Innumerable repressed desires there were, shadows of passion so vague
yet so profound, so fugitive and yet so actual, that one scarcely
knows to what we may compare them. They are like perfumes, or clouds,
or rays of the sun, or shadows, or whatever there is in nature that
shines for a moment and disappears, that springs to life and dies,
leaving in the heart long echoes of emotion. When the soul is young
enough to nurture melancholy and far-off hope, to find in woman more
than a woman, is it not the greatest happiness that can befall a man
when he loves enough to feel more joy in touching a gloved hand, or a
lock of hair, in listening to a word, in casting a single look, than
in all the ardor of possession given by happy love? Thus it is that
rejected persons, those rebuffed by fate, the ugly and unfortunate,
lovers unrevealed, women and timid men, alone know the treasures
contained in the voice of the beloved. Taking their source and their
element from the soul itself, the vibrations of the air, charged with
passion, put our hearts so powerfully into communion, carrying thought
between them so lucidly, and being, above all, so incapable of
falsehood, that a single inflection of a voice is often a revelation.
What enchantments the intonations of a tender voice can bestow upon
the heart of a poet! What ideas they awaken! What freshness they shed
there! Love is in the voice before the glance avows it. Auguste, poet
after the manner of lovers (there are poets who feel, and poets who
express; the first are the happiest), Auguste had tasted all these
early joys, so vast, so fecund. SHE possessed the most winning organ
that the most artful woman of the world could have desired in order to
deceive at her ease; _she_ had that silvery voice which is soft to the
ear, and ringing only for the heart which it stirs and troubles,
caresses and subjugates.

And this woman went by night to the rue Soly through the rue Pagevin!