a sentient man, created by God, that is the first, the greatest gift of
love. We can not deny, however, that love is a mystery, inexplicable,
profound. With all the chains, with all the pains, and I may even say,
with all the disgust with which the world has surrounded it, buried as it
is under a mountain of prejudices which distort and deprave it, in spite
of all the ordure through which it has been dragged, love, eternal and
fatal love, is none the less a celestial law as powerful and as
incomprehensible as that which suspends the sun in the heavens.

What is this mysterious bond, stronger and more durable than iron, that
can neither be seen nor touched? What is there in meeting a woman, in
looking at her, in speaking one word to her, and then never forgetting
her? Why this one rather than that one? Invoke the aid of reason, of
habit, of the senses, the head, the heart, and explain it if you can.
You will find nothing but two bodies, one here, the other there, and
between them, what? Air, space, immensity. O blind fools! who fondly
imagine yourselves men, and who reason of love! Have you talked with it?
No, you have felt it. You have exchanged a glance with a passing
stranger, and suddenly there flies out from you something that can not be
defined, that has no name known to man. You have taken root in the
ground like the seed concealed in the turf which feels the life within
it, and which is on its way to maturity.

We were alone, the window was open, the murmur of a little fountain came
to us from the garden. O God! would that I could count, drop by drop,
all the water that fell while we were sitting there, while she was
talking and I was answering. It was there that I became intoxicated with
her to the point of madness.

It is said that there is nothing so rapid as a feeling of antipathy, but