L.
I travelled day and night in such complete dizziness of thought that I felt neither cold, hunger nor distance, and arrived at M—— as if awaking from a dream, and scarcely remembered that I had been to Paris. I found my friend Louis awaiting me at my father's house in the country. His presence was soothing to me; I could at least speak to him of her whom he admired as much as I did. We slept in the same room, and part of our nights were spent in talking of the heavenly vision, by which he had been as dazzled as myself. He considered her as one of those delusions of fancy, one of those women above mortal height, like Tasso's Eleanora, Dante's Beatrice, Petrarch's Laura, or Vittoria Colonna, the lover, the poet, and the heroine at once,—forms that flit across the earth, scarcely touching it, and without tarrying, only to fascinate the eyes of some men, the privileged few of love, to lead on their souls to immortal aspirations, and to be the sursum corda of superior imaginations. As to Louis, he dared not raise his love as high as his enthusiasm. His sensitive and tender heart, which had been early wounded, was at that time filled with the image of a poor and pious orphan, one of his own family. His happiness would have been to have married her, and to live in obscurity and peace in a cottage among the hills of Chambéry. Want of fortune restricted the two poor lovers to a hopeless and tender friendship, from the fear of lowering the name of their family in poverty, or of bequeathing indigence to children. The young girl died some years after, of solitude and hopelessness. I have never seen a sweeter face droop and die for the want of a few of fortune's rays. Her countenance, where might be traced the remains of blooming youth, equally ready to revive or to fade forever, bore in the highest degree the sublime and touching impress of that virtue of the unhappy, called resignation. She became blind in consequence of the secret tears she shed during her long years of expectation and uncertainty. I met her once, on my return from one of my journeys to Italy. She was led by the hand through the streets of Chambéry, by one of her little sisters. When she heard my voice, she turned pale, and felt for some support with her poor hesitating hand: "Pardon me," she said; "but when I used formerly to hear that voice, I always heard with it another." Poor girl! she now listens to her lover's voice in heaven.