August 25, 1833

Tomorrow it will be a year since I left for R... with Eugénie. Sweet anniversary. Tomorrow will also be a day of travel for me. I am going to La Brousse to spend a few days of friendship and consolation with my dear François.

September 1, 1833

My God, so this is how all things end: regrets, tears! It is an hour since I returned from a charming little journey, and I weep like a child, consuming myself in longing for a happiness I should have taken without attaching myself to it, knowing it must be very brief; but it is always so. Whenever I encounter some little happiness, it is desolation when we must part, because I know I shall fall back into myself and resume my painful routine.

September 3, 1833

Here I am grappling with a terrible situation, I, the weakest of all characters, the most timid of all wills.

September 26, 1833

The memories that attach themselves to the things of nature. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ploërmel, October 1, 1833

I do not know what stopped me short in the very middle of my sentence; but I wished to express what came into my soul at the sight of a thick fog weighing upon the countryside. When the sun had risen a little above the horizon, I saw all this mist gradually clearing, becoming suffused with light, and beginning its ascent toward the sky, where it soon vanished. Not a quarter of an hour passed before the most beautiful serenity prevailed; but for some time after the center of the horizon had cleared, I could still see a few trails of mist running along the distant ridges like the last fugitives of a routed army, and it was to this that my memory and my unfinished sentence were attached. Last year, at the same season, I too watched the fogs rise into the sky and uncover the mountains’ heads, and in those majestic regions the spectacle assumed a character of infinite grandeur. One might have thought one saw the ancient darkness flying away, God lifting with his hand, like a sculptor, the cloth that veiled his work, and the earth exposed in all the purity of its first forms to the rays of the first sun. But that is still not the full meaning of my memory. Often, at the moment when the fog began to detach itself from the earth and become transparent, and I, my forehead pressed against the window, watched the fog at work, a blue dress... — My God, how beautiful the sky is this evening! While writing I turned my head toward the window, and my gaze was flooded with tones so gentle, so soft, so velvety; I saw so many marvelous things upon the horizon that I could not help setting down here this exclamation of delight. It is autumn twilight in all its melancholy. The distant clusters of woods wonderfully limit the reach of sight with their majestic plumes and fanciful undulations. The trees that stand apart, whether through their position or the greatness of their stature, present countenances, characters, I would almost say faces, seeming to express the silent passions and unknown things that perhaps take place beneath the bark of these motionless beings. With their attitudes and the carriage of their heads, they seem to play some mysterious scene I cannot name in the evening glow. Every day since I have been here, twilight gives me these magnificent performances.

— A blue dress, I say, would pass swiftly through the mist and disappear into that white darkness, like the azure bird that darts so quickly along ponds and streams. Sometimes this apparition would flee singing, leaving behind something like a trail of silvery notes unfolding with an ineffable swiftness and melody. A quarter of an hour later, when the atmosphere was clear and the fog’s trailing tail still crept upon the summits of the most distant mountains, I would see L... returning with a slow step and a serious air, like a philosopher coming back from meditation.

— I wept over departures last year and this year, almost date for date. These regrets must not be compared; their natures are too different: they resemble one another only in their depth. Both are inexpressible. If I were determined at all costs to place them side by side, I would say that last year, in September, at two o’clock in the afternoon, in beautiful sunlight, I said farewell to that happiness one encounters at a certain passage along life’s road, which leads one a few leagues, speaking of delightful things in an angel’s words, and then suddenly, at a crossroads, takes the left if one must take the right, saying with a teasing sweetness: ‘Traveler! Farewell, traveler, go well upon your way.’ And I would add that this year, in September, at four in the afternoon, in gray and misty weather, I embraced in parting a man whom I love with that ardent affection which resembles no other, kindled deep within the soul by some strange power I cannot name, reserved for men of genius. M. Féli led me through life for nine months, at the end of which the fatal crossroads appeared. — The habit of living with him meant that I paid no attention to what was happening within my soul; but since I no longer see him, I have found there something like a great rent made at the moment of parting.

October 2, 1833

Six o’clock in the evening. This is the moment when memories return to me by the thousand, like the birds that, at the same hour, flock to the meeting place they have chosen in a great poplar, where they chatter in confusion until night puts them to sleep. The sunset is enchanting. The clouds which escorted it westward open upon the horizon like a group of courtiers who see the king approaching, then close again after he passes. Once the sun has set, some of those clouds return and rise again into the sky, carrying off the loveliest colors. The heaviest remain there at the palace gates, like a company of guards in gilded breastplates. These clouds do not quite touch the horizon: a luminous band, tapering at its ends, runs between them and the earth’s blue line. A few slender, distant poplars, seeming to emerge from that blue line and whose tall forms stand out perfectly against the purity of the luminous band, resemble the masts of ships anchored upon the sea’s horizon.

October 4, 1833

If I could draw a little, I would have brought something away from yesterday’s excursion to Josselin. At last I have contemplated an old baronial castle. Enormous towers and cyclopean ramparts enclose within their massive girdle the most graceful, most delicate architecture, the frailest in appearance, one of those dreams of the Middle Ages embroidered in the air upon stone with the delicacy of the fairies’ needle. At twilight, take a leaf whose parenchyma the insects have devoured and consider in the dying light that network of delicate fibers and veins: you will have something like a miniature of the delightful fancies of Gothic art.

October 5, 1833

The most beautiful days, the sweetest studies cannot lull within me that restless, whining thought which lies at the foundation of humanity.

October 14, 1833

While I go on pursuing a swarm of vain thoughts like a man with nothing more to worry about, my whole future is overturned. I have been told I must return to the world. Strange thing! A hundred times I have caught myself longing for the curious life one leads there, and today, when solitude and retreat have dismissed me, the world fills me with horror. Oh, it is because my place was truly here, and despite my whims and worldly sallies, I was attached to it in the depths of my soul. I was beginning to see my destiny clearly, and now I begin once more to understand nothing of it. My God! Yet it is very cruel. What, then, do you wish to make of me among men? What shall become of me in that whirlpool, I, the weakest of creatures? Oh, I recognize my trial there. I thought I was sufficiently convinced of my powerlessness, my weakness, the sickly and incomplete constitution of my moral being; alas, it seems I am not sufficiently persuaded, since I am sent back to the great destroyer of all inward joy, all noble energy, all innocent hope, the world.

October 24, 1833

Certainly, a ramble among the fields is a keen delight. What happiness to throw off that heavy chain of habitual life and escape into the countryside, where one breathes at ease, savors the noble delight of a few hours’ independence, where the heart rises and thoughts turn toward contemplation, where one is wholly enchanted to find oneself, a man, alone with nature. We went around a pond a good two leagues in circumference: it had been a long time since I took such pleasure in an excursion. The sight of water always charms me infinitely, and today everything was as one could wish to enchant me. This pond, of a fine expanse, spreads between two woods whose edges trace irregular lines, all the more graceful for it! As day declined, there was something infinitely melancholy in that sheet of green, indistinct water, the pale color of the woods beginning to shed their leaves, and the gray tint of the sky across which bands of crows and wild ducks passed silently. A thousand thoughts of gentle sadness came to me: I remembered that in childhood I loved to sit at the same hour upon the parapet of the terrace at Le Cayla and watch the birds passing on their way to find shelter for the night.