SERVAL, January 20, 18—.
Who would have said six months ago that I would ever take up this journal again, or, rather, that I would ever recover from the apathy of heart and mind into which I had been thrown by my rupture with Madame de Fersen, by the death of Irene?
Such, though, is the case.
And yet my despair was frightful!
To-day, though the remembrance of that time gives me sore pain, a distant hope, new sensations mitigate that soreness.
I smile, sadly when I read in my journal, which I have just been looking over, these words repeated so often:
"Never was there greater sorrow—"
"Never was there more happiness—"
"Never can I forget—"
And now new joys have obliterated those sorrows; new troubles have faded those joys. Thus day after day, forgetfulness, that dark, cold tide, creeps up higher, higher, and swallows up in the black abyss of the past the souvenirs that time has discoloured.