Lucile's manuscript.
My brother sometimes vouchsafed to spend a few moments with the hermits of Combourg. He was in the habit of bringing with him a young counsellor of the Parliament of Brittany, M. de Malfilatre[167], cousin to the unfortunate poet of the same name[168]. I believe that, unknown to herself, Lucile felt a secret passion for this friend of my brother's, and that this stifled passion lay at the root of my sister's melancholy. She possessed, moreover, Rousseau's folly without his pride: she thought that everybody was in a conspiracy against her. She came to Paris in 1789, accompanied by her sister Julie, whose loss she deplored with an affection tinged with the sublime. All who knew her admired her, from M. de Malesherbes to Chamfort[169]. Thrown into the revolutionary crypts at Rennes[170], she was on the point of being imprisoned at Combourg Castle, which had been turned into a gaol during the Terror. After her release from prison, she married M. de Caud[171], who left her a widow within a year. I met the friend of my childhood on my return from my emigration: I will tell how she disappeared, when it pleased God to afflict me.
*
I have returned from Montboissier, and these are the last lines that I shall trace in my hermitage; I have to leave it, filled with the tall striplings which already hide and crown their father in their close ranks. I shall not see again the magnolia which promised its blossom to the tomb of my fair Floridan, the Jerusalem pine-tree and the cedar of Lebanon consecrated to the memory of Jerome, the laurel of Granada, the Greek plane-tree, the Armorican oak, at whose feet I drew Blanca, sang Cymodocée, invented Velléda. These trees were born and grew with my dreams, of which they were the hamadryads. They are about to pass under another's sway: will their new master love them as I have loved them? He will allow them to wither, he will cut them down perhaps: I am doomed to keep nothing upon this earth. While bidding farewell to the woods of Aulnay I shall recall the farewell which long ago I bade to the woods of Combourg: my days are all farewells.
*
The taste for poetry with which Lucile had inspired me was as fuel added to the flames. My sensations gathered new strength; vain thoughts of fame passed through my mind; for a moment I believed in my "talent," but soon recovered a proper mistrust of my own powers, and began to entertain doubts of that talent, as I have always done. I looked upon my work as a temptation of the Evil One; I was angry with Lucile for arousing an unfortunate propensity within me: I ceased writing and began to mourn my future glory as one might mourn his glory that is past.
Returning to my former state of idleness, I felt more strongly what was lacking to my youth: I was a mystery to myself. I could not see a woman without feeling confused; I blushed if she spoke to me. My shyness, already excessive with people in general, became so great in the presence of a woman that I would have preferred any torture to that of being left alone with her: no sooner was she gone than I recalled her with all my wishes. The descriptions of Virgil, Tibullus and Massillon, it is true, presented themselves to my memory; but the image of my mother and sister covered all with its purity and made thicker the veils which nature sought to raise: my filial and brotherly affection deceived me with respect to an affection less disinterested. Had the loveliest slaves of the seraglio been handed over to me, I should not have known what to ask of them. Chance enlightened me.
A neighbor of the Combourg domain came to spend a few days at the castle with his wife, a very pretty woman. Something, I know not what, happened in the village; we ran to one of the windows of the hall to look. I reached the window first, the fair visitor followed close upon my heels, I turned to give her my place. Involuntarily she obstructed my way, and I felt myself pressed between her and the window. I was no longer conscious of what was happening around me.
Vague longings.
From that moment I was aware that to love and be loved in a manner unknown to me must be the supreme happiness. Had I done what other men do, I should soon have become acquainted with the pains and pleasures of the passion whose germs I bore within me; but everything in me assumed an extraordinary character. The ardor of my imagination, my shyness, the solitude in which I lived caused me, rather than rush out of doors, to fall back upon myself; for want of a real object, I evoked, by the strength of my vague longings, a phantom which never left my side. I do not know whether the history of the human heart offers another instance of this nature.