The ideal, after all, is truer than the real: for the ideal is the eternal element in perishable things: it is their type, their sum, their raison d’être, their formula in the book of the Creator, and therefore at once the most exact and the most condensed expression of them.
April 11, 1865.—I have been measuring and making a trial of the new gray plaid which is to take the place of my old mountain shawl. The old servant which has been my companion for ten years, and which recalls to me so many poetical and delightful memories, pleases me better than its brilliant successor, even though this last has been a present from a friendly hand. But can anything take the place of the past, and have not even the inanimate witnesses of our life voice and language for us? Glion, Villars, Albisbrunnen, the Righi, the Chamossaire, and a hundred other places, have left something of themselves behind them in the meshes of this woolen stuff which makes a part of my most intimate history. The shawl, besides, is the only chivalrous article of dress which is still left to the modern traveler, the only thing about him which may be useful to others than himself, and by means of which he may still do his devoir to fair women! How many times mine has served them for a cushion, a cloak, a shelter, on the damp grass of the Alps, on seats of hard rock, or in the sudden cool of the pinewood, during the walks, the rests, the readings, and the chats of mountain life! How many kindly smiles it has won for me! Even its blemishes are dear to me, for each darn and tear has its story, each scar is an armorial bearing. This tear was made by a hazel tree under Jaman—that by the buckle of a strap on the Frohnalp—that, again, by a bramble at Charnex; and each time fairy needles have repaired the injury.
“Mon vieux manteau, que je vous remercie
Car c’est à vous que je dois ces plaisirs!”
And has it not been to me a friend in suffering, a companion in good and evil fortune? It reminds me of that centaur’s tunic which could not be torn off without carrying away the flesh and blood of its wearer. I am unwilling to give it up; whatever gratitude for the past, and whatever piety toward my vanished youth is in me, seem to forbid it. The warp of this rag is woven out of Alpine joys, and its woof out of human affections. It also says to me in its own way:
“Pauvre bouquet, fleurs aujourd’hui fanées!”
And the appeal is one of those which move the heart, although profane ears neither hear it nor understand it.
What a stab there is in those words, thou hast been! when the sense of them becomes absolutely clear to us. One feels one’s self sinking gradually into one’s grave, and the past tense sounds the knell of our illusions as to ourselves. What is past is past: gray hairs will never become black curls again; the forces, the gifts, the attractions of youth, have vanished with our young days.
“Plus d’amour; partant plus de joie.”
How hard it is to grow old, when we have missed our life, when we have neither the crown of completed manhood nor of fatherhood! How sad it is to feel the mind declining before it has done its work, and the body growing weaker before it has seen itself renewed in those who might close our eyes and honor our name! The tragic solemnity of existence strikes us with terrible force, on that morning when we wake to find the mournful word too late ringing in our ears! “Too late, the sand is turned, the hour is past! Thy harvest is unreaped—too late! Thou hast been dreaming, forgetting, sleeping—so much the worse! Every man rewards or punishes himself. To whom or of whom wouldst thou complain?”—Alas!
April 21, 1865. (Mornex).—A morning of intoxicating beauty, fresh as the feelings of sixteen, and crowned with flowers like a bride. The poetry of youth, of innocence, and of love, overflowed my soul. Even to the light mist hovering over the bosom of the plain—image of that tender modesty which veils the features and shrouds in mystery the inmost thoughts of the maiden—everything that I saw delighted my eyes and spoke to my imagination. It was a sacred, a nuptial day! and the matin bells ringing in some distant village harmonized marvelously with the hymn of nature. “Pray,” they said, “and love! Adore a fatherly and beneficent God.” They recalled to me the accent of Haydn; there was in them and in the landscape a childlike joyousness, a naïve gratitude, a radiant heavenly joy innocent of pain and sin, like the sacred, simple-hearted ravishment of Eve on the first day of her awakening in the new world. How good a thing is feeling, admiration! It is the bread of angels, the eternal food of cherubim and seraphim.