Hippolyte poured out the tea, and the cups steamed like censers. Then she untied the package! The letters appeared, properly classified, divided into small bundles.
"What a quantity!" cried George.
"There are not so many; only two hundred and ninety-four. And in two years, dear one, there are seven hundred and thirty days."
They both smiled, sat down side by side near a table, and began to read. In the presence of these documents of his love, George felt come over him a strange emotion—an emotion delicate yet strong. The first letters perplexed him.
Such or such an extreme state of mind, of which the letters bore the imprint, at first seemed to him incomprehensible. The lyric flight of such and such a phrase filled him almost with stupor. The violence and tumult of his early passion caused in him a sort of terror, by contrast with the calm which possessed him now, in this modest and quiet house.
One of the letters said: "How my heart sighed for you that night! A gloomy anguish overwhelmed me, even during the short intervals of slumber; and I reopened my eyes in order to escape the phantoms which rose from the depths of my soul. I have now but one thought—only one thought, which tortures me—that you might go far away from me. Never, no, never, has this possibility pierced my soul with a more maddening pain and terror. At this moment I have the certitude, the positive, clear, evident certitude, that without you life for me is an impossibility. When I think that I might lose you, the day becomes suddenly dark—the sunlight becomes odious to me, the earth appears to me like a bottomless tomb, I enter a state of death." Another letter, written after Hippolyte's departure, read: "I make an enormous effort to hold my pen. I have no more energy, no will. I succumb to such discouragement that the only sensation which remains to me of my external existence is an insupportable loathing of life. The day is gray, suffocating, heavy as lead; a day to kill in, so to speak. The hours pass with inexorable slowness, and my misery grows, second by second, always more horrible and more savage. It seems to me that at the bottom of my being are pools of stagnant water, dead, and deadly. Is this a physical or moral suffering? I do not know. I live on, stupid and inert beneath a burden which crushes me, without killing me." Another letter read: "At last, to-day, at four o'clock, when almost hopeless, I have received your reply. I have read and reread it a thousand times, to find between your words the inexpressible—what you could not express—your soul's secret, something more alive and sweeter than the words written on the soulless paper. I am possessed with a terrible desire for you."
So the love-letters cried and groaned, on the table covered with a table-cloth, and loaded with rustic cups in which an innocent infusion peacefully steamed.
"You remember," said Hippolyte. "It was the first time that I left Rome, and only for fifteen days."
George was absorbed in the memories of his mad infatuation; he sought to revive it within him, and to understand it. But the environing comfort was unfavorable for internal effort.
The sensation of this comfort imprisoned his soul, enveloping it loosely. The veiled sunlight, the hot drink, the perfume of the violets, the contact of Hippolyte, benumbed him. "Am I, then, so far from the ardor of former days?" he thought. "No, because during her last absence my anguish was not less cruel." But he did not succeed in filling the interval between the I of long ago and the I of to-day.