I saw the lovely and I did not love, I imagined therefore that all warmth was extinguished in my heart except that which led me ever to dwell on your then infantine image.
"It is a strange link in my fate that without having seen you I should passionately love you.

During my wanderings I never slept without first calling down gentle dreams on your head.

If I saw a lovely woman, I thought, does my Mathilda resemble her?
All delightful things, sublime scenery, soft breezes, exquisite music seemed to me associated with you and only through you to be pleasant to me.

At length I saw you.

You appeared as the deity of a lovely region, the ministering Angel of a Paradise to which of all human kind you admitted only me.