LXXXV.
Spring had returned. The Tuileries cast each morning upon their idlers the green shade of their leaves, and showered down the fragrant snow of their horse-chestnut trees. From the bridges I could perceive beyond the stony horizon of Chaillot and Passy the long line of verdant and undulating hills of Fleury, Meudon, and St. Cloud. These hills seemed to rise as cool and solitary islands in the midst of a chalky ocean. They raised in my heart feelings of remorse and poignant reproach, and were images and remembrances which awaked the craving after Nature that had lain dormant for six months. The broken rays of moonlight floated at night upon the tepid waters of the river, and the dreamy orb opened, as far as the Seine could be traced, luminous and fantastic vistas where the eye lost itself in landscapes of shade and vapor. Involuntarily the soul followed the eye. The front of the shops, the balconies, and the windows of the quays were covered with vases of flowers which shed forth their perfume even on the passers-by. At the corners of the streets, or the ends of the bridges, the flower-girls, seated behind screens of flowering plants, waved branches of lilac, as if to embalm the town. In Julie's room the hearth was converted into a mossy grotto; the consoles and tables had each their vases of primroses, violets, lilies of the valley, and roses. Poor flowers, exiles from the fields! Thus swallows who have heedlessly flown into a room bruise their own wings against the walls, while announcing to the poor inhabitants of dismal garrets the approach of April and its sunny days. The perfume of the flowers penetrated to our hearts, and our thoughts were brought back, under the impression of their fragrance and the images it evoked, to that Nature in the midst of which we had been so isolated and so happy. We had forgotten her while the days were dark, the sky gloomy, and the horizon bounded. Shut up in a small room where we were all in all to each other, we never thought that there was another sky, another sun, another nature beyond our own. These fine, sunny days, glimpses of which we caught from among the roofs of an immense city, recalled them to our minds. They agitated and saddened us; they inspired us with an invincible desire to contemplate and to enjoy them in the forests and solitudes which surround Paris. It seemed to us while indulging these irresistible longings, and projecting distant walks together in the woods of Fontainebleau, Vincennes, St. Germain, and Versailles, that we should be again, as it were, amid the woods and waters of our Alpine valleys, that at least we should see the same sun and the same shade and recognize the harmonious sighing of the same winds in the branches.
Spring, which was restoring to the sky its transparency and to the plants their sap, seemed also to give new youth and pulsation to Julie's heart. The tint upon her cheeks was brighter; her eyes more blue, their rays more penetrating. There was more emotion in the tone of her voice; the languor of her frame was relieved by more frequent sighs; there was more elasticity in her walk, more youthfulness in her attitudes; even in the stillness of her chamber, a pleasant though feverish agitation produced a petulant movement of her feet, and sent the words more hurriedly to her lips. In the evening Julie would undraw the curtains, and frequently lean forth from her window to take in the freshness of the water, the rays of the moon, and the breath of the fragrant breeze which swept along the valley of Meudon, and was wafted even into the apartments on the quay.
"Oh, let us give," said I, "a joyous holiday to our hearts amid all our happiness! Of all God's creatures for whom he reanimates his earth and his heavens, let not us, the most feeling and the most grateful, be the only beings for whom they shall have been reanimated in vain! Let us together dive into that air, that light, that verdure; amid those sprouting branches, in that flood of life and vegetation, which is even now inundating the whole earth! Let us go, let us see if naught in the works of his creation has grown old by the weight of an added day; if naught in that enthusiasm, which sang and groaned, loved and lamented within us, on the mountains and on the waters of Savoy, has been lowered by one ripple or one note!" "Yes, let us go," said she. "We shall neither feel more, nor love better, nor bless otherwise; but we shall have made another sky and another spot of earth witness the happiness of two poor mortals. That temple of our love which was in our loved mountains only will then be wherever I shall have wandered and breathed with you." The old man encouraged these excursions to the fine forests around Paris. He hoped, and the doctors led him to expect, that the air laden with life, the influence of the sun, which strengthens all things, with moderate exercise in the open fields, might invigorate the too sensitive delicacy of Julie's nerves and give elasticity to her heart. Every sunny day, during the five weeks of early spring, I came at noon to fetch her. We entered a close carriage in order to avoid the inquisitive looks and light observations of any of her acquaintances whom we might chance to meet, or the remarks that even strangers might have made on seeing so young and lovely a woman alone with a man of my age; for we were not sufficiently alike to pass for brother and sister. We left the carriage on the skirts of the woods, at the foot of the hills, or at the gates of the parks in the environs of Paris, and sought out at Fleury, at Meudon, at Sèvres, at Satory, and at Vincennes the longest and most solitary paths, carpeted with turf and flowers, untrodden by horses' hoofs, except perhaps on the day of a royal hunt. We never met any one, save a few children or poor women busy with their knives digging up endive. Occasionally a startled doe would rustle through the leaves, and springing across the path, after a glance at us, dive into the thicket. We walked in silence, sometimes preceding each other, sometimes arm in arm, or we talked of the future, of the delight it would be to possess one out of all these untenanted acres, with a keeper's lodge under one of the old oaks. We dreamed aloud. We picked violets and the wild periwinkle, which we interchanged as hieroglyphics and preserved in the smooth leaves of the hellebore. To each of these flowery letters we linked a meaning, a remembrance, a look, a sigh, a prayer. We kept them to reperuse when parted; they were destined to recall each precious moment of these blissful hours.
We often sat in the shade by the side of the path, and opened a book which we tried to read; but we could never turn the first leaf, and ever preferred reading in ourselves the inexhaustible pages of our own feelings. I went to fetch milk and brown bread from some neighboring farm; we ate, seated on the grass, throwing the remains of the cup to the ants, and the crumbs of bread to the birds. At sunset we returned to the tumultuous ocean of Paris, the noise and crowd of which jarred upon our hearts. I left Julie, excited by the enjoyment of the day, at her own door, and then went back, overcome with happiness, to my solitary room, the walls of which I would strike and bid them crumble, that I might be restored to the light, Nature, and love which they shut out. I dined without relish, read without understanding; I lighted my lamp and waited, reckoning the hours as they passed, till the evening was far enough advanced for me to venture again to her door, and renew the enjoyment of the morning.