the passionate heart of a courtesan in an absolutely pure soul; hence the enthusiasm that sometimes reddened her cheek, sanctified her brow, and made her exhale her soul like a flash of light, and communicated the sparkle of flame to all her motions.  Beauvouloir shuddered when he noticed this phenomenon, which we may call in these days the phosphorescence of thought; the old physician of that period regarded it as the precursor of death.

Hidden beside her father, Gabrielle endeavored to see Etienne at her ease, and her looks expressed as much curiosity as pleasure, as much kindliness as innocent daring.  Etienne detected her in stretching her neck around Beauvouloir with the movement of a timid bird looking out of its nest.  To her the young man seemed not feeble, but delicate; she found him so like herself that nothing alarmed her in this sovereign lord.  Etienne’s sickly complexion, his beautiful hands, his languid smile, his hair parted in the middle into two straight bands, ending in curls on the lace of his large flat collar, his noble brow, furrowed with youthful wrinkles,—­all these contrasts of luxury and weakness, power and pettiness, pleased her; perhaps they gratified the instinct of maternal protection, which is the germ of love; perhaps, also, they stimulated the need that every woman feels to find distinctive signs in the man she is prompted to love.  New ideas, new sensations were rising in each with a force, with an abundance that enlarged their souls; both remained silent and overcome, for sentiments are least demonstrative when most real and deep.  All durable love begins by dreamy meditation.  It was suitable that these two beings should first see each other in the softer light of the moon, that love and its splendors might not dazzle them too suddenly; it was well that they met by the shores of the Ocean,—­vast image of the vastness of their feelings.  They parted filled with one another, fearing, each, to have failed to please.

From his window Etienne watched the lights of the house where Gabrielle was.  During that hour of hope mingled with fear, the young poet found fresh meanings in Petrarch’s sonnets.  He had now seen Laura, a delicate, delightful figure, pure and glowing like a sunray, intelligent as an angel, feeble as a woman.  His twenty years of study found their meaning, he understood the mystic marriage of all beauties; he perceived how much of womanhood there was in the poems he adored; in short, he had so long loved unconsciously that his whole past now blended with the emotions of this glorious night.  Gabrielle’s resemblance to his mother seemed to him an order divinely given.  He did not betray his love for the one in loving the other; this new love continued her maternity.  He contemplated that young girl, asleep in the cottage, with the same feelings his mother had felt for him when he was there.  Here, again, was a similitude which bound this present to the past.  On the clouds of memory the saddened face of his mother