"Alors que je me croyais aux derniers jours de l'automne, dans un jardin dépouillé." The words are Madame de Hauterive's, one of the most charming among eighteenth-century letter-writers; but one of whom, for all the indiscretion of that age, we know little or nothing: a delicate, austere outline merely, a reserved and sensitive ghost shrinking into the dimness. She wrote those words when already an old woman, and long after death had taken her father and her daughter and most of her nearest and dearest, to the young Abbé de Carladès, who proved himself (one hopes) not utterly unworthy of that "unexpected late flowering of the soul." The phrase is eighteenth century, and it may be the feeling itself is of as bygone a fashion. Or does this seem the case because such delicate souls can become known to us only when they and their loves and friendships have ceased to be more than a handful of faded paper, fingered very piously, for heaven's sake?
However this may be, that phrase of Madame de Hauterive's contains a truth which is undying, and which, though unobtrusive, can be observed by those who have a discreet eye for the soul's affairs. Nay, one might say that the knowledge of how many times life can begin afresh, the knowledge of the new modes of happiness which may succeed each other, even when the leaves float down yellow in the still air, and the dews on the renovated grass are white like frost, is one of the blessed secrets into which the passing seasons initiate those who have honourably cultivated the garden of life, and life's wide common acres.
Indeed, such faith in the heart's renewed fruitfulness is itself among the autumn blossomings, the hidden compensations. Young folk, and those who never outgrow youth's headlong and blind self-seeking, cannot conceive such truths. For youth has no experience of change; and what it calls the Future is but the present longing or present dread projected forward. Hence youth lacks the resignation which comes of knowing that our aims, our loves, ourselves, will alter; and that we shall not eternally regret what we could not eternally covet. Hence, also, the fine despair and frequent suicide of youthful heroes and heroines. Poor young Werther, in his sky-blue _Frack_ and striped yellow waistcoat, cannot believe that the time will come when he will tune the spinet of some other Charlotte--nay, follow in the footsteps of the enlightened minister, his patron; bury himself in protocols and look forward to a diplomatic game of whist rather than to a country dance with meeting hands and eyes. And it is mere waste of breath to sermon him on the subject: lend him the pistols, and hope that (as in the humaner version of the opera) he will not use them. As to certain other forestallings of experience, they would be positively indecent and barbarous! You would die of shame if the young widow happened to overhear you saying (what is heaven's truth, and a most consoling one) that her baby, which now represents only so much time and love she might have given, all, all, to _him_ alone, is the only good thing which that worthless dead husband could ever have furnished her. And as to hinting in her presence that she will some day be much, much happier with dear Quixotic Dobbin than with that coxcomb of an Osborne, why the bare thought of such indecorum makes us feel like sinking into the ground! We must be sympathizing, and a little short of truthful, with poor distressed young people; above all, never seek to lighten their disappointments with visions of brisk octogenarians, one foot in the grave, enjoying a rubber!