“Monsieur Germain,” she said, “be so kind as to go upstairs to my room. You will find a little book on the table, and bring it to me....” He obeyed. All the while he was absent the young widow gazed at the dusky foliage shivering in the night wind. He returned with a little gilt-edged volume. “_The Idylls of Gesner_; yes, that is it,” said Sophie. “Open the book at the place where the marker lies, and, if your eyes are good enough to read by moonlight, read.” He read these words: “Ah! Often will my soul come to hover around you; often when, inflamed by a noble and sublime thought, you are meditating in solitude, a light breath will brush your cheek: at such a moment may your soul be conscious of a gladdening thrill!...” She stopped him. “Now do you understand, Marcel, that we are never alone, and that there are words to which I can never listen so long as a breath blown landward from the sea shall set in motion the leaves of the oaks.” The voices of the two older men drew near. “God is Goodness,” said Duvernay. “God is evil,” said Franchot, “and we shall extinguish it.” Both of them, and Marcel also, took leave of Sophie. “Adieu, gentlemen,” she said. “Let us all cry, ‘Hurrah for Liberty, and long live the King!’ And you, dear neighbour, do not hinder us from dying when we shall need to die.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MADAME DE LUZY TO MARCEL PROUST MADAME DE LUZY (_From a manuscript dated September 15th, 1792._) I As I entered, Pauline de Luzy held out her hand to me. Then for a moment we remained silent. Her scarf and straw hat were thrown carelessly on an arm-chair. The prayer from _Orpheus_ was open on the spinet. Going towards the window, she watched the sun sinking to the blood-red horizon. “Madame,” I said at length, “do you remember the words you said two years ago this very day, at the foot of that hill on the bank of the river towards which at this moment your eyes are turned? “Do you remember how, with your hand waving in a prophetic gesture, you called up before me, as in a vision, the coming days of trial, of crime and terror? On my very lips you arrested my confession of love, and bade me live and labour for justice and liberty. Madame, since your hand, which I could not anoint with kisses and tears enough, pointed out the way to me, I have pursued it unfaltering. I have obeyed you; I have written and spoken for the cause. For two years I have withstood the blunder-headed starvelings who are the source of dissension and hate, the demagogues who seduce the people by violent demonstrations of pretended sympathy, and the poltroons who do homage to the coming powers.”