Page:The Rebellion in the Cevennes (Volume 2).djvu/38

Rh : "who now would speak of that with you?"

"A curious discourse that we are holding," said Lacoste cooly; "if you know nothing of it, so much the better for you, but at your age, I was so thoroughly in love and enraptured, that a mere touch from me would have made a thousand men in love, as by the magnet the bar of iron acquires the power of attraction. At that time, the earth, with all its stones, appeared to me transparent, I was so benevolent and affectionate, that I would willingly have given my eye-brows to the nightingales, that they might carry them to their nests, to make a bed for their young brood. And beautiful was my beloved, the blind might almost have been aware of it, she was even still more loving and compassionate than I was. She would indeed have voluntarily taken upon herself all the suffering and sorrows of the whole world, would have even suffered herself to be condemned, could she thereby have