"Look, Juliana," said my mother, pointing to the top of the hill, "look at your dear Lilacs. Can you see them?"
"Yes, yes."
And, shading her eyes from the sun with her hand, she made an effort to see better. I, who was watching her, remarked a slight trembling of her lower lip.
"Can you see the cypress?" I asked her, with the intention of increasing her agitation by this suggestive question.
And I saw once more, in imagination, the venerable old cypress, whose trunk rose amid a rose-bush, and whose top sheltered a nest of nightingales.
"Yes, yes; I see it, but with difficulty."
The Lilacs stood out white against its background of foliage half-way up the slope. The chain of hills rolled away in the distance in a noble, peaceful, undulating line, and the olive-tree plantations on their sides appeared of extraordinary lightness, like a kind of greenish fog piled up in motionless shapes. The trees in blossom, dotted here and there with bouquets of red and white, broke the uniformity. The sky seemed to pale from minute to minute as if a stream of milk were being continually spread in and mixed with its fluid atmosphere.
"We will go to the Lilacs after Easter; everything there will be in flower," I said, trying to revive in that soul the dream which I had so brutally shattered.
I dared to draw closer to her, and put my arms around Juliana and my mother, and lean out of the window, advancing my head between theirs in such a manner that the hair of each brushed me. The spring, the purity of the air, the nobleness of the country, the peaceful transfiguration of every creature by the season's maternal influence, and that sky, that sky of divine paleness, more divine in measure as it became paler—all awoke in me such a new sentiment of life that I thought, with an internal tremor: "Can it be possible? Can it be possible? After all that has happened, after all that I have suffered, after so many transgressions, can I still find enjoyment in life? Can I, then, still hope? Can I still have a presentiment of happiness? From whence does this blessing come to me?" It seemed to me that all my being was relieved, became expanded, became dilated beyond its limits, with a subtle, rapid, and continuous vibration. Nothing can convey an idea of the feeling developed in me by the imperceptible sensation of a hair grazing my cheek.
We remained several minutes in this attitude, without speaking. The elms moaned. The constant thrill of the thousands of yellow and violet flowers that carpeted the wall beneath our window enchanted my eyes. A heavy and warm perfume arose in the sunshine with the rhythm of a breath.