While he was thus speaking, and gazing intently at me as if I were some vision about to vanish from his sight, my joyful greeting and cordiality were changed into extreme gravity of manner, and I looked away as his eyes wandered from my face to my mourning attire, and for the first time it occurred to me he found me free, and perhaps was now thinking of it!
Free!… Oh! if I have succeeded in describing the state of my soul since that moment of divine light which marked the most precious day of my life; if I have clearly expressed the aspect which the past, the present, the future, and all the joys, all the sufferings, in short, every event of my life, henceforth took in my eyes; if, I say, I have been able to make myself understood, those who have read these pages are already aware what the word free now signified to me.
Free! Yes, as the bird that cleaves the air is free to return to its cage; as the captive on his way to the shores of his native land is free to return and resume his chains; so is the soul that has once tasted the blessed reality of God’s love free also to return to the vain dreams of earthly happiness.
“I would not accept it!” was the exclamation of a soul[5] that had thus been made free, and it is neither strange nor new. No more than the bird or the captive could it be tempted to return to the past.…
I did not utter a word, however, and the thoughts that came over me like a flood died away in the midst of the joyful excitement that put an end to this moment of silence. Mme. de Kergy and Diana, who had been sent for, arrived pale and agitated. But when I saw Gilbert in his mother’s arms, I felt so happy that I entirely forgot what had occurred, and was not even embarrassed when, as I was on the point of leaving, I heard Diana say to her brother that her mother had two new daughters now, and he would find three sisters instead of one in the house.
I returned home in great haste. It was the first time for a long while my heart had felt light. I searched for Stella. She was neither in the house nor garden. I then thought of the studio, where, in fact, I found her. Everything remained in the same way Lorenzo had left it, and Stella, who had a natural taste for the arts, knew enough of sculpture to devote a part of her time to it. She had succeeded in making a bust of Angiolina which was a good likeness, and she was at work upon it when I entered.
She looked at me with an air of surprise, for she saw something unusual had taken place.
“Gilbert has returned!” I exclaimed, without thinking of preparing her for the news, the effect of which I had not sufficiently foreseen.
She turned deadly pale, and her face assumed an expression I had never known it to wear. I was utterly amazed. Rising with an abrupt movement, she said, in an altered tone:
“Then I must go, Ginevra!” And, suddenly bursting into tears, she pressed her lips to the little bust, the successful production of her labor and grief.