His religious beliefs seemed to have been wrecked by the same storm which had destroyed his passionate hopes of love, and left him stranded and forlorn without either haven or pilot, blown hither and thither solely by the violence of his passion.
By degrees he took an aversion to his home, and would spend entire days in the woods.

Their secluded haunts, already colored by the breath of autumn, became more attractive to him as other refuge failed him.

They were his consolation; his doubts, weakness, and amorous regrets, found sympathy and indulgence under their silent shelter.

He felt less lonely, less humiliated, less prosaic among these great forest depths, these lofty ash-trees, raising their verdant branches to heaven.

He found he could more easily evoke the seductive image of Reine Vincart in these calm solitudes, where the recollections of the previous springtime mingled with the phantoms of his heated imagination and clothed themselves with almost living forms.