She stopped for an instant; her cheeks were flushed. I trembled lest death should seize her in her joy; but her voice soon reassured me. "Raphael! Raphael!" she exclaimed in a solemn tone, which surprised me, as if she had been announcing some good tidings, long and anxiously expected,—"Raphael, there is a God!" "How has he been revealed to you to-day more clearly than any other day?" I asked. "By love," she answered, raising slowly to heaven the orbs of her bright, glistening eyes; "yes, by love, whose torrents have flowed in my heart just now with a murmuring, gushing fulness that I had never felt before with the same force, nor yet the same repose. No, I no longer doubt," she continued in a tone where certitude mingled with joy; "the spring whence such felicity is poured upon the soul cannot be here below, nor can it lose itself in this earth after having once gushed forth! There is a God; there is an eternal love, of which ours is but a drop. We will together mingle it one day with the divine ocean whence we drew it! That ocean is God! I see it; feel it; understand it in this instant by my happiness! Raphael, it is no longer you I love; it is no longer I you love,—it is God we henceforth adore in one another; you in me, and I in you, both, in these tears of bliss which reveal to us, and yet conceal, the immortal fountain of our hearts! Away," she added, with a still more ardent tone and look,—"away with all the vain names by which we have hitherto called our attraction towards each other. I know but one to express it; it is the one which has just been revealed to me in your eyes: God! God! God!" she exclaimed once more, as though she had wished to teach her lips a new language. "God is in you; God is in me for you! God is us; and henceforward the feelings which oppressed us will no longer be love, but a holy and rapturous adoration! Raphael, do you understand me? You will no longer be Raphael, you will be my worship of God!"
We rose in a transport of enthusiasm; we embraced the tree, and blessed it for the inspiration which had descended from its boughs; we gave it a name, and called it the tree of adoration.
We then slowly descended the hill of St. Cloud to return to the noise and turmoil of Paris; but she returned with new-found faith and the knowledge of God in her heart, and I with the joy of knowing that she now possessed a bright and inward source of consolation, hope and peace.
LXXXIX.
In a very short time, the expense I was obliged to incur but which I concealed from Julie, in order to accompany her on our daily country excursions, had so far exhausted the proceeds of the sale of my mother's last diamond that I had only ten louis left. When each night I reckoned over the limited number of happy days represented by that small sum, I was seized with fits of despondency, but I should have blushed to confess my excessive poverty to her I loved. Though far from wealthy she would have wished to share with me all she possessed, and that would have degraded our intercourse in my eyes. I valued my love more than life, but I would rather have died than have debased my love.
The sedentary life I had led all the winter in my dismal room, my intense application to study all day, the tension of my thoughts towards one object, the want of sleep at night, but, above all, the moral exhaustion of a heart too weak to bear a continuous ecstasy of ten months, had undermined my constitution. A consuming flame, which burned unfed, shone through my wan and pale face. Julie implored me to leave Paris, to try the effect of my native air, and to preserve my life, even at the expense of her happiness. She sent me her doctor, to add the authority of science to the entreaties of her love. Her doctor, or rather her friend, Dr. Alain, was one of those men who carry a blessing with them, and whose countenance seems to reflect Heaven by the bedside of the sick poor they visit. He was himself suffering from a complaint of the heart brought on by a pure and mysterious passion for one of the loveliest women in Paris.
He was active, humane, pious, and tolerant, and possessing a small fortune sufficient for his simple wants and charities, practiced only for a few friends or for the poor. His physic was friendship or charity in action. The medical career is so admirable when divested of all cupidity, it brings so much into play the better feelings of our nature, that it often ends by being a virtue after commencing as a profession, With Dr. Alain it was more than a virtue; it had become a passion for relieving the woes of the body and of the soul, which are often so closely linked! Where Alain brought life, he also took God with him, and made even Death resplendent with serenity and immortality.
I saw him, too, die, some years later, the death of the righteous and the just. He had learned how to die at many deathbeds; and when stretched motionless on his, during six months of agony, his eye counted on a little clock, which stood at the foot of his bed, the hours that divided him from eternity. He pressed upon his bosom, with his crossed hands, a crucifix, emblem of patience, and his look never quitted that celestial friend, as though he had conversed at the foot of the cross. When he suffered beyond his powers of endurance he requested that the crucifix might be approached to his lips, and his prayers were then mingled with thanksgiving. At last he slept, supported to the end by his hopes and the memory of the good he had done. He had given the poor and the sick an accumulated treasure of good works to carry before him into the presence of the God of the merciful. He died on a wretched bed in a garret, leaving no inheritance. The poor bore his body to the grave, and, in their turn, gave him the burial of charity in the common earth. O blessed soul, that in memory, I still see smiling on that kind countenance, lighted with inward joy, can so much virtue have been to thee but a deception? Hast thou vanished like the reflection of my lamp upon thy portrait, when my hand withdraws the light that allowed me to contemplate it? No, no; God is faithful, and cannot have deceived thee, who wouldst not have deceived a child!
XC.
The doctor took a deep and friendly interest in me. It seemed as if Julie had imparted to him a portion of her tenderness. He understood my complaint, though he concealed his knowledge from me, and was too deeply read in human passion not to recognize its symptoms in us. He ordered me to depart under penalty of death, and induced Julie herself to enforce his commands by communicating to her his fears. He invoked the tender authority of love to tear me from love. He tried to mitigate the pang of separation by the allurement of hope, and ordered me to breathe some time my native air, and then return to the baths of Savoy, where Julie should join me, by his advice, in the beginning of autumn. His principles did not seem startled by the symptoms of mutual passion which he had not failed to perceive between us. Our pure flame was in his eyes a fault, but it was also its own purification. His countenance only expressed the indulgence of man, and the compassion of God. He thus endeavored to save us by loosening the tie which threatened to draw us to one common death. I at length consented to be the first to depart, and Julie swore to follow me soon. Alas, her tears, her pale face, and trembling lips said more than any vows! It was settled that I should leave Paris as soon as my strength permitted me to travel. The eighteenth of May was the day fixed for my departure.