love the toad which hides itself in the mud of stagnant
waters?"
"You are not an owl, and you are not a toad, for I have chosen you! The love which God has permitted me to bear blots out all sin and assuages all sorrow. Come with me and I shall give you happiness."
"No, no! My heart is cankered, and my lips have drunk the poison which kills souls, the poison which damns angels like you; don't look at me so, for my eyes will defile you and you will be like Juliette! . . ."
The mass was over, the vision disappeared. There arose a noise of moved chairs and heavy steps in the church, and the children of the choir put out the tapers on the altar. . . . Still kneeling, the girl was praying. Of her face I could distinguish only a profile lost in the shadow of the white veil. She got up, after making the sign of the cross. I had to move my chair to let her pass. She passed . . . and I felt a real joy, as though in refusing the love which she offered me in thought I had just now fulfilled a great duty.
She occupied my mind for a week. I resumed my furious walks through the moor, on the strand, and I wished I could conquer my passion. While walking, driven by the wind, carried along by that peculiar exaltation occasioned by rain pelting the sea shore, I imagined all sorts of romantic conversations with demoiselle Landudec and nocturnal adventures which took place in enchanted and lunar places. Like the characters in an opera, we vied with each other in sublime thought, in heroic sacrifices, in wonderful devotion; under the spell of the passionate rhythms and stirring recurrences of the song of the elements, we extended the boundaries of human self-denial. A sobbing orchestra accompanied the anguish of our voices.
"I love you! I love you!"
