with anxiety for the life of an only son. My mother conceived the thought; and, with the readiness and firmness of resolve that distinguished her, called for the woodcutters as soon as morning came,—fearing lest she should feel remorse, or my entreaties stop her, if she first consulted me. She saw the axe laid to their roots, and wept, and turned away her head not to hear their moan, or witness the fall of these leafy protectors of her youth on the echoing and desolate soil of the garden.
When I returned to M—— on the following Sunday, I looked round from the top of the mountain for the clump of trees that stood out so pleasantly on the hillside, screening from the sun a portion of the gray wall of the house; and it seemed as a dream when in their wonted place I perceived only heaps of hewn-down trunks whose barked and bleeding branches strewed the earth around. A sawing-trestle stood there like an instrument of torture, on which the saw with its grinding teeth divided the trees. I hurried on with extended arms towards the outer wall, and trembled as I opened the little garden door…. Alas! the evergreen oak, one lime-tree, and the oldest elm alone were standing, and the bench had been drawn in beneath their shade. "They are sufficient," said my mother, as she advanced towards me, and, to conceal her tears, threw herself into my arms; "the shade of one tree is worth that of a whole forest. Besides, to me what shade can equal yours? Do not be angry. I wrote to your father that the trees were dying from the top, and that they were hurtful to the kitchen-garden. Speak no more of them!"… Then leading me into the house, she opened her desk and drew forth a bag half-filled with money. "Take this," she said, "and go. The trees will have been amply paid me if you return well and happy."
I blushed, and with a stifled sob took the bag. There were six hundred francs in it, which I resolved to bring back untouched to my poor mother.
I started on foot, like a sportsman, with leathern gaiters on my feet, and my gun on my shoulder, and took from the bag only one hundred francs, which I added to the little I had remaining from the proceeds of my last sale. I could not bear to spend the price of the trees, and therefore concealed the remainder of the money at the farm, that on my return I might restore it to her who had so heroically torn it from her heart for me. I ate and slept at the humblest inns in the villages through which I passed, and was taken for a poor Swiss student returning from the University of Strasbourg. I was never charged but the strict value of the bread I ate, of the candle I burned, and of the pallet on which I slept. I had brought but one book with me, which I read at evening on the bench before the inn door; it was Werther, in German; and the unknown characters confirmed my hosts in the idea that I was a foreign traveller.
I thus wandered through the long and picturesque gorges of Bugey, and crossed the Rhône at the foot of the rock of Pierre-Châtel. The narrowed river eternally rushes past the base of this rock, with a current wearing as the grindstone and cutting as the knife, as if to undermine and overthrow the state-prison, whose gloomy shadow saddens its waters. I slowly ascended the Mont du Chat by the paths of the chamois-hunters; arrived at its summit, I perceived stretched out before me in the distance the valleys of Aix, Chambéry, and Annecy; and at my feet the lake, dappled with rosy tints by the floating rays of the setting sun. One single image filled for me the immensity of this horizon; it rose from the chalets where we had met; from the doctor's garden, the pointed slate roof of whose house I could recognize above the smoke of the town; from the fig-trees of the little castle of Bon-Port at the bottom of the opposite creek; from the chestnut-trees on the hill of Tresserves; from the woods of St. Innocent; from the island of Châtillon; from the boats which were returning to their moorings, from all this earth, from all this sky, from all these waves. I fell on my knees before this horizon filled with one image. I spread out my arms and folded them again, as if I could have embraced her spirit by clasping the air which, had swept over these scenes of our happiness, over all the traces of her footsteps.
I then sat down behind a rock which screened me even from the sight of the goatherds, as they passed along the path. There I remained, sunk in contemplation, and reveling in remembrances, till the sun was almost dipping behind the snow-clad tops of Nivolex. I did not wish to cross the lake, or enter the town by daylight, as the homeliness of my dress, the scantiness of my purse, and the frugality of life to which I was constrained, in order to live some months near Julie, would have seemed strange to the inmates of the old doctor's house. They formed too great a contrast with my elegance in dress and habits of life during the preceding season. I should have made those blush whom I had accosted in the streets, in the garb of one who had not even the means of locating himself in a decent hotel in this abode of luxury. I had, therefore, resolved to slip by night into the humble suburb, bordering a rivulet which runs through the orchards below the town.
I knew there a poor young serving girl, called Fanchette, who had married a boatman the year before. She had reserved some beds in the garret of her cottage, that she might board and lodge one or two poor invalids at fifteen sous a day. I had engaged one of these rooms, and a place at the humble board of the good creature. My friend L——, to whom I had written naming the day of my arrival on the borders of the lake, had some days previously written to take my lodgings, and warn Fanchette of my arrival, binding her to secrecy. I had also begged him to receive, under cover to himself, at Chambéry, any letters that might be addressed to me from Paris. He was to forward them to me by one of the drivers of the light carts that run continually between the two towns. I intended, during my stay at Aix, to remain in the daytime concealed in my little cottage room, or in the surrounding orchards. I would only, I thought, go out in the evening; I would go up to the doctor's house by the skirts of the town; I would enter the garden by the gate which opened on the country, and pass in delightful intercourse the solitary evening hours. I would bear with pleasure want and humiliation, which would be compensated a thousand fold by those hours of love. I thought thus to conciliate the respect I owed to my poor mother for the sacrifices she had made, with my devotion to the idol I came to worship.
From a pious superstition of love, I had calculated my steps during my long pedestrian journey, so as to arrive at the Abbey of Haute-Combe, on the other side of the Mont du Chat, upon the anniversary of the day that the miracle of our meeting, and the revelation of our two hearts, had taken place in the fisherman's inn on the borders of the lake. It seemed to me that days, like all other mortal things, had their destiny, and that in the conjunction of the same sun, the same month, the same date, and in the same spot, I might find something of her I loved. It would be an augury, at least, of our speedy and lasting reunion.
From the brink of the almost perpendicular sides of the Mont du Chat that descend to the lake, I could see on my left the old ruins and the lengthening shadows of the Abbey, which darkened a vast extent of the waters. In a few minutes I reached the spot. The sun was sinking behind the Alps, and the long twilight of autumn enveloped the mountains, the waves, and the shore. I did not stop at the ruins, and passed rapidly through the orchard where we had sat at the foot of the haystack, near the bee-hives. The hives and the haystack were still there; but there was no glow of fire lighting the windows of the little inn, no smoke ascending from the roof, no nets hung out to dry on the palisades of the garden.
I knocked, no one answered; I shook the wooden latch, and the door opened of itself. I entered the little hall with the smoky walls; the hearth was swept clean, even to the very ashes, and the table and furniture had been removed. The flagstones of the pavement were strewed with straws and feathers that had fallen from five or six empty swallows' nests which hung from the blackened beams of the ceiling. I went up the wooden ladder which was fastened to the wall by an iron hook, and served to ascend into the upper room where Julie had awaked from her swoon, with her hand on my forehead. I entered as one enters a sanctuary or a sepulchre, and looked around; the wooden beds, the presses, the stools were all gone. The sound of my footsteps frightened a nocturnal bird of prey, that heavily flapped its wings, and after beating against the walls, flew out with a shrill cry through the open window into the orchard. I could scarcely distinguish the place where I had knelt during that terrible and yet enchanting night, at the bedside of the sleeper or of the dead. I kissed the floor, and sat for a long while on the edge of the window, trying to evoke again in my memory the room, the furniture, the bed, the lamp, the hours, which had kept their place within me though all had been changed during a single year of absence. There was no one in the lonely neighborhood of the cottage who could furnish any information as to the cause of its being thus deserted. I conjectured from the heaps of fagots which remained in the yard, from the hens and pigeons which returned of themselves to roost in the room, or on the roof, and from the stacks of hay and straw which stood untouched in the orchard, that the family had gone to gather in a late harvest in the high chalets of the mountain, and had not yet come down again.
The solitude of which I had thus taken possession was sad; not so sad, however, as the presence of the indifferent in a spot that was sacred in my eyes. I must have controlled before them my looks, my voice, my gestures, and the impressions that assailed me. I resolved to pass the night there, and brought up a bundle of fresh straw, which I spread on the floor, on the same spot where Julie had slept her death-like sleep. Resting my gun against the wall, I then took out of my knapsack some bread and a goat cheese that I had bought at Seyssel to support me on the road, and went out to eat my supper on a green platform above the ruins of the Abbey, by the side of the spring which flows and stops alternately, like the intermittent breathing of the mountain.
From the edge of that platform, and from the dismantled terraces of the old monastery, at evening time, the eye embraces the most enchanting horizon that ever delighted an anchorite, a contemplator, or a lover. Behind is the green and humid shade of the mountain, with the murmur of its source, and the rustling of its foliage; and on one side the ruins, the broken walls, with their garlands of ivy, and the dark arcades replete with night and mystery; the lake, with its expiring waves slowly rolling, one by one, their fringes of spray at the foot of the rocks, as if to spread its couch and lull its sleep on the fine sands. On the opposite shore, the blue mountains clothed with their transparent tints; and on the right, as far as the eye can reach, the luminous track that the sun leaves in crimson light on the sky and on the lake, when it withdraws its splendor. I revelled in this light and shade, in these clouds and waves. I incorporated myself with lovely Nature, and thought thus to incorporate in me the image of her who was all nature for me. I inwardly said I saw her there. I was at that distance from her boat when I saw it struggling against the storm. There is the shore where she landed; there is the orchard where we opened our hearts to each other in the sunshine, and where she returned to life to give me two lives. There in the distance are the tops of the poplars of the great avenue which unrolls its length like a green serpent issuing from the waves. There are the chalets, mossy turf, and woods of chestnut-tree, the sheltered paths upon the highest mountain-planes where I picked flowers, strawberries, and chestnuts to fill her lap. There she said this; there I confessed some secret of my soul; and on that spot we remained a whole evening silent, our hearts flooded with enthusiasm, our lips without language. Upon these waves she wished to die; upon this shore she promised me to live. Beneath yonder group of walnut-trees, then leafless, she bid me farewell, and promised me that I should see her again before the new leaves should have turned yellow. They are about to change; but love is faithful as Nature. In a few days I shall see her once more…. I see her already; for am I not here awaiting her? and thus to wait, is it not as though I saw her again?
Then I pictured to myself the instant when, from the shady orchards that slope down from the mountains behind the old doctor's house, I should see at last that window of the closed room where she was expected,—to see it open for the first time, and a woman's face, half-hidden in its long dark hair, appear between the open curtains, dreaming of that brother whom her eye seeks in the glorious landscape, where she, too, sees but him…. And at that image my heart beat so impetuously in my breast that I was forced to drive away the fancy for an instant, in order to breathe.
In the meantime night had almost entirely descended from the mountain to the lake. One could only see the waters through a mist that glazed and darkened their wide expanse. Amid the profound and universal silence which precedes darkness, the regular sound of oars which seemed to approach land smote upon my ear. I soon saw a little speck moving on the waters, and increasing gradually in size until it slid into the little cove near the fisherman's house, throwing on either side a light fringe of spray. Thinking that it might be the fisherman returning from the Savoy coast to his deserted dwelling, I hurried down from the ruins to the shore, to be there when the boat came in. I waited on the sand till the fisherman landed.
As soon as he saw me, he cried out, "Are you, sir, the young Frenchman who is expected at Fanchette's, and to whom I have been ordered to give these papers?" So saying, he jumped out of the boat, and, wading knee-deep through the water, handed me a thick letter. I felt by its weight that it was an enclosure containing many others. I hastily tore open the first cover, and read indistinctly in the dim moonlight a note from my friend L—-, dated that same morning from Chambéry. L—— informed me that my lodging was taken and prepared for me at Fanchette's poor house in the Faubourg, and that no one had yet arrived from Paris at our old friend the doctor's. He added, that, having learned from myself that I should be that same evening at Haute-Combe to spend the night and a part of the following day, he had taken advantage of the departure of a trusty boatman who was to pass beneath the Abbey walls, to send me a packet of letters, which had arrived two days before, and that I was doubtless eagerly expecting. He purposed joining me at Haute-Combe the following day, that we might cross the lake together, and enter the town under the shadow of night.
While my eye glanced over the note, I held the packet with a trembling hand. It seemed to me heavy as my fate. I hastened to pay and dismiss the boatman, who was impatient to be off so as to leave the lake and enter the waters of the Rhone before dark. I only asked him for a piece of candle, to enable me to read my letters; he gave it, and I soon heard the strokes of his oars, as they once more cut through the deep sheet of water. I returned overjoyed to the upper room, to see once more the sacred characters of that angel in the very place where she had first revealed herself to me in all her splendor and in all her love. I felt sure that one of those letters must inform me that she had left Paris and would soon be with me. I sat down on the bundle of straw which I had brought up for my bed, and lighted my candle by means of the priming of my gun. I hastily tore open the cover, and it was only then that I perceived that the seal of the first envelope was black, and that the address was in the handwriting of Dr. Alain. I shuddered as I saw mourning where I had expected to find joy. The other letters slid from my hands onto my knees. I dared not read on for fear of finding—alas! what neither hand, nor eye, nor blood, nor tears, nor earth, nor Heaven could evermore efface—Death!… Though my very soul trembled so as to make the syllables dance before my eyes, I read at last these words:
"Prove yourself a man! Submit yourself to the will of Him whose ways are not our ways; expect her no longer! … Look for her no more on earth, she has returned to heaven, calling on your name…. Thursday at sunrise…. She told me all before she died; … she directed me to send you her last thoughts, which she wrote down till the very instant her hand grew cold while tracing your name…. Love her in Christ, who loved us unto death, and live for your mother!
I fell back senseless on the straw, and only recovered consciousness when the cold air of midnight chilled my brow. The light was still burning, and the doctor's letter was grasped convulsively in my hand. The untouched packet had fallen on the floor; I opened it with my lips, as if I feared to profane the heavenly message by breaking the seal with my fingers. Several long letters from Julie fell out; they were arranged according to dates.
In the-first there was: "Raphael! O my Raphael! O my brother! forgive your sister for having so long deceived you…. I never hoped to see you once more in Savoy…. I knew that my days were numbered, and that I could not live on till that day of happiness…. When I said at the gate of the garden of Monceau, 'We shall meet again,' Raphael, you did not understand me, but God did. I meant to say, 'We shall meet again, once more to love, to bless eternally, in heaven!' I begged Dr. Alain to aid me in deceiving you, and sending you away from Paris. It was my wish, it was my duty, to spare you such a sight of anguish as would have torn your heart asunder, and would have been too much for your strength…. And then again—forgive me, I must tell you all—I did not wish you to see me die…. I wish to spread a veil between us some time before death…. Cold death!—I feel it, see it, and shudder at myself in death! Raphael, I sought to leave an image of beauty in your eyes, that you might ever contemplate and adore! But now, you must not go, … to await me in Savoy! Yet a little while—two or three days perhaps—and you need seek me nowhere! But I shall be there, Raphael! I shall be everywhere, and always where you are."
This letter had been moistened with tears, which had unglazed and stiffened the paper.
In the other, dated the following night, I read:—
"Midnight.
"Raphael, your prayers have drawn down a blessing from Heaven upon me. I thought yesterday of the tree of adoration at St. Cloud, at whose foot I saw God through your soul. But there is another holier tree,—the Cross!… I have embraced it … I will cling to it evermore…. Oh, how that divine blood cleanses! how those divine tears purify!… Yesterday I sent for a holy priest of whom Alain had spoken. He is an old man who knows everything; who forgives all! I have discovered my soul to him, and he has shed on it the love and light of God…. How good is God! how indulgent, how full of loving kindness! How little we know of him! He suffers me to love you, to have you for my brother, to be your sister here below, if I live; your guardian angel above, if I die! O Raphael, let us love him, since he permits that we should love each other as we do!"…
At the end of the letter there was a little cross traced, and, as it were, the impress of a kiss all around.
There was another letter written in a totally altered hand, where the characters crossed and mingled on the page, as if traced in the dark, which said:—
"Raphael, I must say one word more—to-morrow, perhaps, I could not. When I am dead, oh, do not die! I shall watch over you from above; I shall be good and powerful, as the loving God, to whom I shall be united, is good and powerful. After me, you must love again…. God will send you another sister, who will be, moreover, the pious helpmate of your life…. I will myself ask it of him…. Fear not to grieve my soul, Raphael!… I—could I be jealous in heaven of your happiness?… I feel better now I have said this. Alain will forward these lines to you, and a lock of my hair…. I am going to sleep."…
One letter more, almost illegible, contained only these interrupted lines: "Raphael! Raphael! where are you? I have had strength to get out of bed…. I have told the nurse that I wished to be left alone to rest. I have dragged myself along to the table, where I am writing by the light of the lamp…. But I can see no more; …my eyes swim in darkness; … black spots flit across the paper; … Raphael! I can no longer write…. Oh, one word more!"…
Then, in large letters, like those of a child trying to write for the first time, there are two words which occupy a whole line, filling the bottom of the page. "Farewell, Raphael!"
All the letters fell from my hands. I was sobbing without tears, when I perceived another little note in the handwriting of the old man, her husband; it had slid between the pages as I was unsealing the first envelope.
There were only these words: "She breathed her last, her hand in mine, a few hours after writing you her last farewell. I have lost my daughter…. Be my son for the few days I have yet to live. She is there upon her bed, as if asleep, with an expression on her features of one whose last thought smiled at seeing something beyond our world. She never was so lovely; and as I look on her I require to believe in immortality…. I loved you through her; for her sake love me!"
How strange, and yet how fortunate for human nature, is the impossibility of immediately believing in the complete disappearance of a much-loved being! Though the evidence of her death lay scattered around, I could not believe that I was forever separated from her. Her remembrance, her image, her features, the sound of her voice, the peculiar turn of her expressions, the charm of her countenance, were so present, and, as it were, so incorporate in me, that she seemed more than ever with me; she appeared to envelop me, to converse with me, to call me by my name, as though I could have risen to meet her, and to see her once more. God leaves a space between the certainty of our loss and the consciousness of reality, like the interval which our senses measure between the instant when the eye sees the axe fall on the tree and the sound in our ear of the same blow long after. This distance deadens grief by cheating it. For some time after losing those we love, we have not completely lost them; we live on by the prolongation of their life in us. We feel as when we have been long watching the setting sun,—though its orb has sunk below the horizon, its rays are not set in our eyes; they still shine on our soul. It is only gradually, and as our impressions become more distinct as they cool, that we are made to know the complete and heartfelt separation,—that we can say, she is dead in me! For death is not death, but oblivion.
This phenomenon of grief was shown in its full force in me during that night. God suffered me not to drain at one draught my cup of woe, lest it should overwhelm my very soul. He vouchsafed to me the delusive belief, which. I long retained, of her inward presence. In me, before me, and around me, I saw that heavenly being who had been sent to me for one single year, to direct my thoughts and looks forevermore towards the heaven to which she returned in her spring of youth and love.
When the poor boatman's candle was burned out, I took up my letters and hid them in my bosom. I kissed a thousand times the floor of the room which had been the cradle, and was now the tomb, of our love. I unconsciously took my gun, and rushed wildly through the mountain passes. The night was dark; the wind had risen. The waves of the lake, dashing against the rocks, lashed them with such hollow blows, and sent forth sounds so like to human voices, that many times I stopped breathless, and turned round, as if I had been called by name. Yes, I was called; and I was not mistaken; but the voice came from heaven!…
You know, my friend, who found me the next morning, wandering among precipices, in the mists of the Rhône; who raised me up, supported me, and brought me back to my poor mother's arms….
Now fifteen years have rolled by without sweeping away in their course a single memory of that one great year of my youth. According to Julie's promise to send me from above one who should comfort me, God has exchanged his gift for another; he has not withdrawn it. I often return to visit the valley of Chambéry and the lake of Aix, with her who has made my hopes patient and tranquil as felicity. When I sit on the heights of the hill of Tresserves, at the foot of those chestnut-trees that have felt her heart beat against their bark; when I look at the lake, the mountains, snows and meadows, trees and jagged rocks, swimming in a warm atmosphere which seems to bathe all nature in one perfumed liquid; when I hear the sighing breeze, the humming insects, and the quivering leaves, the waves of the lake breaking on the shore, with the gentle rustling sound of silken folds unrolling one by one; when I see the shadow of her whom God has made my companion until my life's end cast beside mine upon the grass or sand; when I feel within me a plenitude that desires nothing before death, and peace, untroubled by a single sigh; methinks I see the blessed soul of her who appeared to me in this spot rise, dazzling and immortal, from every point of the horizon, fill of herself alone the sky and waters, shine in that splendor, float in that ether, bum in all those flames. I see it penetrate those waves, breathe in their murmurs; pray, and laud, and sing in that one hymn of life that streams with these cascades from glacier unto lake, and shed upon the valley and on those who keep her memory a blessing that the eye seems to see, the ear to hear, the heart to feel!…
Here ended Raphael's first manuscript.