It was during one of these walks that Lucile, hearing me speak rapturously of solitude, said, "You ought to write all that down." These words revealed the muse to me; a divine inspiration passed over me. I began to lisp verses, as though it were my natural language; day and night I sang my pleasures, in other words my valleys and my woods; I wrote a multitude of little idylls or pictures of nature[162]. I wrote in verse long before writing in prose: M. de Fontanes used to maintain that I had received both instruments. Did this talent which friendship foresaw for me ever really come to me? How many things have I awaited in vain! In the _Agamemnon_ of Æschylus, a slave is placed as sentry on the roof of the palace of Argos; his eyes seek to discern the concerted signal for the return of the ships; he sings to while away his vigils, but the hours speed by and the stars set, and the torch does not shine forth. When, after many years, its tardy light appears upon the billows, the slave is bent beneath the weight of time; there is naught left for him but to reap misfortunes, and the chorus says to him that "an old man is a shadow that wanders by day." Οναρ ἡμερόϕαντον ἀλαίνει Under the first spell of my inspiration, I engaged Lucile to do as I did. We spent days in mutual consultation, in communicating to each other what we had done and what we proposed to do. We undertook works in common; guided by our instincts, we translated the finest and saddest passages in Job and Lucretius upon life: the _Tædet animam meam vitæ meæ_[163], the _Homo natus de muliere_[164], the _Tum porro puer, ut sævis projectus ab undis navita_[165], and so forth. Lucile's thoughts were sheer feeling; they issued with difficulty from her soul; but when she succeeded in expressing them, there was nothing higher. She has left some thirty pages in manuscript; it is impossible to read them without profound emotion. The elegance, the suavity, the dreaminess, the passionate tenderness of these pages present a combination of the Greek and German genius[166]. * [Sidenote: Lucile's manuscript.]