Moriaz; I came to bid him farewell.I leave this evening."She summoned courage and replied: "You did well to come; you left a volume of Shakespeare--here it is." Then drawing from her notebook a paper--"I have still another restitution to make to you.I have had the misfortune to discover that it was you who wrote this letter."With these words she handed him the anonymous note.He changed countenance, and it was now his turn to grow red."Who can prove to you," he demanded, "that I am the author of this offence, or rather crime?""Every bad case may be denied, but do not you deny."After a moment's silence, he replied: "I will not lie, I am not capable of lying.Yes, I am the guilty one; I confess it with sorrow, because you are offended by my audacity.""I never liked madrigals, either in prose or verse, signed or anonymous," she returned, rather dryly.
He exclaimed, "You took this letter for a madrigal?" Then, having reread it, he deliberately tore it up, throwing the pieces into the fireplace, and added, smiling: "It certainly lacked common-sense; he who wrote it is a fool, and I have nothing to say in his defence."Crossing her hands on her breast, and uplifting to him her brown eyes, that were as proud as gentle, she softly murmured, "What more?""I came to Chur," he replied, "I entered a church, I there saw a fair unknown, and I forgot myself in gazing at her.That evening I saw her again; she was walking in a garden where there was music, and this music of harps and violins was grateful to me.I said within myself:
'What a thing is the heart of man! The woman who has passed me by without seeing me does not know me, will never know of my existence; Iam ignorant of even her name, and I wish to remain so, but I am conscious that she exists, and I am glad, content, almost happy.She will be for me the fair unknown; she cannot prevent me from remembering her.I will think sometimes of the fair unknown of Chur.' ""Very good," said she, "but this does not explain the letter.""We are coming to that," he continued."I was seated in a copse, by the roadside.I had the blues--was profoundly weary; there are times when life weighs on me like a torturing burden.I thought of disappointed expectations, of dissipated illusions, of the bitterness of my youth and of my future.You passed by on the road, and I said to myself, 'There is good in life, because of such encounters, in which we catch renewed glimpses of what was once pleasant for us to see.' ""And the note?" she asked again, in a dreamy tone.
He went on: "I never was a philosopher; wisdom consists in performing only useful actions, and I was born with a taste for the useless.That evening I saw you climb a hill, in order to gather some flowers; the hill was steep and you could not reach the flowers.I gathered them for you, and, in sending my bouquet, I could not resist the temptation of adding a word.'Before doing penance,' I said to myself, 'let me commit this one folly; it shall be the last.' We always flatter ourselves that each folly will be our last.The unfortunate note had scarcely gone, when I regretted having sent it; I would have given much to have had it back; I felt all its impropriety; I have dealt justly by it in tearing it to pieces.My only excuse was my firm resolution not to meet you, not to make your acquaintance.Chance ordered otherwise: I was presented to you, you know by whom, and how;I ended by coming here every evening, but I rebelled against my own weakness, I condemned myself to absence for a few days, so as to break a dangerous habit, and, thank God! I have broken my chain."She lightly tapped the floor with the tip of her foot, and demanded with the air of a queen recalling a subject to his allegiance, "Are you to be believed?"He had spoken in a half-serious, half-jesting tone, tinged with the playful melancholy that was natural to him.He changed countenance, his face flushed, and he cried out abruptly, "I regained my strength and will on the summit of Morteratsch, and I only return to bid you farewell, and to give you the assurance that I never will see you again.""It is a strange case," she replied; "but I pardon you, on condition that you do not execute your threat.You are resolved to be wise; the wise avoid extremes.You will remember that you have friends in Paris.
My father has many connections; if we can be of service to you in any way--"He did not permit her to finish, and responded proudly: "I thank you, with all my heart.I have sworn to be under obligations to none but myself.""Very well," she replied, "you will visit us for our pleasure.In a month we shall be at Cormeilles."He shook his head in sign of refusal.She looked fixedly at him, and said, "It must be so."This look, these words, sent to Count Abel's brain such a thrill of joy and of hope that for a moment he thought he had betrayed himself.
He nearly fell on his knees before Mlle.Moriaz, but, speedily mastering his emotions, he bowed gravely, casting down his eyes.She herself immediately resumed her usual voice and manner, and questioned him on his journey.He told her, in reply, that he proposed to go by the route of Soleure, and to stay there a day in order to visit in Gurzelengasse the house where Kosciuszko, the greatest of Poles, had died.He had thought of this pilgrimage for a long time.He added:
"Still another useless action.Ah! when shall I improve?""Don't improve too much," she said, smiling.And then he went away.
M.Moriaz returned to the hotel about noon: his guide being engaged elsewhere, he had taken only a short ramble.After breakfast his daughter proposed to him that he should go down with her to the banks of the lake.They made the descent, which is not difficult.This pretty piece of water, that has been falsely accused of resembling a shaving-dish, is said to be not less than a mile in length.When the father and daughter reached the entrance of the woods that pedestrians pass through in going to Pontresina, they seated themselves on the grass at the foot of a larch.They remained some time silent.
