From the plains, the mists rose slowly; reluctant yet to quit so fair a mead. At those green slopings, Pierre reined in his steeds, and soon the twain were seated on the bank, gazing far, and far away; over many a grove and lake; corn-crested uplands, and Herd's-grass lowlands; and long-stretching swales of vividest green, betokening where the greenest bounty of this earth seeks its winding channels; as ever, the most heavenly bounteousness most seeks the lowly places; making green and glad many a humble mortal's breast, and leaving to his own lonely aridness, many a hill-top prince's state. But Grief, not Joy, is a moralizer; and small moralizing wisdom caught Pierre from that scene. With Lucy's hand in his, and feeling, softly feeling of its soft tinglingness; he seemed as one placed in linked correspondence with the summer lightnings; and by sweet shock on shock, receiving intimating fore-tastes of the etherealest delights of earth. Now, prone on the grass he falls, with his attentive upward glance fixed on Lucy's eyes. "Thou art my heaven, Lucy; and here I lie thy shepherd-king, watching for new eye-stars to rise in thee. Ha! I see Venus' transit now;--lo! a new planet there;--and behind all, an infinite starry nebulousness, as if thy being were backgrounded by some spangled vail of mystery." Is Lucy deaf to all these ravings of his lyric love? Why looks she down, and vibrates so; and why now from her over-charged lids, drops such warm drops as these? No joy now in Lucy's eyes, and seeming tremor on her lips. "Ah! thou too ardent and impetuous Pierre!" "Nay, thou too moist and changeful April! know'st thou not, that the moist and changeful April is followed by the glad, assured, and showerless joy of June? And this, Lucy, this day should be thy June, even as it is the earth's?" "Ah Pierre! not June to me. But say, are not the sweets of June made sweet by the April tears?" "Ay, love! but here fall more drops,--more and more;--these showers are longer than beseem the April, and pertain not to the June." "June! June!--thou bride's month of the summer,--following the spring's sweet courtship of the earth,--my June, my June is yet to come!" "Oh! yet to come, but fixedly decreed;--good as come, and better." "Then no flower that, in the bud, the April showers have nurtured; no such flower may untimely perish, ere the June unfolds it? Ye will not swear that, Pierre?" "The audacious immortalities of divinest love are in me; and I now swear to thee all the immutable eternities of joyfulness, that ever woman dreamed of, in this dream-house of the earth. A god decrees to thee unchangeable felicity; and to me, the unchallenged possession of thee and them, for my inalienable fief.--Do I rave? Look on me, Lucy; think on me, girl." "Thou art young, and beautiful, and strong; and a joyful manliness invests thee, Pierre; and thy intrepid heart never yet felt the touch of fear;--But--" "But what?" "Ah, my best Pierre!"