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

by Alphonse de Lamartine

LXXVII.

What inward joy, what throbbing of the heart, when they retired, and when I heard beneath the gateway the rolling of the carriage which bore away the last of them! We were then alone; the night was far advanced; our security increased at every move of the minute hand as it approached the figure that marked midnight on the dial. Nothing was to be heard but the sound of a few carriages, which, at rare intervals, rattled over the stones of the quay, or the deep breathing of the old concierge, who was stretched sleeping on a bench in the vestibule at the foot of the stairs.

We would first look at each other, as if surprised at our happiness. I would draw nearer to the table where Julie worked by the light of the lamp. The work soon fell from her unheeding hands; our looks expanded, our lips were unsealed, our hearts overflowed. Our choked and hurried words, like the flow of water impeded by too narrow an opening, were at first slowly poured forth, and the torrent of our thoughts trickled out drop by drop. We could not select, among the many things we had to say, those we most wished to impart to each other. Sometimes there was a long silence, caused by the confusion and excess of crowded thoughts which accumulated in our hearts and could not escape. Then they began to flow slowly, like those first drops which show that the cloud is about to dissolve or burst; these words called forth others in response; one voice led on the other, as a falling child draws his companion with him. Our words mingled without order, without answer, and without connection; neither of us would yield the happiness of outstripping the other in the expression of one common feeling. We fancied that we had first felt what we disclosed of our thoughts since the evening's conversation, or the morning's letter. At last this tumultuous overflow, at which we laughed and blushed, after a time subsided, and gave place to a calm effusion of the lips, which poured forth together, or alternately, the plenitude of their expressions. It was a continuous and murmuring transfusion of one soul into another,—an unreserved interchange of our two natures,—a complete transmutation of one into another, by the reciprocal communication of all that breathed, or lived, or burned within us. Never, perhaps, did two beings as irreproachable in their looks, or in their very thoughts, bare their hearts to one another more unreservedly, and reveal the mysterious depths of their feelings. The innocent nudity of our souls was chaste, though unveiled, as light that discovers all, yet sullies nothing. We had nought to reveal but the spotless love which purified as it consumed us.

Our love, by its very purity, was incessantly renewed, with the same light of soul, the same unsullied transports of its first bloom. Each day was like the first; every instant was as that ineffable moment when we felt it dawn within us, and saw it reflected in the heart and looks of another self. Our love would always preserve its flower and its perfume, for the fruit could never be culled.

LXXVIII.

Of all the different means by which God has allowed soul to communicate with soul, through the transparent barrier of the senses, there was not one that our love did not employ to manifest itself,—from the look which conveys most of ourselves, in an almost ethereal ray, to the closed lids, which seem to enfold within us the image we have received, that it may not evaporate; from languor to delirium, from the sigh to the loud cry; from the long silence to those exhaustless words which flow from the lips without pause and without end, which stop the breath, weary the tongue, which we pronounce without hearing them, and which have no other meaning than an impotent effort to say, again and again, what can never be said enough….

Many a time did we talk thus for hours, in whispered tones, leaning on the little table close to each other, without perceiving that our conversation had lasted more than the space of a single aspiration; quite surprised to find that the minutes had flown as swiftly as our words, and that the clock struck the inexorable hour of parting.

Sometimes there would be interrogations and answers as to our most fugitive shades of thought and nature, dialogues in almost unheard whispers, articulate sighs rather than audible words, blushing confessions of our most secret inward repinings, joyful exclamations of surprise at discovering in us both the same impressions reflected from one another, as light in reverberations, the blow in the counterblow, the form in the image. We would exclaim, rising by a simultaneous impulse, "We are not two; we are one single being under two illusive natures! Which will say you unto the other; which will say I? There is no I; there is no you; but only we." … We would then sink down, overcome with admiration at this wonderful conformity, weeping with delight at this twofold existence, and at having doubled our lives by consecrating them to each other.

LXXIX.

Most generally we used to travel back over the past, step by step, and recall with scrupulous minuteness every place, circumstance, and hour which had brought on, or marked the beginning of our love,—like some young girl who has scattered by the way the unstrung pearls of her precious necklace, and returns upon her steps, her eyes bent upon the ground, to find and gather them up, one by one. We would not lose the recollection of one of those places, or one of those hours, for fear of losing at the same time the hoarded memory of a single joy. We remembered the mountains of Savoy; the valley of Chambéry; the torrents and the lake; the mossy ground, sometimes in shade and sometimes dappled with light, beneath the outstretched arms of the chestnut-trees; the rays between the branches, the glimpse of sky through the leafy dome above our heads, the blue expanse and the white sails at our feet; our first unsought meetings in the mountain paths; our mutual conjectures; our encounters on the lake before we knew each other, sailing in our boats in contrary directions, her dark hair waving in the wind, my indifferent attitude; our looks averted from the crowd; the double enigma that we were to each other, of which the answer was to be eternal love; then the fatal day of the tempest, and her fainting; the mournful night of prayers and tears; the waking in heaven; our return together by moonlight through the avenue of poplars, her hand in mine; her warm tears which my lips had drunk, the first words in which our souls had spoken; our joys, our parting,—we remembered all.