Louis Lambert, Honoré de Balzac [best fiction books of all time .TXT] 📗

I have recalled a single gesture or
the tone of a word of yours. Thus there will be memories of which
the magnitude will overpower me, if the reminiscence of a sweet
and friendly interview is enough to make me shed tears of joy, to
move and thrill my soul, and to be an inexhaustible wellspring of
gladness. Love is the life of angels!

"I can never, I believe, exhaust my joy in seeing you. This
rapture, the least fervid of any, though it never can last long
enough, has made me apprehend the eternal contemplation in which
seraphs and spirits abide in the presence of God; nothing can be
more natural, if from His essence there emanates a light as
fruitful of new emotions as that of your eyes is, of your imposing
brow, and your beautiful countenance--the image of your soul.
Then, the soul, our second self, whose pure form can never perish,
makes our love immortal. I would there were some other language
than that I use to express to you the ever-new ecstasy of my love;
but since there is one of our own creating, since our looks are
living speech, must we not meet face to face to read in each
other's eyes those questions and answers from the heart, that are
so living, so penetrating, that one evening you could say to me,
'Be silent!' when I was not speaking. Do you remember it, dear
life?

"When I am away from you in the darkness of absence, am I not
reduced to use human words, too feeble to express heavenly
feelings? But words at any rate represent the marks these feelings
leave in my soul, just as the word _God_ imperfectly sums up the
notions we form of that mysterious First Cause. But, in spite of
the subtleties and infinite variety of language, I have no words
that can express to you the exquisite union by which my life is
merged into yours whenever I think of you.

"And with what word can I conclude when I cease writing to you,
and yet do not part from you? What can _farewell_ mean, unless in
death? But is death a farewell? Would not my spirit be then more
closely one with yours? Ah! my first and last thought; formerly I
offered you my heart and life on my knees; now what fresh blossoms
of feelings can I discover in my soul that I have not already
given you? It would be a gift of a part of what is wholly yours.

"Are you my future? How deeply I regret the past! I would I could
have back all the years that are ours no more, and give them to
you to reign over, as you do over my present life. What indeed was
that time when I knew you not? It would be a void but that I was
so wretched."


FRAGMENT.

"Beloved angel, how delightful last evening was! How full of
riches your dear heart is! And is your love endless, like mine?
Each word brought me fresh joy, and each look made it deeper. The
placid expression of your countenance gave our thoughts a
limitless horizon. It was all as infinite as the sky, and as bland
as its blue. The refinement of your adored features repeated
itself by some inexplicable magic in your pretty movements and
your least gestures. I knew that you were all graciousness, all
love, but I did not know how variously graceful you could be.
Everything combined to urge me to tender solicitation, to make me
ask the first kiss that a woman always refuses, no doubt that it
may be snatched from her. You, dear soul of my life, will never
guess beforehand what you may grant to my love, and will yield
perhaps without knowing it! You are utterly true, and obey your
heart alone.

"The sweet tones of your voice blended with the tender harmonies
that filled the quiet air, the cloudless sky. Not a bird piped,
not a breeze whispered--solitude, you, and I. The motionless
leaves did not quiver in the beautiful sunset hues which are both
light and shadow. You felt that heavenly poetry--you who
experienced so many various emotions, and who so often raised your
eyes to heaven to avoid answering me. You who are proud and saucy,
humble and masterful, who give yourself to me so completely in
spirit and in thought, and evade the most bashful caress. Dear
witcheries of the heart! They ring in my ears; they sound and play
there still. Sweet words but half spoken, like a child's speech,
neither promise nor confession, but allowing love to cherish its
fairest hopes without fear or torment! How pure a memory for life!
What a free blossoming of all the flowers that spring from the
soul, which a mere trifle can blight, but which, at that moment,
everything warmed and expanded.

"And it will always be so, will it not, my beloved? As I recall,
this morning, the fresh and living delights revealed to me in that
hour, I am conscious of a joy which makes me conceive of true love
as an ocean of everlasting and ever-new experiences, into which we
may plunge with increasing delight. Every day, every word, every
kiss, every glance, must increase it by its tribute of past
happiness. Hearts that are large enough never to forget must live
every moment in their past joys as much as in those promised by
the future. This was my dream of old, and now it is no longer a
dream! Have I not met on this earth with an angel who had made me
know all its happiness, as a reward, perhaps, for having endured
all its torments? Angel of heaven, I salute thee with a kiss.

"I shall send you this hymn of thanksgiving from my heart, I owe
it to you; but it can hardly express my gratitude or the morning
worship my heart offers up day by day to her who epitomized the
whole gospel of the heart in this divine word: 'Believe.'"


V

"What! no further difficulties, dearest heart! We shall be free to
belong to each other every day, every hour, every minute, and for
ever! We may be as happy for all the days of our life as we now
are by stealth, at rare intervals! Our pure, deep feelings will
assume the expression of the thousand fond acts I have dreamed of.
For me your little foot will be bared, you will be wholly mine!
Such happiness kills me; it is too much for me. My head is too
weak, it will burst with the vehemence of my ideas. I cry and I
laugh--I am possessed! Every joy is an arrow of flame; it pierces
and burns me. In fancy you rise before my eyes, ravished and
dazzled by numberless and capricious images of delight.

"In short, our whole future life is before me--its torrents, its
still places, its joys; it seethes, it flows on, it lies sleeping;
then again it awakes fresh and young. I see myself and you side by
side, walking with equal pace, living in the same thought; each
dwelling in each other's heart, understanding each other,
responding to each other as an echo catches and repeats a sound
across wide distances.

"Can life be long when it is thus consumed hour by hour? Shall we
not die in a first embrace? What if our souls have already met in
that sweet evening kiss which almost overpowered us--a feeling
kiss, but the crown of my hopes, the ineffectual expression of all
the prayers I breathe while we are apart, hidden in my soul like
remorse?

"I, who would creep back and hide in the hedge only to hear your
footsteps as you went homewards--I may henceforth admire you at my
leisure, see you busy, moving, smiling, prattling! An endless joy!
You cannot imagine all the gladness it is to me to see you going
and coming; only a man can know that deep delight. Your least
movement gives me greater pleasure than a mother even can feel as
she sees her child asleep or at play. I love you with every kind
of love in one. The grace of your least gesture is always new to
me. I fancy I could spend whole nights breathing your breath; I
would I could steal into every detail of your life, be the very
substance of your thoughts--be your very self.

"Well, we shall, at any rate, never part again! No human alloy
shall ever disturb our love, infinite in its phases and as pure as
all things are which are One--our love, vast as the sea, vast as
the sky! You are mine! all mine! I may look into the depths of
your eyes to read the sweet soul that alternately hides and shines
there, to anticipate your wishes.

"My best-beloved, listen to some things I have never yet dared to
tell you, but which I may confess to you now. I felt a certain
bashfulness of soul which hindered the full expression of my
feelings, so I strove to shroud them under the garbs of thoughts.
But now I long to lay my heart bare before you, to tell you of the
ardor of my dreams, to reveal the boiling demands of my senses,
excited, no doubt, by the solitude in which I have lived,
perpetually fired by conceptions of happiness, and aroused by you,
so fair in form, so attractive in manner. How can I express to you
my thirst for the unknown rapture of possessing an adored wife, a
rapture to which the union of two souls by love must give frenzied
intensity. Yes, my Pauline, I have sat for hours in a sort of
stupor caused by the violence of my passionate yearning, lost in
the dream of a caress as though in a bottomless abyss. At such
moments my whole vitality, my thoughts and powers, are merged and
united in what I must call desire, for lack of a word to express