Kansas University Weekly.
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burning kiss, and now she lived for him alone.
The sun was her joy,her glory,her triumph; she arose at the very moment when he cast his first rays in the heavens; she fixed her eyes upon him,and saluted him with her gaze,as the birds salute him with their songs,as the river salutes him with its murmur,as the rose salutes him with his perfume.
The fairer nature was at sunrise, the calmer the heavens, the happier was the poor woman. Was it not her divine lover who sent in all places warmth and light?
Was not he king of the world, the master of creation? The soul of the world was her soul, hers!
Thus, in a perpetual and divine ecstacy, she gathered his faintest beams. The higher the sun mounted in the heavens, the more her poetic enthusiasm increased. She could scarcely be induced to take her daily repasts, so absorbed was she by her celestial passion. It was necessary to tell her that her divine lover had gilded these fruits, had yellowed this grain, had ripened these grapes. Thus she had a right to seat herself at this immense table which the sun loads with viands on his journey.
She made libations to the sun, she poured milk in his honor in the morning and emptied her glass to his health. Then when the day was fading and the sun gradually disappeared in the Seine, she became as restless as the wife of a poor fisherman, whose husband has been long absent and who hears the roaring of the sea.
“What will happen to my beloved? God grant that he may not wound himself on the way!"
Strange and happy madness; sweet delirium! To know that her soul was attached to heaven by a sunbeam; to have no other passion than that, a serene sky; to know nought to fear save the clouds veiling the star of day; to be happy whenever nature is happy; to open her soul to the sweet warmth as does the earth, and to receive its benificent influence; to sing softly a song to her love, and to be jealous only of the grass of the fields.
Such was the life of this poor woman for two
years. Not that she was without her griefs; for when winter came and she saw the face of the sun grow pale and tremble under the snow, like a young man wounded to the death, when she saw this immense glory obscured by thick clouds—as sometimes happens to the greatest men on the earth below, whose glory is obscured by envy—then the unhappy woman became the saddest of human creatures.
No more smiles, no more songs. Do you not see her lover who freezes and trembles up there, resting his weary head on the icy mountains?
How long and sad seemed the winter days! It was a real incredible suffering, a passion such as the privileged companions of great, unhappy men experience.
The loftier her lover's station the more impatiently she endured the great grief of seeing him humiliated, obscured, trembling, misunderstood, vanquished, captive.
It was like the grief of the mother of the Emperor when she saw her son chained to his rock in the middle of the sea. But the grief of this noble mother is an eternal grief. Her fallen star will never rise again. The sun is more fortunate; his defeat is transient; he has soon pierced the thickest cloud; he is victor, he returns, behold him! The sun has twice each year his hundred days.
When, in springtime, the poor woman found again her lover as she had left him; in the month of May when she saw him again, resplendent as ever, and all the leaves flashed at his coming like the spark under the hammer of the smith, then sweet joy returned to her heart; then she quitted her mourning; she put on her gayest dress, she sang her sweetest song.
"Rejoice in the heavens and on the earth; rejoice, stars of the firmament, and you, waves of the river! You, angels above, and you, men below, rejoice! My lover, the sun, was ill, and he is well. He was absent, and he has returned!"
And in truth all nature obeyed the poor woman; all nature rejoiced.
This happy mania lasted ten years without being cured. But the woman was so happy!