I remained for a long time in this strange calm. Just as the man who
receives a thrust from a poignard feels, at first only the cold steel;
when he has gone some distance on his way he becomes weak, his eyes start
from their sockets and he asks what has happened. But drop by drop the
blood flows, the ground under his feet becomes red; death comes; the man,
at his approach, shudders with horror and falls as though struck by a
thunderbolt. Thus, apparently calm, I awaited the coming of misfortune; I
repeated in a low voice what Brigitte had said, and I placed near her all
that I supposed she would need for the night; I looked at her, and then
went to the window and pressed my forehead against the pane, peering out
at a somber and lowering sky; then I returned to the bedside. That I was
going away to-morrow was the only thought in my mind and, little by
little, the word "depart" became intelligible to me. "Ah! God!" I
suddenly cried, "my poor mistress, I am going to lose you and I have not
known how to love you!"
I trembled at these words as though it had been another who had
pronounced them; they resounded through all my being as resounds the
string of the harp that has been plucked to the point of breaking. In an
instant two years of suffering traversed my heart, and after them, as
their consequence and as their last expression, the present seized me.
How shall I describe such woe? By a single word, perhaps, for those who
have loved.
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