I cried,
and so did he, when we met and when we parted. I think I am getting old,
for indeed I could not help it: yet there was peace in his eyes--peace."
"His eyes used to rustle so."
"Rustle--that is the word. Now, that is what, he has learned in life--the
way to peace. When I left him, it was with Virginie close beside him, and
when I said to him, 'Will you come back to us one day, Jean Jacques?' he
said, 'But no, Fille, my friend; it is too far. I see it--it is a million
miles away--too great a journey to go with the feet, but with the soul I
will visit it. The soul is a great traveller. I see it always--the clouds
and the burnings and the pitfalls gone--out of sight--in memory as it was
when I was a child. Well, there it is, everything has changed, except the
child-memory. I have had, and I have had not; and there it is. I am not
the same man--but yes, in my love just the same, with all the rest--' He
did not go on, so I said, 'If not the same, then what are you, Jean
Jacques?'"
"Ah, Fille, in the old days he would have said that he was a
philosopher"--said his sister interrupting. "Yes, yes, one knows--he said
it often enough and had need enough to say it. Well, said he to me, 'Me,
I am a'--then he stopped, shook his head, and so I could scarcely hear
him, murmured, 'Me--I am a man who has been a long journey with a pack on
his back, and has got home again.
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