The grave and serious tone-with which she said these words struck to my heart. Yet as I looked on her, and saw the glowing tints of the setting sun illumining her face, which shone with hourly increasing youth and serenity of expression, as though a new sun had risen in her heart, I could not believe in death concealed under these glorious signs of life. Besides, what cared I? If that heavenly vision was death, well, it was death I loved. It might be that the vast and perfect love for which I thirsted was only to be found in death. It might be that God had only showed me its nearly extinguished light on earth, to urge me to follow the trace of its ray into the grave, and from thence to heaven.
"Do not stay dreaming thus," she said, "but listen to me!" This was not said with the accent of one who loves, and affects a sportive seriousness, but with the tone of a still youthful mother, or an elder sister counselling a brother or a son. "I do not wish you to attach yourself to a false appearance, a delusion, a dream; I wish you to know her to whom you so rashly pledge a heart which she could only retain by deceiving you. Falsehood has always been so odious and so impossible to me, that I could not desire the supreme felicity of heaven, if I must enter heaven by deceit. Stolen happiness would not be happiness for me, it would be remorse."
As she spoke, there was so much candor on her lips, so much sincerity in her tone, and limpid purity in her eyes, that I fancied as I looked at her that under her pure and lovely form I saw immortal Truth, in the broad light of day, pouring her voice into the ear, her look into the eye, and her soul into the heart. I stretched myself on the hay at her feet and, with my elbow leaning on the ground, I rested my head upon my hand; my eyes were riveted upon her lips, of which I strove not to lose a single motion, a single modulation, or a single sigh.
XIX.
"I was born," she said, "in the same land as Virginia (for the poet's fancy has given a real birthplace to his dream), in an island of the tropics. You may have guessed it from the color of my hair, and from my complexion, which is paler than that of European women. You must have perceived, too, the accent which still lingers on my lips. In truth, I rather wish to preserve that accent as my only memento of my native land; it recalls to my mind the plaintive and harmonious sounds of the sea-breeze that are heard at noon beneath the lofty palms. You may also have noticed that incorrigible indolence of walk and attitude, so different from the vivacity of French women, which indicates in the Creole a wild and natural frankness that knows not how to feign or to dissemble.
"My family name is D——, and my own is Julie. My mother was lost in a boat in attempting to leave our native island during an insurrection of the blacks. I was washed ashore and saved by a black woman, who took care of me for several years, and then delivered me over to my father. He brought me to France when I was six years old, with an elder sister, and a short time after he died in poverty and exile in the house of some poor relations, who had hospitably received us in Brittany. The second mother whom I had found in exile provided for my education until her death, and, at twelve years old, I was adopted by the government as being the daughter of a man who had done some service to his country.
"I was brought up in all the luxurious splendor, and amid the choice friendships of those sumptuous houses, in which the State receives the daughters of those who die for their country. I grew in years, in talent, and also, it was said, in beauty. Mine was a grave and saddened grace, like the flower of some tropical plant blooming awhile beneath a foreign sky. But my useless beauty and my unavailing talents gladdened no eye or heart beyond the narrow precincts in which I was confined. My companions, with whom I had formed those close intimacies which make the friends of childhood the kindred of the heart, had all left, one by one, to join their mothers, or to follow their husbands. No mother took me home; no relation came to visit me; no young man heard of me, or sought me for his wife. I was saddened by these successive departures of all my friends, and felt sorrowful to think I was forsaken by the whole world, and doomed to an eternal bereavement of the heart without ever having loved. I often wept in secret, and regretted that the poor black woman had not allowed me to perish in the waves of my native shore, more merciful to me than the ocean, of the world on which I was cast.
"Now and then, an old man of great celebrity would come to visit, in the name of the Emperor, the national house of education, and inquire into the progress of the pupils in the arts and sciences, which were taught by the first masters of the capital; I was always pointed out to him as the brightest example of the education bestowed on the orphans. He invariably treated me with peculiar predilection from my childhood. 'How I regret,' he would sometimes say, loud enough for me to hear, 'that I have no son!'
"One day I was called down to the parlor of the Superior. I found there my illustrious and venerable friend, who seemed as discomposed as I was myself. 'My child,' said he, at length, 'years roll on for every one,—slowly for you, swiftly for me. You are now seventeen; in a few months you will have attained the age at which you must leave this house for the world; but there is no world to receive you. You have no country, no home, no fortune, and no family in France; your unprotected and dependent situation has made me feel anxious on your account for many years. The life of a young girl who earns her livelihood by her labor is full of snares and bitterness, and a home offered by friends is both precarious and humiliating to the spirit. The extreme beauty that Nature has bestowed upon you will, by its brightness, dispel the obscurity of your fate and attract vice, as the brightness of gold induces theft. Where do you mean to take shelter from the sorrows and dangers of life?' 'I know not,' I answered; 'and I have thought sometimes that death alone can save me from my fate!' 'Oh,' he replied, with a sad and irresolute smile, 'I have thought of another mode of escape, but I scarcely dare propose it.' 'Speak without fear, sir,' I answered; 'you have during so many years spoken to me with the look and accent of a father, that I shall fancy I am obeying mine, in obeying you.' 'Ah, he would be happy indeed,' he replied, 'who had a daughter such as you! Forgive me if I have sometimes indulged in such a dream! Listen to me,' he added in a more tender and serious tone; 'and answer me in thorough frankness and liberty of heart.
"'My life is drawing to a close; the grave will soon open to receive me, and I have no relations to whom to bequeath my only wealth,—the unaspiring celebrity of my name, and the humble fortune that I have acquired by my labors. Hitherto I have lived alone, completely absorbed by the studies that have consumed and dignified my life. I draw near to the close of my existence, and I am painfully aware that I have not commenced to live, since I have not thought of loving. It is too late to retrace my steps, and follow the path of happiness instead of that of glory, which I have unfortunately chosen; and yet I would not die without leaving in some memory that prolongation of existence in the existence of another, which is called affection,—the only immortality in which I believe. I cannot hope for more than gratitude, and I feel that it is from you that I should wish to obtain it. But,' added he, more timidly, 'for that, you must consent to accept, in the eyes of the world, and for the world only, the name, the hand, and the affection of an old man who would he a father under the name of husband, and who, as such, would merely seek the right of receiving you into his house, and loving you as his child.'