That summer was for him more terrible than ever. He saw no hope of emerging from poverty and obscurity. Crops failed that year and the resources of the family were straitened to actual penury. His health suffered and serious results were apprehended. He was again ordered to go to Aix. His mother procured the money for him by surreptitiously selling trees that were growing on their little farm.
A note from Julie informed him that her husband was ill, but told him to go to Aix and wait for her. When he arrived there, there came a package forwarded from Chambery enclosing letters from Paris. One of these was from Julie[1] containing a lock of hair and bidding him farewell. It had been herself and not her husband, that was ill and dying. She had given up her former disbelief. "God will send you another sister," she wrote, "and she will be the pious helpmate of your life. I will ask it of him."
A letter from the husband asked Lamartine to continue to him as a son.
The shock almost bereft him of reason. He wandered for months over the mountains of Savoy and Switzerland, as he describes, "like a darkened soul that had lost the light of heaven and had no mind for that of earth." His mother secretly procured money for him in the hope that travel would alleviate his condition, the cause of which she did not imagine. Autumn was passing, however, and she could no longer frame excuses for his absence. He must return home.
As he was returning in the boat from Lyons, he contemplated the prospects before him. He had chafed for an active life, and destiny was compelling him to fold his wings in the nest from which he had been eager to escape. Now, in his exhaustion, he was willing to give up, hoping soon to die. "I was convinced," says he, "that in those months of love, of delirium and of grief, my heart had exhausted all the delights and bitternesses of a long life; that I had nothing more than for some months more to bury the memory of Julie under the ashes of my heart; and that the angel whose steps I had followed in thought into another life would soon call me to shorten my absence and begin the eternal love. The feeling that this was sure, now gave me comfort and enabled me to accept with patience the interval which I believed would be a short one between the parting and the reunion."
When the boat arrived at Mâcon, Lamartine saw nobody at the landing to welcome him. But as he picked up his valise he found himself suddenly embraced and almost smothered by the caresses of a dog. It was Azor, the same that had so abruptly broken up his Ossianic interview, seven years before, with Lucy, on the terrace. It was necessary to give him a strap of the valise to hold to keep him from getting under the feet of other travellers.
The Chevalier, his father, however, was only a little way off. He was watching with an opera-glass to see whether the dog had found his son. He now conducted him home by the most frequented streets, as if to show him to those whom he met. The dog had already gone to announce him, and Lamartine found his mother and sisters at the door.
The house had been recently purchased for a winter residence. The mother had besought this outlay for the sake of her five daughters, to be able to provide them with tutors and governesses and to introduce them advantageously into society. The Chevalier lost no time in showing his son the various rooms and conveniences and bringing him to the apartment for himself.
Lamartine had retired for the evening when his mother came into the room. She had noted his profound depression and now silently caressed him.
"Who would have told me," said she, "that in twenty-two years I would see my child blighted in the vigor of his soul and heart, and his countenance enshrouded in a secret grief?"