In a society where all things were in harmony, love would surely become a stimulant to patriotism and to social virtue. But when bold and generous impulses are doomed to maintain a painful conflict with the men and things that surround us, the personal affections capture us and dominate us to the point of producing a sort of numbness of the other faculties.
The common people seek in intoxication by alcohol oblivion of their privations, and the lover finds in the intoxication produced by his mistress's eyes a sort of philter that induces oblivion of everything else. Emile was too young to know how to suffer and to desire to suffer, but he had already suffered much. Now that happiness had come in search of him, how could he think of eluding it? Let us admit, without too much shame for the poor boy, that he no longer thought of laws or facts or the future, of the past of the world, of the vices of society, or the means of saving it, of human misery or the divine will, of Heaven or earth. Earth, Heaven, God's law, destiny, the world—his love was all of these; and provided he could see Gilberte and read his fate in her eyes, it mattered little to him if the universe crumbled about his ears.
He could not open a book or sustain a discussion. When he had tired himself out scouring all the paths that led in the direction of his beloved, he dozed beside his mother's chair or read the newspapers to her without understanding a word of what his voice said; and when he was alone in his chamber, he would undress very hurriedly so that he could put out his light and avoid the sight of external objects.
Then the darkness would be illuminated by the inward fire which gave him life, and his radiant vision would appear before him. In that ecstatic state he ceased to have the sensations of sleep or of waking. He dreamed with his eyes open, he saw with his eyes closed.
A word of playful affection, a smile from Gilberte, the touch of her dress brushing against him as she passed, a blade of grass which she had broken and which he had seized upon,—any one of these was enough to occupy his mind during the night; and no sooner did the first rays of dawn appear than he ran to groom his horse himself so that he might start the earlier. He forgot to eat and considered it perfectly natural that he should live on the morning dew and the breeze that blew from Châteaubrun.
He dared not go there every day, although he might have done so without fear that Monsieur Antoine would receive him less warmly. But there is in love a shrinking modesty which takes fright at happiness at the moment of grasping it. So he wandered about in every direction, and hid in the woods, where he could gaze at the ruins of Châteaubrun through the branches, as if he were afraid of being caught in the act of adoration.
At night, when Jean Jappeloup had finished his day's work, as he did not as yet earn enough to hire a house and did not choose to be a burden to his friends, and as the nights were warm and pleasant, he repaired to a small abandoned chapel, on the hill which formed the centre of the village, and before lying down on the straw with which he had made a bed, went to say his prayers at the pretty little church of Gargilesse.
He went down, from preference, into the Roman crypt which still bears traces of the curious frescoes of the fifteenth century. From the daintily-carved window of that underground apartment one overlooks walls of rock and the green ravines through which the Gargilesse flows.
The carpenter had been deprived longer than he liked of the sight of his dear native place, and he often interrupted his placid, pensive prayer to gaze on the landscape, still half-praying, half-musing, in that peculiar frame of mind characteristic of simple-hearted folk, peasants, especially after the fatigue of the day.
It was then that Emile, when he had dined and walked a while with his mother, came to join the carpenter, to admire the pretty structure with him, and then to chat on the hill-top of everything that he could not talk about at home—of Châteaubrun, Monsieur Antoine, Janille, and, lastly, of Gilberte.