Louis Lambert — Honoré de Balzac, trans. Katharine Prescott Wormeley

soul as swiftly as a shadow falls. Were you sad or suffering? Iwas wretched. Whence came my distress? Write to me at once. Why did I not knowit? We are not yet completely one in mind. At two leagues’ distance or at a thousand 1 ought to feel your pains and sorrows. I shall not believe that I love you till my life is so bound up with yours that our life is one, till our hearts, our thoughts are one. I must be where you are, see what you see, feel what you feel, be with you in thought. Did not I know, at once, that your carriage had been overthrown and you were bruised ? But on that day I had been with you, I had never left you, I could see you. When my uncle asked me what made me turn so pale, I answered at once, ‘Mademoiselle de Villenoix has had a fall.’

‘‘Why, then, yesterday, did I fail to read your soul?
Did you wish to hide the cause of your grief? However,
T fancied I could feel that you were arguing in my favor,
though in vain, with that dreadful Salomon, who freezes
my blood. That man is not of our heaven.

‘“Why do you insist that our happiness, which has no resemblance to that of other people, should conform to the laws of the world?) And yet I delight too much in your bashfulness, your religion, your superstitions, not to obey your lightest whim. What you do must be right; nothing can be purer than your mind, as nothing is lovelier than your face, which reflects your divine soul.

“T shall wait for a letter before going along the lanes to meet the sweet hour you grant me. Oh! if you could know how the sight of those turrets makes my heart throb when I see them edged with light by the moon, our only confidante.”

sero

p. 285

IV

“Farewell to glory, farewell to the future, to the life I had dreamed of! Now, my well-beloved, my glory is that I am yours, and worthy of you; my future lies entirely in the hope of seeing you; and is not my life summed up in sitting at your feet, in lying under your eyes, in drawing deep breaths in the heaven you have created forme? All my powers, all my thoughts must be yours, since you could speak those thrilling words, ‘Your sufferings must be mine!’ Should I not be stealing some joys from love, some moments from happiness, some experiences from your divine spirit, if I gave my hours to study—ideas to the world and poems to the poets? Nay, nay, my very life, I will treasure everything for you; I will bring to you every flower of my soul. Is there anything fine enough, splendid enough, in all the resources of the world or of intellect, to do honor to a heart so rich, so pure as yours—the heart to which I dare now and again to unite my own? Yes, now and again, I dare believe that I can love as much as you do.

‘‘And yet, no; you are the angel-woman; there will always be a greater charm in the expression of your feelings, more harmony in your voice, more grace in your smile, more purity in your looks than in mine. Let me feel that you are the creature of a higher sphere than that I live in; it will be your pride to have descended from it; mine, that I should have deserved you; and you will not perhaps have fallen too far by coming down to me in my poverty and misery. Nay, if a woman’s most glorious refuge is in a heart that is wholly her own, you will always reign supreme in mine. Not a thought, not a deed, shall ever pollute this heart, this glorious sanctuary, so long as you vouchsafe to dwell in it—and will you not dwell in it forever? Did you notp. 286 enchant me by the words, ‘Now and forever’? Nunc et — semper! And I have written these words of our ritual below your portrait—words worthy of you, as they are of God. He is mune et semper, as my love is.