Have we lost the power of rendering you happy?
Ah! While we love, while we are true to each other, here in this land of peace and beauty, your native country, we may reap every tranquil blessing--what can disturb our peace ?" And could not such words from her whom I fondly prized before every other gift of fortune suffice to chase away the fiend that lurked in my heart?
Even as she spoke I drew near to her, as if in terror, lest at that very moment the destroyer had been near to rob me of her.
Thus not the tenderness of friendship, nor the beauty of earth, nor of heaven, could redeem my soul from woe; the very accents of love were ineffectual.

I was encompassed by a cloud which no beneficial influence could penetrate.

The wounded deer dragging its fainting limbs to some untrodden brake, there to gaze upon the arrow which had pierced it, and to die, was but a type of me.
Sometimes I could cope with the sullen despair that overwhelmed me, but sometimes the whirlwind passions of my soul drove me to seek, by bodily exercise and by change of place, some relief from my intolerable sensations.

It was during an access of this kind that I suddenly left my home, and bending my steps towards the near Alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and my ephemeral, because human, sorrows.

My wanderings were directed towards the valley of Chamounix.