CHAPTER IV.
A HEART UNDER A STONE.
The reduction of the Universe to a single being, the expansion of asingle being as far as God,--such is love.
Love is the salutation of the angels to the stars.
How sad the soul is when it is sad through love! What a void is theabsence of the being who of her own self fills the world! Oh, how trueit is that the beloved being becomes God! We might understand how Godmight be jealous, had not the Father of all evidently made creation forthe soul, and the soul for love.
The soul only needs to see a smile in a white crape bonnet in order toenter the palace of dreams.
God is behind everything, but everything conceals God. Things areblack and creatures are opaque, but to love a being is to render hertransparent.
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when the soul iskneeling, no matter what the attitude of the body may be.
Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand chimerical things, which,however, have their reality. They are prevented seeing each other,and they cannot write, but they find a number of mysterious ways tocorrespond. They send to each other the song of birds, the light ofthe sun, the sighs of the breeze, the rays of the stars, and the wholeof creation; and why should they not? All the works of God are made toserve love. Love is sufficiently powerful to interest all nature withits messages.
Oh, Spring, thou art a letter which I write to her.
The future belongs even more to hearts than to minds. Loving is theonly thing which can occupy and fill the immensity, for the infiniteneeds the inexhaustible.
Love is a portion of the soul itself, and is of the same nature asit. Like it, it is the divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible,indivisible, and imperishable. It is a point of fire within us,which is immortal and infinite; which nothing can limit, and nothingextinguish. We feel it burning even in the marrow of our bones, and seeits flashing in the depths of the heavens.
Oh, love! adoration! voluptuousness of two minds which comprehend eachother, of two hearts which are exchanged, of two glances that penetrateone another! You will come to me, oh happiness, will you not? Walkswith her in the solitudes, blest and radiant days! I have dreamed thatfrom time to time hours were detached from the lives of the angels,and came down here to traverse the destinies of men.
God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love, except givingthem endless duration. After a life of love, an eternity of love is intruth an augmentation; but it is impossible even for God to increase inits intensity the ineffable felicity which love gives to the soul inthis world. God is the fulness of heaven, love is the fulness of man.
You gaze at a star for two motives, because it is luminous and becauseit is impenetrable. You have by your side a sweeter radiance andgreater mystery,--woman.
All of us, whoever we may be, have our respirable beings. If they failus, air fails us, and we stifle and die. Dying through want of love isfrightful, for it is the asphyxia of the soul.
When love has blended and moulded two beings in an angelic and sacredunion, they have found the secret of life; henceforth they are only thetwo terms of the same destiny, the two wings of one mind. Love and soar!
On the day when a woman who passes before you emits light as she walks,you are lost, for you love. You have from that moment but one thing todo; think of her so intently that she will be compelled to think ofyou.
What love begins can only be completed by God.
True love is in despair, or enchanted by a lost glove or a foundhandkerchief, and it requires eternity for its devotion and its hopes.It is composed at once of the infinitely great and the infinitelylittle.
If you are a stone, be a magnet; if you are a plant, be sensitive; ifyou are a man, be love.
Nothing is sufficient for love. You have happiness and you wish forParadise. You have Paradise, and you crave for heaven. Oh, ye wholove each other, all this is in love, contrive to find it there.Love has, equally with heaven, contemplation, and more than heaven,voluptuousness.
Does she still go to the Luxembourg? No, sir.--Does she attend mass inthat church? She does not go there any longer.--Does she still live inthis house? She has removed.--Where has she gone to live? She did notleave her address.
What a gloomy thing it is not to know where to find one's soul.
Love has its childishness, and other passions have their littleness.Shame on the passions that makes a man little! Honor to the one whichmakes him a child!
It is a strange thing, are you aware of it? I am in the night. There isa being who vanished and took heaven with her.
Oh! to lie side by side in the same tomb, hand in hand, and to gentlycaress a finger from time to time in the darkness, would suffice for myeternity.
You who suffer because you love, love more than ever. To die of love isto live through it.
Love, a gloomy starry transfiguration, is mingled with this punishment,and there is ecstasy in the agony.
Oh, joy of birds! they sing because they have the nest.
Love is the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of Paradise.
Profound hearts, wise minds, take life as God makes it; it is a longtrial, an unintelligible preparation for the unknown destiny. Thisdestiny, the true one, begins for man with the first step in theinterior of the tomb. Then something appears to him, and he beginsto distinguish the definite. The definite, reflect on that word. Theliving see the infinite, but the definite only shows itself to thedead. In the mean while, love and suffer, hope and contemplate. Woe,alas, to the man who has only loved bodies, shapes, and appearances!Death will strip him of all that. Try to love souls, and you will meetthem again.
I have met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hatwas old, his coat worn, the elbows in holes; the water passed throughhis shoes, and the stars through his soul.
What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a grander thing still tolove! The heart becomes heroic by the might of passion. Henceforth itis composed of nought but what is pure, and is only supported by whatis elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no more germinate in itthan a nettle on a glacier. The lofty and serene soul, inaccessibleto emotions and vulgar passions, soaring above the clouds andshadows of the world,--follies, falsehoods, hatreds, vanities, andmiseries,--dwells in the azure of the sky, and henceforth only feelsthe profound and subterranean heavings of destiny as the summit of themountains feels earthquakes.
If there were nobody who loved, the sun would be extinguished.