As the Pyrenees rose up on the horizon, my heart beat: from the depth of three and twenty years issued memories to which the perspective of time gave added beauty; I was returning from Palestine and Spain, when I caught sight of the summits of those mountains from the other side of their chain. I agree with Madame de Motteville; I think that it was in one of those castles of the Pyrenees that Urganda the Unknown dwelt. The past is like a museum of antiquities; in it one visits the hours that have elapsed; each one can recognise his own. One day, walking about a deserted church, I heard footsteps dragging along the flag-stones, like those of an old man in search of his tomb. I looked round and saw nobody; it was I that had awakened myself. [Sidenote: Romance at Cauterets.] The happier I was at Cauterets, the greater pleasure did I take in the melancholy of what was ended. The narrow and confined valley is enlivened by a mountain torrent; beyond the town and the mineral springs, it divides into two defiles, one of which, famous for its sites, ends in the Pont d'Espagne and glaciers. I benefited by the baths; I made long excursions alone, imagining myself on the steeps of the Sabina. I made every effort to be sad, and could not succeed. I wrote a few stanzas on the Pyrenees[153]; it was impossible for me to finish my ode: I had draped my drum lugubriously to beat the troop of the visions of my past nights; but ever, amid these visions recalled, mingled some dreams of the moment, whose happy look foiled the air of consternation of their older fellows. One day as I was versifying I met a young woman seated beside the torrent; she rose and walked straight towards me: she knew, by the rumour of the hamlet, that I was at Cauterets. It appeared that the stranger was an Occitanian[154] lady who had been writing to me for two years without my having ever seen her: my mysterious anonymous correspondent unveiled: _patuit Dea._ I went to pay a respectful visit to the naiad of the torrent. One evening she saw me to the door as I was leaving, and wanted to go with me; I was obliged to carry her indoors in my arms. I never felt so ashamed; to inspire a sort of attachment at my age seemed to me really ridiculous; the more I might have been flattered by this oddness, the more humiliated was I, rightly taking it for a mockery. I would gladly have hidden myself for shame among the bears, our neighbours. I was far from saying to myself what Montaigne said: "Love would restore me the vigilancy, sobriety, grace and care of my person[155]."