I bid the postilion go on with the chaise to Moulines—and La Fleur to bespeak my supper;—and that I would walk after him.
She was dress’d in white, and much as my friend described her, except that her hair hung loose, which before was twisted within a silk net.—She had superadded likewise to her jacket, a pale green riband, which fell across her shoulder to the waist; at the end of which hung her pipe.—Her goat had been as faithless as her lover; and she had got a little dog in lieu of him, which she had kept tied by a string to her girdle: as I looked at her dog, she drew him towards her with the string.—“Thou shalt not leave me, Sylvio,” said she. I look’d in Maria’s eyes and saw she was thinking more of her father than of her lover, or her little goat; for, as she utter’d them, the tears trickled down her cheeks.
I sat down close by her; and Maria let me wipe them away as they fell, with my handkerchief.—I then steep’d it in my own,—and then in hers,—and then in mine,—and then I wip’d hers again;—and as I did it, I felt such undescribable emotions within me, as I am sure could not be accounted for from any combinations of matter and motion.
I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pester’d the world ever convince me to the contrary.
MARIA.
When Maria had come a little to herself, I ask’d her if she remembered a pale thin person of a man, who had sat down betwixt her and her goat about two years before? She said she was unsettled much at that time, but remembered it upon two accounts:—that ill as she was, she saw the person pitied her; and next, that her goat had stolen his handkerchief, and she had beat him for the theft;—she had wash’d it, she said, in the brook, and kept it ever since in her pocket to restore it to him in case she should ever see him again, which, she added, he had half promised her. As she told me this, she took the handkerchief out of her pocket to let me see it; she had folded it up neatly in a couple of vine leaves, tied round with a tendril;—on opening it, I saw an S. marked in one of the corners.
She had since that, she told me, stray’d as far as Rome, and walk’d round St. Peter’s once,—and return’d back;—that she found her way alone across the Apennines;—had travell’d over all Lombardy, without money,—and through the flinty roads of Savoy without shoes:—how she had borne it, and how she had got supported, she could not tell;—but God tempers the wind, said Maria, to the shorn lamb.
Shorn indeed! and to the quick, said I: and wast thou in my own land, where I have a cottage, I would take thee to it, and shelter thee: thou shouldst eat of my own bread and drink of my own cup;—I would be kind to thy Sylvio;—in all thy weaknesses and wanderings I would seek after thee and bring thee back;—when the sun went down I would say my prayers: and when I had done thou shouldst play thy evening song upon thy pipe, nor would the incense of my sacrifice be worse accepted for entering heaven along with that of a broken heart!
Nature melted within me, as I utter’d this; and Maria observing, as I took out my handkerchief, that it was steep’d too much already to be of use, would needs go wash it in the stream.—And where will you dry it, Maria? said I.—I’ll dry it in my bosom, said she:—’twill do me good.
And is your heart still so warm, Maria? said I.