"O God! I know not whether it is with joy or with fear that I tremble. I am about to carry off my treasure. Die, my youth, die all memories of the past, die, all cares and regrets! O my good, brave mistress! You have made a man out of a child. If I lose you now, I will never love again. Perhaps, before I knew you, another woman might have cured me; but now you, alone, of all the world, have power to destroy me or to save me, for I bear on my heart the wound of all the evil I have done you. I have been an ingrate, blind and cruel. God be praised! You love me still. If you ever return to that home under whose lindens, where I first met you, look carefully about that deserted house; you will find a fantom there, for the man who left it, and went away with you, is not the man who entered it." "Is it true?" said Brigitte, and her head, all radiant with love, was raised to heaven; "is it true that I am yours? Yes, far from this odious world in which you have grown old before your time--yes, my child, you are going to love. I will have you, such as you are, and wherever we go you will forget the day when you will no longer love me. My mission will have been accomplished, and I shall always be thankful for it." Finally, we decided to go to Geneva and then choose some resting-place in the Alps. Brigitte was enthusiastic about the lake; I thought I could already breathe the air which floats over its surface and the odor of the verdure-clad valley; already Lausanne, Vevay, Oberland and beyond the summits of Monte Rosa and the immense plain of Lombardy; already, oblivion, repose, flight, all the delights of happy solitude, invited us; already, when in the evening with joined hands, we looked at one another in silence, we felt rising within us that sentiment of strange grandeur which takes possession of the heart on the eve of a long journey, mysterious and indescribable vertigo, which has in it something of the terrors of exile and the hopes of a pilgrimage. Are there not in the human mind wings that flutter and sonorous chords that vibrate? How shall I describe it? Is there not a world of meaning in the simple words: "All is ready, we are about to go"?