Chapter XXIX

The lovely garden blossoming with flames that
seemed to us the double or the mirror of the
bright garden we carried in our hearts is
crystallized in frost and gold this evening.

A great white silence has descended and sits
yonder on the marble horizons, towards which
march the trees in files, with their blue,
immense and regular shadow beside them.

No puff of wind, no breath. Alone, the great
veils of cold spread from plain to plain over the
silver marshes or crossing roads.

The stars appear to live. The hoar-frost shines
like steel through the translucent, frozen air.
Bright powdered metals seem to snow down, in the
infinite distances, from the pallor of a copper
moon. Everything sparkles in the stillness.

And it is the divine hour when the mind is
haunted by the thousand glances that are cast
upon earth by kind and pure and unchangeable
eternity towards the hazards of human
wretchedness.

XXX

If it should ever happen that, without our
knowledge, we became a pain or torment or despair
one to the other;

If it should come about that weariness or
hackneyed pleasure unbent in us the golden bow of
lofty desire;

If the crystal of pure thought must fall in our
hearts and break;

If, in spite of all, I should feel myself
vanquished because I had not bowed my will
sufficiently to the divine immensity of goodness;

Then, oh! then let us embrace like two sublime
madmen who beneath the broken skies cling to the
summits even so--and with one flight and soul
ablaze grow greater in death.

THE HOURS OF AFTERNOON