How happy I should be if you were here with me, gathering wild flowers, chasing butterflies, daydreaming in the shade of these trees when the sun beats down, and strolling arm in arm on these lovely evenings by moonlight, with no other sound but the droning of insects.

If only you were here with me! If only you could see these mountains, in the moonshine or at sunrise, and the ample shade of the woods, and the azure-blue of the sky, and the green of the vines hidden in the valleys, all around the little houses, and the deep blue of the sea glistening over there, far away in the distance, and all these villages climbing up the sides of mountains.

At night, I listen at the window to all those leaves rustling, and amid the shadows that take on fantastic shapes. I glimpse a moonbeam slipping through the branches like a white ghost. I listen to the nightingale trilling away in the distance.

A heart overwhelmed and bewilled by......