"The little Morvonnais, her mother tells me, sends me a kiss. What shall I give her in return for a thing so pure, so sweet as a child's kiss? It seems to me as if a lily had touched my cheek."
Glad would I run, my child, at thy soft call, Saying: "I love thee, I would like to kiss thee;" And when thy little arms, like two white wings, Thou openest wide to embrace me!
I have white lambs that often me caress, A dove as well lays on my lips its beak; But when a child doth give me soft embrace, 'Tis as a lily rested on my cheek;
Filling with balmy innocence my face, And making all my life more pure and mild; Pleasure ineffable, celestial grace! Who would not have thy kisses, blue-eyed child?
"A daughter ought to be so sweet a thing to her father! We should be to them almost as the angels are to God. Between brothers it is different; here there is less consideration and more freedom."
Under date May 13, 1837, she writes:--"A sorrow. We have got Trilby poorly--so ill that the poor beast will die. I was fond of my pretty little dog. I remember, too, that you used to be fond of her and to caress her, calling her _little rogue_. All kinds of memories attach themselves to Trilbette, and make me regret her. Small and great affections--everything leaves us and dies in its turn. The heart is like a tree surrounded with dead leaves....
"I have just had a young pigeon brought to me, which I am going to keep, and tame, and caress. It will replace Trilby. This poor heart always wants something to love; when it loses one object it takes another. I notice this, and that we keep loving without interruption, which shows our destination to eternal love. Nothing helps me better to understand heaven than to picture it to myself as the place of love; for if even here we cannot love for a moment without happiness, what will it be to love for ever?"
Maurice was, meanwhile, stung with the feeling that his life was a failure. He, indeed, resigned himself with a sense of hopeless indifference to his lot. It was in bitterness of soul, if with conscientious purpose, that he continued the monotonous, and to him uncongenial, task of teaching, when the bright dream of his youth had been so different--of poetry and literature, with his helpful sister Eugénie, if not a still dearer one, by his side. How different the stern reality! He reproached himself for his want of success. Entries in his journal at this time show the agony of soul of this sensitive plant, destined to live in the world's stony places. Here is one of June, 1835:--