"Yes, Guillen, yes," interrupted the Infanta. "The finger of God has touched the heart of my brother. How happy we are, Guillen!" And she added, with the smile of a child who amuses itself with other children, "Let us now be content with the happiness that we have already experienced, for there will be time enough to enjoy that which smiles on us from all sides."
"Yes, Teresa, yes, my angel," murmured the page in a low voice, "let us retire to rest, for when the heart is full of love there is happiness in sleep. Go to your rest, my love, lulled to sleep by the happiness which will lull me to sleep also."
And the happy lovers parted from each other.
Teresa did not send for Elvira to undress her, as she was in the habit of doing, for she desired to be alone, entirely alone, in order to give herself up unreservedly to her happy thoughts. She knelt down and prayed, thanking God for the joy which she experienced, with as much fervour and earnestness as a saint could have shown if the gates of heaven, in a divine vision, had been opened before him.
She then retired to her bed, and in a very short time was in a deep sleep.
The count was also sleeping—but let us not approach his couch, for the angel of purity does not repose in it, for it is profaned by unholy love. Let us approach that of Guillen or that of Teresa—let us only approach that of the latter, for the chaste love which sleeps in the one also sleeps in the other.
Teresa was dreaming of Guillen.
Guillen was dreaming of Teresa.
There is scarcely anyone in the world who has not dreamed, some time or other, that the bonds of love united him to a being who until then had been indifferent to him, and on awaking, and for some time after, had thought with delight on that being, and where formerly he had seen only an ordinary individual who awoke no feelings in his soul, now sees a being surrounded with enchantment and poetry. How many constant, ardent loves, fruitful of joys and sorrows, have had their birth in a dream!
Well, then, if the being who has been always indifferent to us, and to whom we do not owe sacrifices of love, appears in dreams surrounded with enchantment, ideality, and poesy, how must not that being appear to us whom we have long loved, and who loves us sincerely, who has exposed his life to save us; who is our only hope in this world; who physically and morally has so many claims on our love, and appears to our eyes surrounded with so many charms? Such was the case of Teresa in regard to Guillen.