I forgot my age, my
obligations, my duties, my vexations, and youth leaped within me as
though life were beginning again. It was as though something explosive
had caught fire, and one's soul were scattered to the four winds; in
such a mood one would fain devour the whole world, experience
everything, see everything. Faust's ambition enters into one, universal
desire--a horror of one's own prison cell. One throws off one's hair
shirt, and one would fain gather the whole of nature into one's arms and
heart. O ye passions, a ray of sunshine is enough to rekindle you all!
The cold black mountain is a volcano once more, and melts its snowy
crown with one single gust of flaming breath. It is the spring which
brings about these sudden and improbable resurrections, the spring
which, sending a thrill and tumult of life through all that lives, is
the parent of impetuous desires, of overpowering inclinations, of
unforeseen and inextinguishable outbursts of passion. It breaks through
the rigid bark of the trees, and rends the mask on the face of
asceticism; it makes the monk tremble in the shadow of his convent, the
maiden behind the curtains of her room, the child sitting on his school
bench, the old man bowed under his rheumatism.
"O Hymen, Hymenae!"
April 24, 1869.
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