When we had made the round of the building she said:
"This is my little world; you have seen all I possess, and my domain ends
here."
"Madame," I said, "as my father's name has secured for me the favor of
admittance here, permit me to return and I will believe that happiness
has not entirely forgotten me."
She extended her hand and I touched it with respect, not daring to raise
it to my lips.
I returned home, closed my door and retired. There danced before my eyes
a little white house; I saw myself walking through the village and
knocking at the garden gate. "Oh! my poor heart!" I cried. "God be
praised, you are still young, you are still capable of life and of love!"
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, it is
all the same."
I loved. During the three months we had taken many long walks; I was
initiated into the mysteries of her modest charity; we passed through
dark streets, she on her little horse, I on foot, a small stick in my
hand; thus, half conversing, half dreaming, we knocked at the doors of
cottages. 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.
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