midnight
Her love saw nothing in me but myself . Only once I involuntarily betrayed before her the poor gift of poetry that I possessed , and which she neither suspected nor desired in me . My friend Louis -- had come to stay a few days with us . The evening had been spent till midnight in reading , in confidential talk , in musing , in sadness , and in smiles . We wondered to see three young lives , which a short time before were unknown to each other , now united and identified beneath the same roof , at the same fireside , with the same murmur of autumnal winds around , in a cottage of the mountains of Savoy ; we strove to foresee by what sport of Providence , or Chance , the stormy winds of life might scatter or reunite us once more . These distant vistas of the horizon of our future lives had saddened us , and we remained silent round the little tea-table on which we were leaning . At last Louis , who was a poet , felt a mournful inspiration rising in his heart , and wished to write it down .