Raphael; Or, Pages of the Book of Life at Twenty

by Alphonse de Lamartine

XXXV.

[Illustration: THE LOVERS' COMPACT.]

One sunny evening when our boat lay in a calm and sheltered creek, formed by the Mont du Chat, and we were delightfully lulled by the distant sound of a cascade which perpetually murmurs in the grottos through which it filtrates before losing itself in the abyss of water, our boatmen landed to draw some nets they had set the day before. We remained alone in the boat which was moored to the branch of a fig-tree by a slender rope; the motion of the boat caused the branch to bend and break without our being aware of it, and we drifted out to the middle of the bay, nearly three hundred yards from the perpendicular rocks with which it is surrounded. The waters of the lake in this part were of that bronzed color and had that molten appearance and look of heavy immobility which the shade of overhanging cliffs always gives; and the perpendicular rocks which surrounded it indicated the unfathomable depth of its waters. I might have taken up the oars and returned to shore, but we felt a thrill of pleasure at our loneliness and the absence of any form of living nature. We would have wished to wander thus on a boundless firmament, instead of on a sea with shores. We no longer heard the voices of the boatmen who had gone along the Savoy shore, and were now hidden from our view by some projecting rocks; we only heard the distant trickling of the cascade, the harmonious sighs of the pines when some playful breeze swept for an instant through the still and heavy air, and the low ripple of the water against the sides of the boat which gently undulated at our slightest movement.

Our boat lay half in shade and half in sunshine,—the head in sunshine, and the stern in shade. I was sitting at Julie's feet in the bottom of the boat, as on the first day when I brought her back from Haute-Combe. We took delight in calling to remembrance every circumstance of that first day, that mysterious era from which the world commenced for us,—for that day was the date of our meeting and of our love! She was half reclining with one arm hanging over the side of the boat, the other leaned upon my shoulder, and her hand played with a lock of my long hair; my head was thrown back, so that I could only see the heavens above and her face, which stood out on the blue background of the sky. She bent over me, as if to contemplate her sun on my brow, her light in my eyes; an expression of deep, calm, and ineffable happiness was diffused over her features, and gave to her beauty a radiance and splendor which was in harmony with the surrounding glory of the sky. Suddenly I saw her turn pale and withdraw her arms from the side of the boat and from my shoulder; she started up as if awaked from sleep, covered for one instant her face with her two hands, and remained in deep and silent thought; then withdrawing her hands, which were wet with tears, she said, in a tone of calm and serene determination, "Oh, let us die! …"

After these words she remained silent for an instant, then resumed: "Yes, let us die, for earth has nothing more to give, and Heaven nothing more to promise!" She gazed at the sky and mountain, the lake and its translucid waves around us. "Seest thou," she said (it was the first and the last time that she ever used that form of speech which is tender or solemn, according as we address God or man),—"seest thou that all is ready around us for the blessed close of our two lives? Seest thou the sun of the brightest of our days which sets, not to rise for us perhaps to-morrow? Seest thou the mountains glass themselves for the last time in the lake? They stretch out their long shadows towards us, as if to say, Wrap yourselves in this shroud which I extend towards you! See! the deep and clear, the silent waves have prepared for us a sandy couch from which no man shall wake us and tell us to be gone! No human eye can see us. None will know from what mysterious cause the empty bark has been washed ashore upon some rock. No ripple on these waters will betray to the curious or the indifferent the spot where our two bodies slid beneath the wave, in one embrace; where our two souls rose mingled in the surrounding ether; no sound of earth will follow us, but the slight ripple of the closing wave!… Oh, let us die in this delight of soul, and feel of death only its entrancing joy. One day we shall wish to die, and we shall die less happy. I am a few years older than you, and this difference which is unfelt now will increase with time. The little beauty which has attracted you will early fade, and you will only recall with wonder the memory of your departed enthusiasm. Besides, I am to you but as a spirit; … you will seek another happiness; … I should die of jealousy if you found it with another, … and I should die of grief, if I saw you unhappy through me!… Oh, let us die, let us die! Let us efface the dark or doubtful future with one last sigh, which will only leave on our lips the unallayed taste of complete felicity."

At the same moment my heart spoke to me as forcibly as she did, and said what her voice said to my ear, what her looks said to my eyes, what solemn, mute, funereal Nature in the splendor of her last hour, said to all my senses. The two voices that I heard, the inward and the outer voice, said the same words, as if one had been the echo or translation of the other. I forgot the universe, and I answered, "Let us die!"

* * * * *

I wound the fisherman's ropes which I found in the boat several times round her body and mine, which were bound as in the same winding sheet. I took her up in my arms, which I had left disengaged in order to precipitate her with me into the lake.

At the very instant that I was taking the spring which would forever have buried us in the waters, I saw her turn pale, her head drooped, its lifeless weight sank upon my shoulder, and I felt her knees give way beneath her body. Excessive emotion and the joy of dying together had forestalled death. She had fainted in my arms. The idea of taking advantage of her insensible state to hurry her, unknown to herself, and perhaps against her will, into my grave, struck me with horror. I fell back into the boat with my burden; I loosed the ropes that bound us, and laid her on the seat; I dipped my hands into the lake and sprinkled the cold drops of water on her lips and forehead. I know not how long she remained thus without color, voice, or motion. When she first opened her eyes and regained consciousness, night was coming on, and the slow drift of the boat had carried us into the middle of the lake.

"God wills it not," I said. "We live; what we thought the privilege of our love was a double crime. Is there no one to whom we belong on earth? No one in heaven?" I added looking upwards reverentially, as though I had seen in the firmament the sovereign Judge and Lord of our destinies. "Speak no more of it," she said in a low and hurried tone; "never speak of it again! You have chosen that I should live; I will live; my crime was not in dying, but in taking you with me!" There was something of bitterness and tender reproach in her tone and in her look. "It may be," said I, replying to her thoughts,—"it may be that heaven itself has no such hours as those we have just passed; but life has,—that is enough to make me love it." She soon recovered her bloom and her serenity. I seized the oars, and slowly rowed back to the little sandy beach, where we heard the voices of the boatmen, who had lighted a fire beneath a projecting rock. We recrossed the lake, and returned home silently and thoughtfully.