Gilbert strode across the terrace, and, leaning over the parapet, gazed long and silently at the highroad."Ten months yet!" said he to himself, and contracting his brows, he turned to look at the odious castle, where destiny had cast his lot.It seemed as if the old pile wished to avenge itself for his ill humor: never had it been clothed with such a smiling aspect.A ray of the setting sun rested obliquely upon its wide roof; the bricks had the warm color of amber, the highest points were bathed in gold dust, and the gables and vanes threw out sparks.The air was balmy; the lilacs, the citron, the jasmine, and the honeysuckle intermingled their perfumes, which the almost imperceptible breath of the north wind spread in little waves to the four corners of the terrace.
And these wandering perfumes mingled themselves, in passing, with other odors more delicate and more subtle; from each leaf, each petal, each blade of grass, exhaled secret aromas, mute words which the plants exchange with each other, and which revealed to Gilbert's heart the great mystery of happiness which animates the soul of things.
Gilbert was determined to drown his sorrows this evening in the divine harmonies of nature.To succeed the better, he called poetry to his aid, for the great poets are the eternal mediators between the soul of things and our feeble hearts of earth and clay.
He recited the distichs where Goethe has related in a tongue worthy of Homer or Lucretius the metamorphosis of the plants.This was placed like a preamble at the beginning of the volume which he carried with him in his walks, and he had learned it by heart a few days before.The better to penetrate the sense of these admirable lines, he tried to translate them into French alexandrines, which he sometimes composed.This effort at translation soon appeared to him beyond his abilities; all the French words seemed too noisy, too brilliant or too vulgar, or too solemn to render these mute accents, these intonations veiled as if in religious mystery, by which the author of Faust intended to express the subtle sounds and even the silence of nature.We know that it is only in German poetry that we can hear the grass growing from the bosom of the earth, and the celestial spheres revolving in space.