When Brigitte spoke thus I experienced a feeling that resembled avarice; I caught her in my arms and cried: 

“Oh, God!  I know not whether it is with joy or with fear that I tremble.  I am about to carry off my treasure.  Die, my youth; die, all memories of the past; die, all cares and regrets!  Oh, my, good, my brave Brigitte!  You have made a man out of a child.  If I lose you now, I shall never love again.  Perhaps, before I knew you, another woman might have cured me; but now you alone, of all the world, have power to destroy me or to save me, for I bear in my heart the wound of all the evil I have done you.  I have been an ingrate, blind and cruel.  God be praised!  You love me still.  If you ever return to that home under whose lindens I first met you, look carefully about that deserted house; you will find a phantom there, for the man who left it, and went away with you, is not the man who entered it.”

“Is it true?” said Brigitte, and her face, all radiant with love, was raised to heaven; “is it true that I am yours?  Yes, far from this odious world in which you have grown old before your time, yes, my child, you shall really love.  I shall have you as you are, and, wherever we go you will make me forget the possibility of a day when you will no longer love me.  My mission will have been accomplished, and I shall always be thankful for it.”

Finally we decided to go to Geneva and then choose some resting place in the Alps.  Brigitte was enthusiastic about the lake; I thought I could already breathe the air which floats over its surface, and the odor of the verdure-clad valley; already I beheld Lausanne, Vevey, Oberland, and in the distance the summits of Monte Rosa and the immense plain of Lombardy.  Already oblivion, repose, travel, all the delights of happy solitude invited us; already, when in the evening with joined hands, we looked at each other in silence, we felt rising within us that sentiment of strange grandeur which takes possession of the heart on the eve of a long journey, the mysterious and indescribable vertigo which has in it something of the terrors of exile and the hopes of pilgrimage.  Are there not in the human mind wings that flutter and sonorous chords that vibrate?  How shall I describe it?  Is there not a world of meaning in the simple words:  “All is ready, we are about to go”?

Suddenly Brigitte became languid; she bowed her head in silence.  When I asked her whether she was in pain, she said “No!” in a voice that was scarcely audible; when I spoke of our departure, she arose, cold and resigned, and continued her preparations; when I swore to her that she was going to be happy, and that I would consecrate my life to her, she shut herself up in her room and wept; when I kissed her she turned pale, and averted her eyes as my lips approached hers; when I told her that nothing had yet been done, that it was not too late to renounce our plans, she frowned severely; when I begged her to open her heart to me and told her I would die rather than cause her one regret, she threw her arms about my neck, then stopped and repulsed me as if involuntarily.  Finally, I entered her room holding in my hand a ticket on which our places were marked for the carriage to Besancon.  I approached her and placed it in her lap; she stretched out her hand, screamed, and fell unconscious at my feet.