Most generally we used to travel back over the past, step by step, and recall with scrupulous minuteness every place, circumstance, and hour which had brought on, or marked the beginning of our love,--like some young girl who has scattered by the way the unstrung pearls of her precious necklace, and returns upon her steps, her eyes bent upon the ground, to find and gather them up, one by one. We would not lose the recollection of one of those places, or one of those hours, for fear of losing at the same time the hoarded memory of a single joy. We remembered the mountains of Savoy; the valley of Chambéry; the torrents and the lake; the mossy ground, sometimes in shade and sometimes dappled with light, beneath the outstretched arms of the chestnut-trees; the rays between the branches, the glimpse of sky through the leafy dome above our heads, the blue expanse and the white sails at our feet; our first unsought meetings in the mountain paths; our mutual conjectures; our encounters on the lake before we knew each other, sailing in our boats in contrary directions, her dark hair waving in the wind, my indifferent attitude; our looks averted from the crowd; the double enigma that we were to each other, of which the answer was to be eternal love; then the fatal day of the tempest, and her fainting; the mournful night of prayers and tears; the waking in heaven; our return together by moonlight through the avenue of poplars, her hand in mine; her warm tears which my lips had drunk, the first words in which our souls had spoken; our joys, our parting,--we remembered all. We never wearied of these details. It was as though we had related some story which was not our own. But what was there henceforth in the universe save ourselves? O inexhaustible curiosity of love, thou art not only a childish delight of the hour, thou art love itself, which never tires of contemplating what it possesses, treasures up every impression, each hair, each thrill, each blush, each sigh of the loved one, as a reason for loving more, as a means of feeding anew with each memory the flame of enthusiasm, in which it joys to be consumed! LXXX.