But all the rest was confused: place, occasion,
and the figure itself, for I saw neither the face nor its expression.
The whole was like a fluttering veil under which the enigma--the secret
of happiness--might have been hidden. And I was awake enough to be sure
that it was not a dream.
In impressions like these we recognize the last trace of things which
are sinking out of sight and call within us, of memories which are
perishing. It is like a shimmering marsh-light falling upon some vague
outline of which one scarcely knows whether it represents a pain or a
pleasure--a gleam upon a grave. How strange! One might almost call such
things the ghosts of the soul, reflections of past happiness, the
_manes_ of our dead emotions. If, as the Talmud, I think, says, every
feeling of love gives birth involuntarily to an invisible genius or
spirit which yearns to complete its existence, and these glimmering
phantoms, which have never taken to themselves form and reality, are
still wandering in the limbo of the soul, what is there to astonish us
in the strange apparitions which sometimes come to visit our pillow? At
any rate, the fact remains that I was not able to force the phantom to
tell me its name, nor to give any shape or distinctness to my
reminiscence.
What a melancholy aspect life may wear to us when we are floating down
the current of such dreamy thoughts as these! It seems like some vast
nocturnal shipwreck in which a hundred loving voices are clamoring for
help, while the pitiless mounting wave is silencing all the cries one by
one, before we have been able, in this darkness of death, to press a
hand or give the farewell kiss.
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