One evening I was with Madame Pierson. More than three months had passed, during which I had seen her almost every day; and what can I say of that time except that I saw her? "To be with those we love," said Bruyere, "suffices; to dream, to talk to them, not to talk to them, to think of them, to think of the most indifferent things, but to be near them, that is all." I loved. During the three months we had taken many long walks; I was initiated into the mysteries of her modest charities; we passed through dark streets, she on her pony, I on foot, a small stick in my hand; thus half conversing, half dreaming, we went from cottage to cottage. There was a little bench near the edge of the wood where I was accustomed to rest after dinner; we met here regularly, as though by chance. In the morning, music, reading; in the evening, cards with the aunt as in the days of my father; and she always there, smiling, her presence filling my heart. By what road, O Providence! have you led me? What irrevocable destiny am I to accomplish? What! a life so free, an intimacy so charming, so much repose, such buoyant hope! O God! Of what do men complain? What is there sweeter than love? To live, yes, to feel intensely, profoundly, that one exists, that one is a sentient man, created by God, that is the first, the greatest gift of love. We can not deny, however, that love is a mystery, inexplicable, profound. With all the chains, with all the pains, and I may even say, with all the disgust with which the world has surrounded it, buried as it is under a mountain of prejudices which distort and deprave it, in spite of all the ordure through which it has been dragged, love, eternal and fatal love, is none the less a celestial law as powerful and as incomprehensible as that which suspends the sun in the heavens. What is this mysterious bond, stronger and more durable than iron, that can neither be seen nor touched? What is there in meeting a woman, in looking at her, in speaking one word to her, and then never forgetting her? Why this one rather than that one? Invoke the aid of reason, of habit, of the senses, the head, the heart, and explain it if you can. You will find nothing but two bodies, one here, the other there, and between them, what? Air, space, immensity. O blind fools! who fondly imagine yourselves men, and who reason of love! Have you talked with it? No, you have felt it. You have exchanged a glance with a passing stranger, and suddenly there flies out from you something that can not be defined, that has no name known to man. You have taken root in the ground like the seed concealed in the turf which feels the life within it, and which is on its way to maturity.