Your future is before you; but no one in the world can make his

way unaided. Therefore, make use of my father’s house; its doors

are open to you; the connections that you will create for yourself

under his roof will serve you in a hundred ways. But do not yield

an inch of ground to my mother; she will crush any one who gives

up to her, but she will admire the courage of whoever resists her.

She is like iron, which if beaten, can be fused with iron, but

when cold will break everything less hard than itself. Cultivate

my mother; for if she thinks well of you she will introduce you

into certain houses where you can acquire the fatal science of the

world, the art of listening, speaking, answering, presenting

yourself to the company and taking leave of it; the precise use of

language, the something--how shall I explain it?--which is no more

superiority than the coat is the man, but without which the

highest talent in the world will never be admitted within those

portals.

I know you well enough to be quite sure I indulge no illusion when

I imagine that I see you as I wish you to be; simple in manners,

gentle in tone, proud without conceit, respectful to the old,

courteous without servility, above all, discreet. Use your wit but

never display it for the amusement of others; for be sure that if

your brilliancy annoys an inferior man, he will retire from the

field and say of you in a tone of contempt, “He is very amusing.”

Let your superiority be leonine. Moreover, do not be always

seeking to please others. I advise a certain coldness in your

relations with men, which may even amount to indifference; this

will not anger others, for all persons esteem those who slight

them; and it will win you the favor of women, who will respect you

for the little consequence that you attach to men. Never remain in

company with those who have lost their reputation, even though

they may not have deserved to do so; for society holds us

responsible for our friendships as well as for our enmities. In

this matter let your judgments be slowly and maturely weighed, but

see that they are irrevocable. When the men whom you have repulsed

justify the repulsion, your esteem and regard will be all the more

sought after; you have inspired the tacit respect which raises a

man among his peers. I behold you now armed with a youth that

pleases, grace which attracts, and wisdom with which to preserve

your conquests. All that I have now told you can be summed up in

two words, two old-fashioned words, “Noblesse oblige.”

Now apply these precepts to the management of life. You will hear

many persons say that strategy is the chief element of success;

that the best way to press through the crowd is to set some men

against other men and so take their places. That was a good system

for the Middle Ages, when princes had to destroy their rivals by

pitting one against the other; but in these days, all things being

done in open day, I am afraid it would do you ill-service. No, you

must meet your competitors face to face, be they loyal and true

men, or traitorous enemies whose weapons are calumny,

evil-speaking, and fraud. But remember this, you have no more

powerful auxiliaries than these men themselves; they are their own

enemies; fight them with honest weapons, and sooner or later they

are condemned. As to the first of them, loyal men and true, your

straightforwardness will obtain their respect, and the differences

between you once settled (for all things can be settled), these

men will serve you. Do not be afraid of making enemies; woe to him

who has none in the world you are about to enter; but try to give

no handle for ridicule or disparagement. I say _try_, for in Paris a

man cannot always belong solely to himself; he is sometimes at the

mercy of circumstances; you will not always be able to avoid the

mud in the gutter nor the tile that falls from the roof. The moral

world has gutters where persons of no reputation endeavor to

splash the mud in which they live upon men of honor. But you can

always compel respect by showing that you are, under all

circumstances, immovable in your principles. In the conflict of

opinions, in the midst of quarrels and cross-purposes, go straight

to the point, keep resolutely to the question; never fight except

for the essential thing, and put your whole strength into that.

You know how Monsieur de Mortsauf hates Napoleon, how he curses

him and pursues him as justice does a criminal; demanding

punishment day and night for the death of the Duc d’Enghien, the

only death, the only misfortune, that ever brought the tears to

his eyes; well, he nevertheless admired him as the greatest of

captains, and has often explained to me his strategy. May not the

same tactics be applied to the war of human interests; they would

economize time as heretofore they economized men and space. Think

this over, for as a woman I am liable to be mistaken on such

points which my sex judges only by instinct and sentiment. One

point, however, I may insist on; all trickery, all deception, is

certain to be discovered and to result in doing harm; whereas

every situation presents less danger if a man plants himself

firmly on his own truthfulness. If I may cite my own case, I can

tell you that, obliged as I am by Monsieur de Mortsauf’s condition

to avoid litigation and to bring to an immediate settlement all

difficulties which arise in the management of Clochegourde, and

which would otherwise cause him an excitement under which his mind

would succumb, I have invariably settled matters promptly by

taking hold of the knot of the difficulty and saying to our

opponents: “We will either untie it or cut it!”

It will often happen that you do a service to others and find

yourself ill-rewarded; I beg you not to imitate those who complain

of men and declare them to be all ungrateful. That is putting

themselves on a pedestal indeed! and surely it is somewhat silly

to admit their lack of knowledge of the world. But you, I trust,

will not do good as a usurer lends his money; you will do it--will

you not?--for good’s sake. Noblesse oblige. Nevertheless, do not

bestow such services as to force others to ingratitude, for if you

do, they will become your most implacable enemies; obligations

sometimes lead to despair, like the despair of ruin itself, which

is capable of very desperate efforts. As for yourself, accept as

little as you can from others. Be no man’s vassal; and bring

yourself out of your own difficulties.

You see, dear friend, I am advising you only on the lesser points

of life. In the world of politics things wear a different aspect;

the rules which are to guide your individual steps give way before

the national interests. If you reach that sphere where great men

revolve you will be, like God himself, the sole arbiter of your

determinations. You will no longer be a man, but law, the living

law; no longer an individual, you are then the Nation incarnate.

But remember this, though you judge, you will yourself be judged;

hereafter you will be summoned before the ages, and you know

history well enough to be fully informed as to what deeds and what

sentiments have led to true grandeur.

I now come to a serious matter, your conduct towards women.

Wherever you visit make it a principle not to fritter yourself

away in a petty round of gallantry. A man of the last century who

had great social success never paid attention to more than one

woman of an evening, choosing the one who seemed the most

neglected. That man, my dear child, controlled his epoch. He

wisely reckoned that by a given time all women would speak well of

him. Many young men waste their most precious possession, namely,

the time necessary to create connections which contribute more

than all else to social success. Your springtime is short,

endeavor to make the most of it. Cultivate influential women.

Influential women are old women; they will teach you the

intermarriages and the secrets of all the families of the great

world; they will show you the cross-roads which will bring you

soonest to your goal. They will be fond of you. The bestowal of

protection is their last form of love--when they are not devout.

They will do you innumerable good services; sing your praises and

make you desirable to society. Avoid young women. Do not think I

say this from personal self-interest. The woman of fifty will do

all for you, the woman of twenty will do nothing; she wants your

whole life while the other asks only a few attentions. Laugh with

the young women, meet them for pastime merely; they are incapable

of serious thought. Young women, dear friend, are selfish, vain,

petty, ignorant of true friendship; they love no one but

themselves; they would sacrifice you to an evening’s success.

Besides, they all want absolute devotion, and your present

situation requires that devotion be shown to you; two

irreconcilable needs! None of these young women would enter into

your interests; they would think of themselves and not of you;

they would injure you more by their emptiness and frivolity than

they could serve you by their love; they will waste your time

unscrupulously, hinder your advance to fortune, and end by

destroying your future with the best grace possible. If you

complain, the silliest of them will make you think that her glove

is more precious than fortune, and that nothing is so glorious as

to be her slave. They will all tell you that they bestow

happiness, and thus lull you to forget your nobler destiny.

Believe me, the happiness they give is transitory; your great

career will endure. You know not with what perfidious cleverness

they contrive to satisfy their caprices, nor the art with which

they will convert your passing fancy into a love which ought to be

eternal. The day when they abandon you they will tell you that the

words, “I no longer love you,” are a full justification of their

conduct, just as the words, “I love,” justified their winning you;

they will declare that love is involuntary and not to be coerced.

Absurd! Believe me, dear, true love is eternal, infinite, always

like unto itself; it is equable, pure, without violent

demonstration; white hair often covers the head but the heart that

holds it is ever young. No such love is found among the women of

the world; all are playing comedy; this one will interest you by

her misfortunes; she seems the gentlest and least exacting of her

sex, but when once she is necessary to you, you will feel the

tyranny of weakness and will do her will; you may wish to be a

diplomat, to go and come, and study men and interests,--no, you

must stay in Paris, or at her country-place, sewn to her

petticoat, and the more devotion you show the more ungrateful and

exacting she will be. Another will attract you by her

submissiveness; she will be your attendant, follow you

romantically about, compromise herself to keep you, and be the

millstone about your neck. You will drown yourself some day, but

the woman will come to the surface.

The least manoeuvring of these women of the world have many nets.

The silliest triumph because too foolish to excite distrust. The

one to be feared least may be the woman of gallantry whom you love

without exactly knowing why; she will leave you for no motive and

go back to you out of vanity. All these women will injure you,

either in the present or the future. Every young woman who enters

society and lives a life of pleasure and of gratified vanity is

semi-corrupt and will corrupt you. Among them you will not find

the chaste and tranquil being in whom you may forever reign. Ah!

she who loves you will love solitude; the festivals of her heart

will be your glances; she will live upon your words. May she be

all the world to you, for you will be all in all to her. Love her

well; give her neither griefs nor rivals; do not rouse her

jealousy. To be loved, dear, to be comprehended, is the greatest

of all joys; I pray that you may taste it! But run no risk of

injuring the flower of your soul; be sure, be very sure of the

heart in which you place your affections. That woman will never be

her own self; she will never think of herself, but of you. She

will never oppose you, she will have no interests of her own; for

you she will see a danger where you can see none and where she

would be oblivious of her own. If she suffers it will be in

silence; she will have no personal vanity, but deep reverence for

whatever in her has won your love. Respond to such a love by

surpassing it. If you are fortunate enough to find that which I,

your poor friend, must ever be without, I mean a love mutually

inspired, mutually felt, remember that in a valley lives a mother

whose heart is so filled with the feelings you have put there that

you can never sound its depths. Yes, I bear you an affection which

you will never know to its full extent; before it could show

itself for what it is you would have to lose your mind and

intellect, and then you would be unable to comprehend the length

and breadth of my devotion.

Shall I be misunderstood in bidding you avoid young women (all

more or less artful, satirical, vain, frivolous, and extravagant)

and attach yourself to influential women, to those imposing

dowagers full of excellent good-sense, like my aunt, who will help

your career, defend you from attacks, and say for you the things

that you cannot say for yourself? Am I not, on the contrary,

generous in bidding you reserve your love for the coming angel

with the guileless heart? If the motto Noblesse oblige sums up the

advice I gave you just now, my further advice on your relations to

women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, “Serve all, love

one!”

Your educational knowledge is immense; your heart, saved by early

suffering, is without a stain; all is noble, all is well with you.

Now, Felix, WILL! Your future lies in that one word, that word of

great men. My child, you will obey your Henriette, will you not?

You will permit her to tell you from time to time the thoughts

that are in her mind of you and of your relations to the world? I

have an eye in my soul which sees the future for you as for my

children; suffer me to use that faculty for your benefit; it is a

faculty, a mysterious gift bestowed by my lonely life; far from

its growing weaker, I find it strengthened and exalted by solitude

and silence.

I ask you in return to bestow a happiness on me; I desire to see

you becoming more and more important among men, without one single

success that shall bring a line of shame upon my brow; I desire

that you may quickly bring your fortunes to the level of your

noble name, and be able to tell me I have contributed to your

advancement by something better than a wish. This secret

co-operation in your future is the only pleasure I can allow

myself. For it, I will wait and hope.

I do not say farewell. We are separated; you cannot put my hand to

your lips, but you must surely know the place you hold in the

heart of your

Henriette.

As I read this letter I felt the maternal heart beating beneath my

fingers which held the paper while I was still cold from the harsh

greeting of my own mother. I understood why the countess had forbidden

me to open it in Touraine; no doubt she feared that I would fall at her

feet and wet them with my tears.

I now made the acquaintance of my brother Charles, who up to this

time had been a stranger to me. But in all our intercourse he showed

a haughtiness which kept us apart and prevented brotherly affection.

Kindly feelings depend on similarity of soul, and there was no point of

touch between us. He preached to me dogmatically those social trifles

which head or heart can see without instruction; he seemed to mistrust

me. If I had not had the inward support of my great love he would have

made me awkward and stupid by affecting to believe that I knew nothing

of life. He presented me in society under the expectation that my

dulness would be a foil to his qualities. Had I not remembered the

sorrows of my childhood I might have taken his protecting vanity for

brotherly affection; but inward solitude produces the same effects

as outward solitude; silence within our souls enables us to hear the

faintest sound; the habit of taking refuge within ourselves develops

a perception which discerns every quality of the affections about us.

Before I knew Madame de Mortsauf a hard look grieved me, a rough word

wounded me to the heart; I bewailed these things without as yet knowing

anything of a life of tenderness; whereas now, since my return from

Clochegourde, I could make comparisons which perfected my instinctive

perceptions. All deductions derived only from sufferings endured are

incomplete. Happiness has a light to cast. I now allowed myself the more

willingly to be kept under the heel of primogeniture because I was not

my brother’s dupe.

I always went alone to the Duchesse de Lenoncourt’s, where Henriette’s

name was never mentioned; no one, except the good old duke, who was

simplicity itself, ever spoke of her to me; but by the way he welcomed

me I guessed that his daughter had privately commended me to his care.

At the moment when I was beginning to overcome the foolish wonder and

shyness which besets a young man at his first entrance into the great

world, and to realize the pleasures it could give through the resources

it offers to ambition, just, too, as I was beginning to make use of

Henriette’s maxims, admiring their wisdom, the events of the 20th of

March took place.

My brother followed the court to Ghent; I, by Henriette’s advice (for I

kept up a correspondence with her, active on my side only), went there

also with the Duc de Lenoncourt. The natural kindness of the old duke

turned to a hearty and sincere protection as soon as he saw me attached,

body and soul, to the Bourbons. He himself presented me to his Majesty.

Courtiers are not numerous when misfortunes are rife; but youth is

gifted with ingenuous admiration and uncalculating fidelity. The king

had the faculty of judging men; a devotion which might have passed

unobserved in Paris counted for much at Ghent, and I had the happiness

of pleasing Louis XVIII.

A letter from Madame de Mortsauf to her father, brought with despatches

by an emissary of the Vendeens, enclosed a note to me by which I learned

that Jacques was ill. Monsieur de Mortsauf, in despair at his son’s

ill-health, and also at the news of a second emigration, added a few

words which enabled me to guess the situation of my dear one. Worried by

him, no doubt, when she passed all her time at Jacques’ bedside, allowed

no rest either day or night, superior to annoyance, yet unable always to

control herself when her whole soul was given to the care of her child,

Henriette needed the support of a friendship which might lighten the

burden of her life, were it only by diverting her husband’s mind. Though

I was now most impatient to rival the career of my brother, who had

lately been sent to the Congress of Vienna, and was anxious at any risk

to justify Henriette’s appeal and become a man myself, freed from all

vassalage, nevertheless my ambition, my desire for independence, the

great interest I had in not leaving the king, all were of no account

before the vision of Madame de Mortsauf’s sad face. I resolved to leave

the court at Ghent and serve my true sovereign. God rewarded me. The

emissary sent by the Vendeens was unable to return. The king wanted a

messenger who would faithfully carry back his instructions. The Duc de

Lenoncourt knew that the king would never forget the man who undertook

so perilous an enterprise; he asked for the mission without consulting

me, and I gladly accepted it, happy indeed to be able to return to

Clochegourde employed in the good cause.

After an audience with the king I returned to France, where, both in

Paris and in Vendee, I was fortunate enough to carry out his Majesty’s

instructions. Towards the end of May, being tracked by the Bonapartist

authorities to whom I was denounced, I was obliged to fly from place to

place in the character of a man endeavoring to get back to his estate.

I went on foot from park to park, from wood to wood, across the whole

of upper Vendee, the Bocage and Poitou, changing my direction as danger

threatened.

I reached Saumur, from Saumur I went to Chinon, and from Chinon I

reached, in a single night, the woods of Nueil, where I met the count on

horseback; he took me up behind him and we reached Clochegourde without

passing any one who recognized me.

“Jacques is better,” were the first words he said to me.

I explained to him my position of diplomatic postman, hunted like a wild

beast, and the brave gentleman in his quality of royalist claimed the

danger over Chessel of receiving me. As we came in sight of Clochegourde

the past eight months rolled away like a dream. When we entered the

salon the count said: “Guess whom I bring you?--Felix!”

“Is it possible!” she said, with pendant arms and a bewildered face.

I showed myself and we both remained motionless; she in her armchair, I

on the threshold of the door; looking at each other with that hunger

of the soul which endeavors to make up in a single glance for the lost

months. Then, recovering from a surprise which left her heart unveiled,

she rose and I went up to her.

“I have prayed for your safety,” she said, giving me her hand to kiss.

She asked news of her father; then she guessed my weariness and went

to prepare my room, while the count gave me something to eat, for I was

dying of hunger. My room was the one above hers, her aunt’s room; she

requested the count to take me there, after setting her foot on the

first step of the staircase, deliberating no doubt whether to accompany

me; I turned my head, she blushed, bade me sleep well, and went away.

When I came down to dinner I heard for the first time of the disasters

at Waterloo, the flight of Napoleon, the march of the Allies to Paris,

and the probable return of the Bourbons. These events were all in all to

the count; to us they were nothing. What think you was the great event

I was to learn, after kissing the children?--for I will not dwell on the

alarm I felt at seeing the countess pale and shrunken; I knew the injury

I might do by showing it and was careful to express only joy at seeing

her. But the great event for us was told in the words, “You shall have

ice to-day!” She had often fretted the year before that the water was

not cold enough for me, who, never drinking anything else, liked it

iced. God knows how many entreaties it had cost her to get an ice-house

built. You know better than any one that a word, a look, an inflection

of the voice, a trifling attention, suffices for love; love’s noblest

privilege is to prove itself by love. Well, her words, her look, her

pleasure, showed me her feelings, as I had formerly shown her mine by

that first game of backgammon. These ingenuous proofs of her affection

were many; on the seventh day after my arrival she recovered her

freshness, she sparkled with health and youth and happiness; my lily

expanded in beauty just as the treasures of my heart increased. Only in

petty minds or in common hearts can absence lessen love or efface the

features or diminish the beauty of our dear one. To ardent imaginations,

to all beings through whose veins enthusiasm passes like a crimson tide,

and in whom passion takes the form of constancy, absence has the same

effect as the sufferings of the early Christians, which strengthened

their faith and made God visible to them. In hearts that abound in love

are there not incessant longings for a desired object, to which the

glowing fire of our dreams gives higher value and a deeper tint? Are

we not conscious of instigations which give to the beloved features the

beauty of the ideal by inspiring them with thought? The past, dwelt on

in all its details becomes magnified; the future teems with hope. When

two hearts filled with these electric clouds meet each other, their

interview is like the welcome storm which revives the earth and

stimulates it with the swift lightnings of the thunderbolt. How many

tender pleasures came to me when I found these thoughts and these

sensations reciprocal! With what glad eyes I followed the development

of happiness in Henriette! A woman who renews her life from that of her

beloved gives, perhaps, a greater proof of feeling than she who dies

killed by a doubt, withered on her stock for want of sap; I know not

which of the two is the more touching.

The revival of Madame de Mortsauf was wholly natural, like the effects

of the month of May upon the meadows, or those of the sun and of the

brook upon the drooping flowers. Henriette, like our dear valley of

love, had had her winter; she revived like the valley in the springtime.

Before dinner we went down to the beloved terrace. There, with one hand

stroking the head of her son, who walked feebly beside her, silent, as

though he were breeding an illness, she told me of her nights beside his

pillow.

For three months, she said, she had lived wholly within herself,

inhabiting, as it were, a dark palace; afraid to enter sumptuous rooms

where the light shone, where festivals were given, to her denied, at the

door of which she stood, one glance turned upon her child, another to

a dim and distant figure; one ear listening for moans, another for a

voice. She told me poems, born of solitude, such as no poet ever

sang; but all ingenuously, without one vestige of love, one trace of

voluptuous thought, one echo of a poesy orientally soothing as the rose

of Frangistan. When the count joined us she continued in the same tone,

like a woman secure within herself, able to look proudly at her husband

and kiss the forehead of her son without a blush. She had prayed much;

she had clasped her hands for nights together over her child, refusing

to let him die.

“I went,” she said, “to the gate of the sanctuary and asked his life of

God.”

She had had visions, and she told them to me; but when she said, in that

angelic voice of hers, these exquisite words, “While I slept my heart

watched,” the count harshly interrupted her.

“That is to say, you were half crazy,” he cried.

She was silent, as deeply hurt as though it were a first wound;

forgetting that for thirteen years this man had lost no chance to shoot

his arrows into her heart. Like a soaring bird struck on the wing by

vulgar shot, she sank into a dull depression; then she roused herself.

“How is it, monsieur,” she said, “that no word of mine ever finds favor

in your sight? Have you no indulgence for my weakness,--no comprehension

of me as a woman?”

She stopped short. Already she regretted the murmur, and measured the

future by the past; how could she expect comprehension? Had she not

drawn upon herself some virulent attack? The blue veins of her temples

throbbed; she shed no tears, but the color of her eyes faded. Then she

looked down, that she might not see her pain reflected on my face, her

feelings guessed, her soul wooed by my soul; above all, not see the

sympathy of young love, ready like a faithful dog to spring at the

throat of whoever threatened his mistress, without regard to the

assailant’s strength or quality. At such cruel moments the count’s air

of superiority was supreme. He thought he had triumphed over his wife,

and he pursued her with a hail of phrases which repeated the one idea,

and were like the blows of an axe which fell with unvarying sound.

“Always the same?” I said, when the count left us to follow the huntsman

who came to speak to him.

“Always,” answered Jacques.

“Always excellent, my son,” she said, endeavoring to withdraw Monsieur

de Mortsauf from the judgment of his children. “You see only the

present, you know nothing of the past; therefore you cannot criticise

your father without doing him injustice. But even if you had the pain of

seeing that your father was to blame, family honor requires you to bury

such secrets in silence.”

“How have the changes at the Cassine and the Rhetoriere answered?” I

asked, to divert her mind from bitter thoughts.

“Beyond my expectations,” she replied. “As soon as the buildings were

finished we found two excellent farmers ready to hire them; one at four

thousand five hundred francs, taxes paid; the other at five thousand;

both leases for fifteen years. We have already planted three thousand

young trees on the new farms. Manette’s cousin is delighted to get the

Rabelaye; Martineau has taken the Baude. All _our_ efforts have been

crowned with success. Clochegourde, without the reserved land which

we call the home-farm, and without the timber and vineyards, brings

in nineteen thousand francs a year, and the plantations are becoming

valuable. I am battling to let the home-farm to Martineau, the keeper,

whose eldest son can now take his place. He offers three thousand francs

if Monsieur de Mortsauf will build him a farm-house at the Commanderie.

We might then clear the approach to Clochegourde, finish the proposed

avenue to the main road, and have only the woodland and the vineyards

to take care of ourselves. If the king returns, _our_ pension will be

restored; WE shall consent after clashing a little with _our_ wife’s

common-sense. Jacques’ fortune will then be permanently secured. That

result obtained, I shall leave monsieur to lay by as much as he likes

for Madeleine, though the king will of course dower her, according to

custom. My conscience is easy; I have all but accomplished my task. And

you?” she said.

I explained to her the mission on which the king had sent me, and showed

her how her wise counsel had borne fruit. Was she endowed with second

sight thus to foretell events?

“Did I not write it to you?” she answered. “For you and for my children

alone I possess a remarkable faculty, of which I have spoken only to my

confessor, Monsieur de la Berge; he explains it by divine intervention.

Often, after deep meditation induced by fears about the health of my

children, my eyes close to the things of earth and see into another

region; if Jacques and Madeleine there appear to me as two luminous

figures they are sure to have good health for a certain period of time;

if wrapped in mist they are equally sure to fall ill soon after. As

for you, I not only see you brilliantly illuminated, but I hear a voice

which explains to me without words, by some mental communication, what

you ought to do. Does any law forbid me to use this wonderful gift for

my children and for you?” she asked, falling into a reverie. Then,

after a pause, she added, “Perhaps God wills to take the place of their

father.”

“Let me believe that my obedience is due to none but you,” I cried.

She gave me one of her exquisitely gracious smiles, which so exalted my

heart that I should not have felt a death-blow if given at that moment.

“As soon as the king returns to Paris, go there; leave Clochegourde,”

she said. “It may be degrading to beg for places and favors, but it

would be ridiculous to be out of the way of receiving them. Great

changes will soon take place. The king needs capable and trustworthy

men; don’t fail him. It is well for you to enter young into the affairs

of the nation and learn your way; for statesmen, like actors, have a

routine business to acquire, which genius does not reveal, it must be

learnt. My father heard the Duc de Choiseul say this. Think of me,” she

said, after a pause; “let me enjoy the pleasures of superiority in a

soul that is all my own; for are you not my son?”

“Your son?” I said, sullenly.

“Yes, my son!” she cried, mocking me; “is not that a good place in my

heart?”

The bell rang for dinner; she took my arm and leaned contentedly upon

it.

“You have grown,” she said, as we went up the steps. When we reached the

portico she shook my arm a little, as if my looks were importunate;

for though her eyes were lowered she knew that I saw only her. Then she

said, with a charming air of pretended impatience, full of grace and

coquetry, “Come, why don’t you look at our dear valley?”

She turned, held her white silk sun-shade over our heads and drew

Jacques closely to her side. The motion of her head as she looked

towards the Indre, the punt, the meadows, showed me that in my absence

she had come to many an understanding with those misty horizons

and their vaporous outline. Nature was a mantle which sheltered her

thoughts. She now knew what the nightingale was sighing the livelong

night, what the songster of the sedges hymned with his plaintive note.

At eight o’clock that evening I was witness of a scene which touched me

deeply, and which I had never yet witnessed, for in my former visits I

had played backgammon with the count while his wife took the children

into the dining-room before their bedtime. The bell rang twice, and all

the servants of the household entered the room.

“You are now our guest and must submit to convent rule,” said the

countess, leading me by the hand with that air of innocent gaiety which

distinguishes women who are naturally pious.

The count followed. Masters, children, and servants knelt down, all

taking their regular places. It was Madeleine’s turn to read the

prayers. The dear child said them in her childish voice, the ingenuous

tones of which rose clear in the harmonious silence of the country, and

gave to the words the candor of holy innocence, the grace of angels.

It was the most affecting prayer I ever heard. Nature replied to the

child’s voice with the myriad murmurs of the coming night, like the low

accompaniment of an organ lightly touched, Madeleine was on the right

of the countess, Jacques on her left. The graceful curly heads, between

which rose the smooth braids of the mother, and above all three the

perfectly white hair and yellow cranium of the father, made a picture

which repeated, in some sort, the ideas aroused by the melody of the

prayer. As if to fulfil all conditions of the unity which marks the

sublime, this calm and collected group were bathed in the fading light

of the setting sun; its red tints coloring the room, impelling the

soul--be it poetic or superstitious--to believe that the fires of heaven

were visiting these faithful servants of God as they knelt there without

distinction of rank, in the equality which heaven demands. Thinking

back to the days of the patriarchs my mind still further magnified this

scene, so grand in its simplicity.

The children said good-night, the servants bowed, the countess went

away holding a child by each hand, and I returned to the salon with the

count.

“We provide you with salvation there, and hell here,” he said, pointing

to the backgammon-board.

The countess returned in half an hour, and brought her frame near the

table.

“This is for you,” she said, unrolling the canvas; “but for the last

three months it has languished. Between that rose and this heartsease my

poor child was ill.”

“Come, come,” said Monsieur de Mortsauf, “don’t talk of that any more.

Six--five, emissary of the king!”

When alone in my room I hushed my breathing that I might hear her

passing to and fro in hers. She was calm and pure, but I was lashed with

maddening ideas. “Why should she not be mine?” I thought; “perhaps she

is, like me, in this whirlwind of agitation.” At one o’clock, I went

down, walking noiselessly, and lay before her door. With my ear pressed

to a chink I could hear her equable, gentle breathing, like that of a

child. When chilled to the bone I went back to bed and slept tranquilly

till morning. I know not what prenatal influence, what nature within me,

causes the delight I take in going to the brink of precipices, sounding

the gulf of evil, seeking to know its depths, feeling its icy chill, and

retreating in deep emotion. That hour of night passed on the threshold

of her door where I wept with rage,--though she never knew that on the

morrow her foot had trod upon my tears and kisses, on her virtue first

destroyed and then respected, cursed and adored,--that hour, foolish in

the eyes of many, was nevertheless an inspiration of the same mysterious

impulse which impels the soldier. Many have told me they have played

their lives upon it, flinging themselves before a battery to know if

they could escape the shot, happy in thus galloping into the abyss of

probabilities, and smoking like Jean Bart upon the gunpowder.

The next day I went to gather flowers and made two bouquets. The count

admired them, though generally nothing of the kind appealed to him. The

clever saying of Champcenetz, “He builds dungeons in Spain,” seemed to

have been made for him.

I spent several days at Clochegourde, going but seldom to Frapesle,

where, however, I dined three times. The French army now occupied Tours.

Though my presence was health and strength to Madame de Mortsauf, she

implored me to make my way to Chateauroux, and so round by Issoudun and

Orleans to Paris with what haste I could. I tried to resist; but

she commanded me, saying that my guardian angel spoke. I obeyed. Our

farewell was, this time, dim with tears; she feared the allurements of

the life I was about to live. Is it not a serious thing to enter the

maelstrom of interests, passions, and pleasures which make Paris a

dangerous ocean for chaste love and purity of conscience? I promised to

write to her every night, relating the events and thoughts of the day,

even the most trivial. When I gave the promise she laid her head on my

shoulder and said: “Leave nothing out; everything will interest me.”

She gave me letters for the duke and duchess, which I delivered the

second day after my return.

“You are in luck,” said the duke; “dine here to-day, and go with me this

evening to the Chateau; your fortune is made. The king spoke of you this

morning, and said, ‘He is young, capable, and trustworthy.’ His Majesty

added that he wished he knew whether you were living or dead, and in

what part of France events had thrown you after you had executed your

mission so ably.”

That night I was appointed master of petitions to the council of State,

and I also received a private and permanent place in the employment

of Louis XVIII. himself,--a confidential position, not highly

distinguished, but without any risks, a position which put me at

the very heart of the government and has been the source of all my

subsequent prosperity. Madame de Mortsauf had judged rightly. I now owed

everything to her; power and wealth, happiness and knowledge; she guided

and encouraged me, purified my heart, and gave to my will that unity

of purpose without which the powers of youth are wasted. Later I had

a colleague; we each served six months. We were allowed to supply each

other’s place if necessary; we had rooms at the Chateau, a carriage,

and large allowances for travelling when absent on missions. Strange

position! We were the secret disciples of a monarch in a policy to which

even his enemies have since done signal justice; alone with us he gave

judgment on all things, foreign and domestic, yet we had no legitimate

influence; often we were consulted like Laforet by Moliere, and made to

feel that the hesitations of long experience were confirmed or removed

by the vigorous perceptions of youth.

In other respects my future was secured in a manner to satisfy ambition.

Beside my salary as master of petitions, paid by the budget of the

council of State, the king gave me a thousand francs a month from his

privy purse, and often himself added more to it. Though the king knew

well that no young man of twenty-three could long bear up under the

labors with which he loaded me, my colleague, now a peer of France, was

not appointed till August, 1817. The choice was a difficult one; our

functions demanded so many capabilities that the king was long in coming

to a decision. He did me the honor to ask which of the young men among

whom he was hesitating I should like for an associate. Among them was

one who had been my school-fellow at Lepitre’s; I did not select him.

His Majesty asked why.

“The king,” I replied, “chooses men who are equally faithful, but

whose capabilities differ. I choose the one whom I think the most able,

certain that I shall always be able to get on with him.”

My judgment coincided with that of the king, who was pleased with the

sacrifice I had made. He said on this occasion, “You are to be the

chief”; and he related these circumstances to my colleague, who

became, in return for the service I had done him, my good friend. The

consideration shown to me by the Duc de Lenoncourt set the tone of

that which I met with in society. To have it said, “The king takes an

interest in the young man; that young man has a future, the king likes

him,” would have served me in place of talents; and it now gave to the

kindly welcome accorded to youth a certain respect that is only given to

power. In the salon of the Duchesse de Lenoncourt and also at the house

of my sister who had just married the Marquis de Listomere, son of the

old lady in the Ile St. Louis, I gradually came to know the influential

personages of the Faubourg St. Germain.

Henriette herself put me at the heart of the circle then called

“le Petit Chateau” by the help of her great-aunt, the Princesse de

Blamont-Chauvry, to whom she wrote so warmly in my behalf that the

princess immediately sent for me. I cultivated her and contrived to

please her, and she became, not my protectress but a friend, in whose

kindness there was something maternal. The old lady took pains to make

me intimate with her daughter Madame d’Espard, with the Duchesse de

Langeais, the Vicomtesse de Beauseant, and the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse,

women who held the sceptre of fashion, and who were all the more

gracious to me because I made no pretensions and was always ready to be

useful and agreeable to them. My brother Charles, far from avoiding me,

now began to lean upon me; but my rapid success roused a secret jealousy

in his mind which in after years caused me great vexation. My father

and mother, surprised by a triumph so unexpected, felt their vanity

flattered, and received me at last as a son. But their feeling was too

artificial, I might say false, to let their present treatment have much

influence upon a sore heart. Affectations stained with selfishness win

little sympathy; the heart abhors calculations and profits of all kinds.

I wrote regularly to Henriette, who answered by two letters a month.

Her spirit hovered over me, her thoughts traversed space and made the

atmosphere around me pure. No woman could captivate me. The king noticed

my reserve, and as, in this respect, he belonged to the school of Louis

XV., he called me, in jest, Mademoiselle de Vandenesse; but my conduct

pleased him. I am convinced that the habit of patience I acquired in my

childhood and practised at Clochegourde had much to do in my winning the

favor of the king, who was always most kind to me. He no doubt took a

fancy to read my letters, for he soon gave up his notion of my life

as that of a young girl. One day when the duke was on duty, and I was

writing at the king’s dictation, the latter suddenly remarked, in that

fine, silvery voice of his, to which he could give, when he chose, the

biting tone of epigram:--

“So that poor devil of a Mortsauf persists in living?”

“Yes,” replied the duke.

“Madame de Mortsauf is an angel, whom I should like to see at my court,”

continued the king; “but if I cannot manage it, my chancellor here,”

turning to me, “may be more fortunate. You are to have six months’

leave; I have decided on giving you the young man we spoke of yesterday

as colleague. Amuse yourself at Clochegourde, friend Cato!” and he

laughed as he had himself wheeled out of the room.

I flew like a swallow to Touraine. For the first time I was to show

myself to my beloved, not merely a little less insignificant, but

actually in the guise of an elegant young man, whose manners had been

formed in the best salons, his education finished by gracious women; who

had found at last a compensation for all his sufferings, and had put to

use the experience given to him by the purest angel to whom heaven had

ever committed the care of a child. You know how my mother had equipped

me for my three months’ visit at Frapesle. When I reached Clochegourde

after fulfilling my mission in Vendee, I was dressed like a huntsman;

I wore a jacket with white and red buttons, striped trousers, leathern

gaiters and shoes. Tramping through underbrush had so injured my clothes

that the count was obliged to lend me linen. On the present occasion,

two years’ residence in Paris, constant intercourse with the king, the

habits of a life at ease, my completed growth, a youthful countenance,

which derived a lustre from the placidity of the soul within

magnetically united with the pure soul that beamed on me from

Clochegourde,--all these things combined had transformed me. I was

self-possessed without conceit, inwardly pleased to find myself, in

spite of my years, at the summit of affairs; above all, I had the

consciousness of being secretly the support and comfort of the dearest

woman on earth, and her unuttered hope. Perhaps I felt a flutter of

vanity as the postilions cracked their whips along the new avenue

leading from the main road to Clochegourde and through an iron gate I

had never seen before, which opened into a circular enclosure recently

constructed. I had not written to the countess of my coming, wishing to

surprise her. For this I found myself doubly in fault: first, she was

overwhelmed with the excitement of a pleasure long desired, but

supposed to be impossible; and secondly, she proved to me that all such

deliberate surprises are in bad taste.

When Henriette saw a young man in him who had hitherto seemed but a

child to her, she lowered her eyes with a sort of tragic slowness.

She allowed me to take and kiss her hand without betraying her inward

pleasure, which I nevertheless felt in her sensitive shiver. When she

raised her face to look at me again, I saw that she was pale.

“Well, you don’t forget your old friends?” said Monsieur de Mortsauf,

who had neither changed nor aged.

The children sprang upon me. I saw them behind the grave face of the

Abbe Dominis, Jacques’ tutor.

“No,” I replied, “and in future I am to have six months’ leave, which

will always be spent here--Why, what is the matter?” I said to the

countess, putting my arm round her waist and holding her up in presence

of them all.

“Oh, don’t!” she said, springing away from me; “it is nothing.”

I read her mind, and answered to its secret thought by saying, “Am I not

allowed to be your faithful slave?”

She took my arm, left the count, the children, and the abbe, and led

me to a distance on the lawn, though still within sight of the others;

then, when sure that her voice could not be heard by them, she spoke.

“Felix, my dear friend,” she said, “forgive my fears; I have but one

thread by which to guide me in the labyrinth of life, and I dread to see

it broken. Tell me that I am more than ever Henriette to you, that you

will never abandon me, that nothing shall prevail against me, that you

will ever be my devoted friend. I have suddenly had a glimpse into my

future, and you were not there, as hitherto, your eyes shining and fixed

upon me--”

“Henriette! idol whose worship is like that of the Divine,--lily, flower

of my life, how is it that you do not know, you who are my conscience,

that my being is so fused with yours that my soul is here when my body

is in Paris? Must I tell you that I have come in seventeen hours, that

each turn of the wheels gathered thoughts and desires in my breast,

which burst forth like a tempest when I saw you?”

“Yes, tell me! tell me!” she cried; “I am so sure of myself that I can

hear you without wrong. God does not will my death. He sends you to me

as he sends his breath to his creatures; as he pours the rain of

his clouds upon a parched earth,--tell me! tell me! Do you love me

sacredly?”

“Sacredly.”

“For ever?”

“For ever.”

“As a virgin Mary, hidden behind her veil, beneath her white crown.”

“As a virgin visible.”

“As a sister?”

“As a sister too dearly loved.”

“With chivalry and without hope?”

“With chivalry and with hope.”

“As if you were still twenty years of age, and wearing that absurd blue

coat?”

“Oh better far! I love you thus, and I also love you”--she looked at me

with keen apprehension--“as you loved your aunt.”

“I am happy! You dispel my terrors,” she said, returning towards the

family, who were surprised at our private conference. “Be still a child

at Clochegourde--for you are one still. It may be your policy to be a

man with the king, but here, let me tell you, monsieur, your best policy

is to remain a child. As a child you shall be loved. I can resist a man,

but to a child I can refuse nothing, nothing! He can ask for nothing I

will not give him.--Our secrets are all told,” she said, looking at

the count with a mischievous air, in which her girlish, natural self

reappeared. “I leave you now; I must go and dress.”

Never for three years had I heard her voice so richly happy. For the

first time I heard those swallow cries, the infantile notes of which I

told you. I had brought Jacques a hunting outfit, and for Madeleine a

work-box--which her mother afterwards used. The joy of the two children,

delighted to show their presents to each other, seemed to annoy the

count, always dissatisfied when attention was withdrawn from himself. I

made a sign to Madeleine and followed her father, who wanted to talk to

me of his ailments.

“My poor Felix,” he said, “you see how happy and well they all are. I am

the shadow on the picture; all their ills are transferred to me, and

I bless God that it is so. Formerly I did not know what was the matter

with me; now I know. The orifice of my stomach is affected; I can digest

nothing.”

“How do you come to be as wise as the professor of a medical school?”

I asked, laughing. “Is your doctor indiscreet enough to tell you such

things?”

“God forbid I should consult a doctor,” he cried, showing the aversion

most imaginary invalids feel for the medical profession.

I now listened to much crazy talk, in the course of which he made the

most absurd confidences,--complained of his wife, of the servants, of

the children, of life, evidently pleased to repeat his daily speeches to

a friend who, not having heard them daily, might be alarmed, and who

at any rate was forced to listen out of politeness. He must have been

satisfied, for I paid him the utmost attention, trying to penetrate

his inconceivable nature, and to guess what new tortures he had been

inflicting on his wife, of which she had not written to me. Henriette

presently put an end to the monologue by appearing in the portico. The

count saw her, shook his head, and said to me: “You listen to me, Felix;

but here no one pities me.”

He went away, as if aware of the constraint he imposed on my intercourse

with Henriette, or perhaps from a really chivalrous consideration

for her, knowing he could give her pleasure by leaving us alone. His

character exhibited contradictions that were often inexplicable; he was

jealous, like all weak beings, but his confidence in his wife’s sanctity

was boundless. It may have been the sufferings of his own self-esteem,

wounded by the superiority of that lofty virtue, which made him so eager

to oppose every wish of the poor woman, whom he braved as children brave

their masters or their mothers.

Jacques was taking his lessons, and Madeleine was being dressed; I had

therefore a whole hour to walk with the countess alone on the terrace.

“Dear angel!” I said, “the chains are heavier, the sands hotter, the

thorns grow apace.”

“Hush!” she said, guessing the thoughts my conversation with the count

had suggested. “You are here, and all is forgotten! I don’t suffer; I

have never suffered.”

She made a few light steps as if to shake her dress and give to the

breeze its ruches of snowy tulle, its floating sleeves and fresh

ribbons, the laces of her pelerine, and the flowing curls of her

coiffure a la Sevigne; I saw her for the first time a young girl,--gay

with her natural gaiety, ready to frolic like a child. I knew then the

meaning of tears of happiness; I knew the joy a man feels in bringing

happiness to another.

“Sweet human flower, wooed by my thought, kissed by my soul, oh my

lily!” I cried, “untouched, untouchable upon thy stem, white, proud,

fragrant, and solitary--”

“Enough, enough,” she said, smiling. “Speak to me of yourself; tell me

everything.”

Then, beneath the swaying arch of quivering leaves, we had a long

conversation, filled with interminable parentheses, subjects taken,

dropped, and retaken, in which I told her my life and my occupations; I

even described my apartment in Paris, for she wished to know everything;

and (happiness then unappreciated) I had nothing to conceal. Knowing

thus my soul and all the details of a daily life full of incessant toil,

learning the full extent of my functions, which to any one not sternly

upright offered opportunities for deception and dishonest gains, but

which I had exercised with such rigid honor that the king, I told her,

called me Mademoiselle de Vandenesse, she seized my hand and kissed it,

and dropped a tear, a tear of joy, upon it.

This sudden transposition of our roles, this homage, coupled with the

thought--swiftly expressed but as swiftly comprehended--“Here is the

master I have sought, here is my dream embodied!” all that there was of

avowal in the action, grand in its humility, where love betrayed itself

in a region forbidden to the senses,--this whirlwind of celestial things

fell on my heart and crushed it. I felt myself too small; I wished to

die at her feet.

“Ah!” I said, “you surpass us in all things. Can you doubt me?--for you

did doubt me just now, Henriette.”

“Not now,” she answered, looking at me with ineffable tenderness, which,

for a moment, veiled the light of her eyes. “But seeing you so changed,

so handsome, I said to myself, ‘Our plans for Madeleine will be defeated

by some woman who will guess the treasures in his heart; she will steal

our Felix, and destroy all happiness here.’”

“Always Madeleine!” I replied. “Is it Madeleine to whom I am faithful?”

We fell into a silence which Monsieur de Mortsauf inconveniently

interrupted. I was forced to keep up a conversation bristling with

difficulties, in which my honest replies as to the king’s policy jarred

with the count’s ideas, and he forced me to explain again and again the

king’s intentions. In spite of all my questions as to his horses, his

agricultural affairs, whether he was satisfied with his five farms,

whether he meant to cut the timber of the old avenue, he returned to the

subject of politics with the pestering faculty of an old maid and the

persistency of a child. Minds like his prefer to dash themselves against

the light; they return again and again and hum about it without ever

getting into it, like those big flies which weary our ears as they buzz

upon the glass.

Henriette was silent. To stop the conversation, in which I feared

my young blood might take fire, I answered in monosyllables, mostly

acquiescent, avoiding discussion; but Monsieur de Mortsauf had too much

sense not to perceive the meaning of my politeness. Presently he was

angry at being always in the right; he grew refractory, his eyebrows and

the wrinkles of his forehead worked, his yellow eyes blazed, his rufous

nose grew redder, as it did on the day I first witnessed an attack of

madness. Henriette gave me a supplicating look, making me understand

that she could not employ on my behalf an authority to which she

had recourse to protect her children. I at once answered the count

seriously, taking up the political question, and managing his peevish

spirit with the utmost care.

“Poor dear! poor dear!” she murmured two or three times; the words

reaching my ear like a gentle breeze. When she could intervene with

success she said, interrupting us, “Let me tell you, gentlemen, that you

are very dull company.”

Recalled by this conversation to his chivalrous sense of what was due to

a woman, the count ceased to talk politics, and as we bored him in our

turn by commonplace matters, he presently left us to continue our walk,

declaring that it made his head spin to go round and round on the same

path.

My sad conjectures were true. The soft landscape, the warm atmosphere,

the cloudless skies, the soothing poetry of this valley, which for

fifteen years had calmed the stinging fancies of that diseased mind,

were now impotent. At a period of life when the asperities of other

men are softened and their angles smoothed, the disposition of this man

became more and more aggressive. For the last few months he had taken

a habit of contradicting for the sake of contradiction, without reason,

without even trying to justify his opinions; he insisted on knowing the

why and the wherefore of everything; grew restless under a delay or

an omission; meddled with every item of the household affairs, and

compelled his wife and the servants to render him the most minute

and fatiguing account of all that was done; never allowing them the

slightest freedom of action. Formerly he did not lose his temper except

for some special reason; now his irritation was constant. Perhaps the

care of his farms, the interests of agriculture, an active out-door life

had formerly soothed his atrabilious temper by giving it a field for its

uneasiness, and by furnishing employment for his activity. Possibly the

loss of such occupation had allowed his malady to prey upon itself; no

longer exercised on matters without, it was showing itself in more fixed

ideas; the moral being was laying hold of the physical being. He had

lately become his own doctor; he studied medical books, fancied he had

the diseases he read of, and took the most extraordinary and unheard of

precautions about his health,--precautions never the same, impossible to

foresee, and consequently impossible to satisfy. Sometimes he wanted no

noise; then, when the countess had succeeded in establishing absolute

silence, he would declare he was in a tomb, and blame her for not

finding some medium between incessant noise and the stillness of La

Trappe. Sometimes he affected a perfect indifference for all earthly

things. Then the whole household breathed freely; the children played;

family affairs went on without criticism. Suddenly he would cry out

lamentably, “They want to kill me!--My dear,” he would say to his wife,

increasing the injustice of his words by the aggravating tones of his

sharp voice, “if it concerned your children you would know very well

what was the matter with them.”

He dressed and re-dressed himself incessantly, watching every change

of temperature, and doing nothing without consulting the barometer.

Notwithstanding his wife’s attentions, he found no food to suit him, his

stomach being, he said, impaired, and digestion so painful as to keep

him awake all night. In spite of this he ate, drank, digested, and

slept, in a manner to satisfy any doctor. His capricious will exhausted

the patience of the servants, accustomed to the beaten track of domestic

service and unable to conform to the requirements of his conflicting

orders. Sometimes he bade them keep all the windows open, declaring that

his health required a current of fresh air; a few days later the

fresh air, being too hot or too damp, as the case might be, became

intolerable; then he scolded, quarrelled with the servants, and in order

to justify himself, denied his former orders. This defect of memory, or

this bad faith, call it which you will, always carried the day against

his wife in the arguments by which she tried to pit him against himself.

Life at Clochegourde had become so intolerable that the Abbe Dominis, a

man of great learning, took refuge in the study of scientific problems,

and withdrew into the shelter of pretended abstraction. The countess had

no longer any hope of hiding the secret of these insane furies within

the circle of her own home; the servants had witnessed scenes of

exasperation without exciting cause, in which the premature old man

passed the bounds of reason. They were, however, so devoted to the

countess that nothing so far had transpired outside; but she dreaded

daily some public outburst of a frenzy no longer controlled by respect

for opinion.

Later I learned the dreadful details of the count’s treatment of his

wife. Instead of supporting her when the children were ill, he assailed

her with dark predictions and made her responsible for all future

illnesses, because she refused to let the children take the crazy doses

which he prescribed. When she went to walk with them the count would

predict a storm in the face of a clear sky; if by chance the prediction

proved true, the satisfaction he felt made him quite indifferent to

any harm to the children. If one of them was ailing, the count gave

his whole mind to fastening the cause of the illness upon the system

of nursing adopted by his wife, whom he carped at for every trifling

detail, always ending with the cruel words, “If your children fall ill

again you have only yourself to thank for it.”

He behaved in the same way in the management of the household, seeing

the worst side of everything, and making himself, as his old coachman

said, “the devil’s own advocate.” The countess arranged that Jacques

and Madeleine should take their meals alone at different hours from the

family, so as to save them from the count’s outbursts and draw all the

storms upon herself. In this way the children now saw but little of

their father. By one of the hallucinations peculiar to selfish persons,

the count had not the slightest idea of the misery he caused. In the

confidential communication he made to me on my arrival he particularly

dwelt on his goodness to his family. He wielded the flail, beat,

bruised, and broke everything about him as a monkey might have done.

Then, having half-destroyed his prey, he denied having touched it. I now

understood the lines on Henriette’s forehead,--fine lines, traced as it

were with the edge of a razor, which I had noticed the moment I saw her.

There is a pudicity in noble minds which withholds them from speaking

of their personal sufferings; proudly they hide the extent of their

woes from hearts that love them, feeling a merciful joy in doing so.

Therefore in spite of my urgency, I did not immediately obtain the truth

from Henriette. She feared to grieve me; she made brief admissions,

and then blushed for them; but I soon perceived myself the increase of

trouble which the count’s present want of regular occupation had brought

upon the household.

“Henriette,” I said, after I had been there some days, “don’t you think

you have made a mistake in so arranging the estate that the count has no

longer anything to do?”

“Dear,” she said, smiling, “my situation is critical enough to take all

my attention; believe me, I have considered all my resources, and they

are now exhausted. It is true that the bickerings are getting worse

and worse. As Monsieur de Mortsauf and I are always together, I cannot

lessen them by diverting his attention in other directions; in fact the

pain would be the same to me in any case. I did think of advising him

to start a nursery for silk-worms at Clochegourde, where we have many

mulberry-trees, remains of the old industry of Touraine. But I reflected

that he would still be the same tyrant at home, and I should have

many more annoyances through the enterprise. You will learn, my dear

observer, that in youth a man’s ill qualities are restrained by society,

checked in their swing by the play of passions, subdued under the fear

of public opinion; later, a middle-aged man, living in solitude, shows

his native defects, which are all the more terrible because so long

repressed. Human weaknesses are essentially base; they allow of neither

peace nor truce; what you yield to them to-day they exact to-morrow, and

always; they fasten on concessions and compel more of them. Power, on

the other hand, is merciful; it conforms to evidence, it is just and it

is peaceable. But the passions born of weakness are implacable. Monsieur

de Mortsauf takes an absolute pleasure in getting the better of me; and

he who would deceive no one else, deceives me with delight.”

One morning as we left the breakfast table, about a month after my

arrival, the countess took me by the arm, darted through an iron gate

which led into the vineyard, and dragged me hastily among the vines.

“He will kill me!” she cried. “And I want to live--for my children’s

sake. But oh! not a day’s respite! Always to walk among thorns! to

come near falling every instant! every instant to have to summon all my

strength to keep my balance! No human being can long endure such strain

upon the system. If I were certain of the ground I ought to take, if my

resistance could be a settled thing, then my mind might concentrate upon

it--but no, every day the attacks change character and leave me without

defence; my sorrows are not one, they are manifold. Ah! my friend--”

she cried, leaning her head upon my shoulder, and not continuing her

confidence. “What will become of me? Oh, what shall I do?” she said

presently, struggling with thoughts she did not express. “How can I

resist? He will kill me! No, I will kill myself--but that would be

a crime! Escape? yes, but my children! Separate from him? how, after

fifteen years of marriage, how could I ever tell my parents that I will

not live with him? for if my father and mother came here he would be

calm, polite, intelligent, judicious. Besides, can married women look to

fathers or mothers? Do they not belong body and soul to their husbands?

I could live tranquil if not happy--I have found strength in my chaste

solitude, I admit it; but if I am deprived of this negative happiness

I too shall become insane. My resistance is based on powerful reasons

which are not personal to myself. It is a crime to give birth to poor

creatures condemned to endless suffering. Yet my position raises serious

questions, so serious that I dare not decide them alone; I cannot be

judge and party both. To-morrow I will go to Tours and consult my new

confessor, the Abbe Birotteau--for my dear and virtuous Abbe de la Berge

is dead,” she said, interrupting herself. “Though he was severe, I miss

and shall always miss his apostolic power. His successor is an angel of

goodness, who pities but does not reprimand. Still, all courage draws

fresh life from the heart of religion; what soul is not strengthened by

the voice of the Holy Spirit? My God,” she said, drying her tears

and raising her eyes to heaven, “for what sin am I thus punished?--I

believe, yes, Felix, I believe it, we must pass through a fiery furnace

before we reach the saints, the just made perfect of the upper spheres.

Must I keep silence? Am I forbidden, oh, my God, to cry to the heart of

a friend? Do I love him too well?” She pressed me to her heart as though

she feared to lose me. “Who will solve my doubts? My conscience does not

reproach me. The stars shine from above on men; may not the soul, the

human star, shed its light upon a friend, if we go to him with pure

thoughts?”

I listened to this dreadful cry in silence, holding her moist hand

in mine that was still more moist. I pressed it with a force to which

Henriette replied with an equal pressure.

“Where are you?” cried the count, who came towards us, bareheaded.

Ever since my return he had insisted on sharing our interviews,--either

because he wanted amusement, or feared the countess would tell me her

sorrows and complain to me, or because he was jealous of a pleasure he

did not share.

“How he follows me!” she cried, in a tone of despair. “Let us go into

the orchard, we shall escape him. We can stoop as we run by the hedge,

and he will not see us.”

We made the hedge a rampart and reached the enclosure, where we were

soon at a good distance from the count in an alley of almond-trees.

“Dear Henriette,” I then said to her, pressing her arm against my heart

and stopping to contemplate her in her sorrow, “you have guided me with

true knowledge along the perilous ways of the great world; let me in

return give you some advice which may help you to end this duel without

witnesses, in which you must inevitably be worsted, for you are fighting

with unequal weapons. You must not struggle any longer with a madman--”

“Hush!” she said, dashing aside the tears that rolled from her eyes.

“Listen to me, dear,” I continued. “After a single hour’s talk with the

count, which I force myself to endure for love of you, my thoughts are

bewildered, my head heavy; he makes me doubtful of my own intellect; the

same ideas repeated over and over again seem to burn themselves on

my brain. Well-defined monomanias are not communicated; but when the

madness consists in a distorted way of looking at everything, and when

it lurks under all discussions, then it can and does injure the minds of

those who live with it. Your patience is sublime, but will it not end in

disordering you? For your sake, for that of your children, change your

system with the count. Your adorable kindness has made him selfish; you

have treated him as a mother treats the child she spoils; but now, if

you want to live--and you do want it,” I said, looking at her, “use

the control you have over him. You know what it is; he loves you and

he fears you; make him fear you more; oppose his erratic will with your

firm will. Extend your power over him, confine his madness to a moral

sphere just as we lock maniacs in a cell.”

“Dear child,” she said, smiling bitterly, “a woman without a heart

might do it. But I am a mother; I should make a poor jailer. Yes, I can

suffer, but I cannot make others suffer. Never!” she said, “never! not

even to obtain some great and honorable result. Besides, I should

have to lie in my heart, disguise my voice, lower my head, degrade my

gesture--do not ask of me such falsehoods. I can stand between Monsieur

de Mortsauf and his children, I willingly receive his blows that they

may not fall on others; I can do all that, and will do it to conciliate

conflicting interests, but I can do no more.”

“Let me worship thee, O saint, thrice holy!” I exclaimed, kneeling at

her feet and kissing her robe, with which I wiped my tears. “But if he

kills you?” I cried.

She turned pale and said, lifting her eyes to heaven:

“God’s will be done!”

“Do you know that the king said to your father, ‘So that devil of a

Mortsauf is still living’?”

“A jest on the lips of the king,” she said, “is a crime when repeated

here.”

In spite of our precautions the count had tracked us; he now arrived,

bathed in perspiration, and sat down under a walnut-tree where the

countess had stopped to give me that rebuke. I began to talk about the

vintage; the count was silent, taking no notice of the dampness under

the tree. After a few insignificant remarks, interspersed with pauses

that were very significant, he complained of nausea and headache; but he

spoke gently, and did not appeal to our pity, or describe his sufferings

in his usual exaggerated way. We paid no attention to him. When we

reached the house, he said he felt worse and should go to bed; which he

did, quite naturally and with much less complaint than usual. We took

advantage of the respite and went down to our dear terrace accompanied

by Madeleine.

“Let us get that boat and go upon the river,” said the countess after

we had made a few turns. “We might go and look at the fishing which is

going on to-day.”

We went out by the little gate, found the punt, jumped into it and

were presently paddling up the Loire. Like three children amused with

trifles, we looked at the sedges along the banks and the blue and green

dragon-flies; the countess wondered perhaps that she was able to

enjoy such peaceful pleasures in the midst of her poignant griefs;

but Nature’s calm, indifferent to our struggles, has a magic gift of

consolation. The tumults of a love full of restrained desires harmonize

with the wash of the water; the flowers that the hand of man has never

wilted are the voice of his secret dreams; the voluptuous swaying of the

boat vaguely responds to the thoughts that are floating in his soul.

We felt the languid influence of this double poesy. Words, tuned to the

diapason of nature, disclosed mysterious graces; looks were impassioned

rays sharing the light shed broadcast by the sun on the glowing meadows.

The river was a path along which we flew. Our spirit, no longer kept

down by the measured tread of our footsteps, took possession of the

universe. The abounding joy of a child at liberty, graceful in its

motions, enticing in its play, is the living expression of two freed

souls, delighting themselves by becoming ideally the wondrous being

dreamed of by Plato and known to all whose youth has been filled with

a blessed love. To describe to you that hour, not in its indescribable

details but in its essence, I must say to you that we loved each other

in all the creations animate and inanimate which surrounded us; we felt

without us the happiness our own hearts craved; it so penetrated our

being that the countess took off her gloves and let her hands float in

the water as if to cool an inward ardor. Her eyes spoke; but her mouth,

opening like a rose to the breeze, gave voice to no desire. You know the

harmony of deep tones mingling perfectly with high ones? Ever, when I

hear it now, it recalls to me the harmony of our two souls in this one

hour, which never came again.

“Where do you fish?” I asked, “if you can only do so from the banks you

own?”

“Near Pont-de-Ruan,” she replied. “Ah! we now own the river from

Pont-de-Ruan to Clochegourde; Monsieur de Mortsauf has lately bought

forty acres of the meadow lands with the savings of two years and the

arrearage of his pension. Does that surprise you?”

“Surprise me?” I cried; “I would that all the valley were yours.” She

answered me with a smile. Presently we came below the bridge to a place

where the Indre widens and where the fishing was going on.

“Well, Martineau?” she said.

“Ah, Madame la comtesse, such bad luck! We have fished up from the mill

the last three hours, and have taken nothing.”

We landed near them to watch the drawing in of the last net, and all

three of us sat down in the shade of a “bouillard,” a sort of poplar

with a white bark, which grows on the banks of the Danube and the Loire

(probably on those of other large rivers), and sheds, in the spring

of the year, a white and silky fluff, the covering of its flower. The

countess had recovered her august serenity; she half regretted the

unveiling of her griefs, and mourned that she had cried aloud like Job,

instead of weeping like the Magdalen,--a Magdalen without loves, or

galas, or prodigalities, but not without beauty and fragrance. The net

came in at her feet full of fish; tench, barbels, pike, perch, and an

enormous carp, which floundered about on the grass.

“Madame brings luck!” exclaimed the keeper.

All the laborers opened their eyes as they looked with admiration at the

woman whose fairy wand seemed to have touched the nets. Just then the

huntsman was seen urging his horse over the meadows at a full gallop.

Fear took possession of her. Jacques was not with us, and the mother’s

first thought, as Virgil so poetically says, is to press her children to

her breast when danger threatens.

“Jacques! Where is Jacques? What has happened to my boy?”

She did not love me! If she had loved me I should have seen upon her

face when confronted with my sufferings that expression of a lioness in

despair.

“Madame la comtesse, Monsieur le comte is worse.”

She breathed more freely and started to run towards Clochegourde,

followed by me and by Madeleine.

“Follow me slowly,” she said, looking back; “don’t let the dear child

overheat herself. You see how it is; Monsieur de Mortsauf took that

walk in the sun which put him into a perspiration, and sitting under the

walnut-tree may be the cause of a great misfortune.”

The words, said in the midst of her agitation, showed plainly the

purity of her soul. The death of the count a misfortune! She reached

Clochegourde with great rapidity, passing through a gap in the wall and

crossing the fields. I returned slowly. Henriette’s words lighted my

mind, but as the lightning falls and blasts the gathered harvest. On

the river I had fancied I was her chosen one; now I felt bitterly the

sincerity of her words. The lover who is not everything is nothing. I

loved with the desire of a love that knows what it seeks; which feeds in

advance on coming transports, and is content with the pleasures of

the soul because it mingles with them others which the future keeps

in store. If Henriette loved, it was certain that she knew neither the

pleasures of love nor its tumults. She lived by feelings only, like a

saint with God. I was the object on which her thoughts fastened as

bees swarm upon the branch of a flowering tree. In my mad jealousy I

reproached myself that I had dared nothing, that I had not tightened

the bonds of a tenderness which seemed to me at that moment more subtile

than real, by the chains of positive possession.

The count’s illness, caused perhaps by a chill under the walnut-tree,

became alarming in a few hours. I went to Tours for a famous doctor

named Origet, but was unable to find him until evening. He spent that

night and the next day at Clochegourde. We had sent the huntsman in

quest of leeches, but the doctor, thinking the case urgent, wished to

bleed the count immediately, but had brought no lancet with him. I

at once started for Azay in the midst of a storm, roused a surgeon,

Monsieur Deslandes, and compelled him to come with the utmost celerity

to Clochegourde. Ten minutes later and the count would have died; the

bleeding saved him. But in spite of this preliminary success the doctor

predicted an inflammatory fever of the worst kind. The countess was

overcome by the fear that she was the secret cause of this crisis. Two

weak to thank me for my exertions, she merely gave me a few smiles, the

equivalent of the kiss she had once laid upon my hand. Fain would I have

seen in those haggard smiles the remorse of illicit love; but no, they

were only the act of contrition of an innocent repentance, painful to

see in one so pure, the expression of admiring tenderness for me whom

she regarded as noble while reproaching herself for an imaginary wrong.

Surely she loved as Laura loved Petrarch, and not as Francesca da Rimini

loved Paolo,--a terrible discovery for him who had dreamed the union of

the two loves.

The countess half lay, her body bent forwards, her arms hanging, in a

soiled armchair in a room that was like the lair of a wild boar. The

next evening before the doctor departed he said to the countess, who had

sat up the night before, that she must get a nurse, as the illness would

be a long one.

“A nurse!” she said; “no, no! We will take care of him,” she added,

looking at me; “we owe it to ourselves to save him.”

The doctor gave us both an observing look full of astonishment. The

words were of a nature to make him suspect an atonement. He promised

to come twice a week, left directions for the treatment with Monsieur

Deslandes, and pointed out the threatening symptoms that might oblige

us to send for him. I asked the countess to let me sit up the alternate

nights and then, not without difficulty, I persuaded her to go to bed on

the third night. When the house was still and the count sleeping I heard

a groan from Henriette’s room. My anxiety was so keen that I went to

her. She was kneeling before the crucifix bathed in tears. “My God!” she

cried; “if this be the cost of a murmur, I will never complain again.”

“You have left him!” she said on seeing me.

“I heard you moaning, and I was frightened.”

“Oh, I!” she said; “I am well.”

Wishing to be certain that Monsieur de Mortsauf was asleep she came

down with me; by the light of the lamp we looked at him. The count was

weakened by the loss of blood and was more drowsy than asleep; his hands

picked the counterpane and tried to draw it over him.

“They say the dying do that,” she whispered. “Ah! if he were to die of

this illness, that I have caused, never will I marry again, I swear it,”

she said, stretching her hand over his head with a solemn gesture.

“I have done all I could to save him,” I said.

“Oh, you!” she said, “you are good; it is I who am guilty.”

She stooped to that discolored brow, wiped the perspiration from it and

laid a kiss there solemnly; but I saw, not without joy, that she did it

as an expiation.

“Blanche, I am thirsty,” said the count in a feeble voice.

“You see he knows me,” she said giving him to drink.

Her accent, her affectionate manner to him seemed to me to take the

feelings that bound us together and immolate them to the sick man.

“Henriette,” I said, “go and rest, I entreat you.”

“No more Henriette,” she said, interrupting me with imperious haste.

“Go to bed if you would not be ill. Your children, _he himself_ would

order you to be careful; it is a case where selfishness becomes a

virtue.”

“Yes,” she said.

She went away, recommending her husband to my care by a gesture which

would have seemed like approaching delirium if childlike grace had not

been mingled with the supplicating forces of repentance. But the scene

was terrible, judged by the habitual state of that pure soul; it alarmed

me; I feared the exaltation of her conscience. When the doctor

came again, I revealed to him the nature of my pure Henriette’s

self-reproach. This confidence, made discreetly, removed Monsieur

Origet’s suspicions, and enabled him to quiet the distress of that noble

soul by telling her that in any case the count had to pass through this

crisis, and that as for the nut-tree, his remaining there had done more

good than harm by developing the disease.

For fifty-two days the count hovered between life and death. Henriette

and I each watched twenty-six nights. Undoubtedly, Monsieur de Mortsauf

owed his life to our nursing and to the careful exactitude with which

we carried out the orders of Monsieur Origet. Like all philosophical

physicians, whose sagacious observation of what passes before them

justifies many a doubt of noble actions when they are only the

accomplishment of a duty, this man, while assisting the countess and

me in our rivalry of devotion, could not help watching us, with

scrutinizing glances, so afraid was he of being deceived in his

admiration.

“In diseases of this nature,” he said to me at his third visit, “death

has a powerful auxiliary in the moral nature when that is seriously

disturbed, as it is in this case. The doctor, the family, the nurses

hold the patient’s life in their hands; sometimes a single word, a fear

expressed by a gesture, has the effect of poison.”

As he spoke Origet studied my face and expression; but he saw in my eyes

the clear look of an honest soul. In fact during the whole course of

this distressing illness there never passed through my mind a single one

of the involuntary evil thoughts which do sometimes sear the consciences

of the innocent. To those who study nature in its grandeur as a

whole all tends to unity through assimilation. The moral world must

undoubtedly be ruled by an analogous principle. In an pure sphere all

is pure. The atmosphere of heaven was around my Henriette; it seemed as

though an evil desire must forever part me from her. Thus she not only

stood for happiness, but for virtue; she _was_ virtue. Finding us always

equally careful and attentive, the doctor’s words and manners took a

tone of respect and even pity; he seemed to say to himself, “Here

are the real sufferers; they hide their ills, and forget them.” By a

fortunate change, which, according to our excellent doctor, is common

enough in men who are completely shattered, Monsieur de Mortsauf

was patient, obedient, complained little, and showed surprising

docility,--he, who when well never did the simplest thing without

discussion. The secret of this submission to medical care, which he

formerly so derided, was an innate dread of death; another contradiction

in a man of tried courage. This dread may perhaps explain several

other peculiarities in the character which the cruel years of exile had

developed.

Shall I admit to you, Natalie, and will you believe me? these fifty days

and the month that followed them were the happiest moments of my life.

Love, in the celestial spaces of the soul is like a noble river flowing

through a valley; the rains, the brooks, the torrents hie to it, the

trees fall upon its surface, so do the flowers, the gravel of its

shores, the rocks of the summits; storms and the loitering tribute of

the crystal streams alike increase it. Yes, when love comes all comes to

love!

The first great danger over, the countess and I grew accustomed to

illness. In spite of the confusion which the care of the sick entails,

the count’s room, once so untidy, was now clean and inviting. Soon

we were like two beings flung upon a desert island, for not only do

anxieties isolate, but they brush aside as petty the conventions of the

world. The welfare of the sick man obliged us to have points of contact

which no other circumstances would have authorized. Many a time our

hands, shy or timid formerly, met in some service that we rendered to

the count--was I not there to sustain and help my Henriette? Absorbed

in a duty comparable to that of a soldier at the pickets, she forgot

to eat; then I served her, sometimes on her lap, a hasty meal which

necessitated a thousand little attentions. We were like children at a

grave. She would order me sharply to prepare whatever might ease the

sick man’s suffering; she employed me in a hundred petty ways. During

the time when actual danger obscured, as it does during the battle, the

subtile distinctions which characterize the facts of ordinary life,

she necessarily laid aside the reserve which all women, even the most

unconventional, preserve in their looks and words and actions before the

world or their own family. At the first chirping of the birds she would

come to relieve my watch, wearing a morning garment which revealed to

me once more the dazzling treasures that in my folly I had treated as my

own. Always dignified, nay imposing, she could still be familiar.

Thus it came to pass that we found ourselves unconsciously intimate,

half-married as it were. She showed herself nobly confiding, as sure of

me as she was of herself. I was thus taken deeper and deeper into her

heart. The countess became once more my Henriette, Henriette constrained

to love with increasing strength the friend who endeavored to be her

second soul. Her hand unresistingly met mine at the least solicitation;

my eyes were permitted to follow with delight the lines of her beauty

during the long hours when we listened to the count’s breathing, without

driving her from their sight. The meagre pleasures which we allowed

ourselves--sympathizing looks, words spoken in whispers not to wake

the count, hopes and fears repeated and again repeated, in short, the

thousand incidents of the fusion of two hearts long separated--stand

out in bright array upon the sombre background of the actual scene. Our

souls knew each other to their depths under this test, which many a warm

affection is unable to bear, finding life too heavy or too flimsy in the

close bonds of hourly intercourse.

You know what disturbance follows the illness of a master; how the

affairs of life seem to come to a standstill. Though the real care of

the family and estate fell upon Madame de Mortsauf, the count was useful

in his way; he talked with the farmers, transacted business with his

bailiff, and received the rents; if she was the soul, he was the body.

I now made myself her steward so that she could nurse the count without

neglecting the property. She accepted this as a matter of course, in

fact without thanking me. It was another sweet communion to share her

family cares, to transmit her orders. In the evenings we often met in

her room to discuss these interests and those of her children. Such

conversations gave one semblance the more to our transitory marriage.

With what delight she encouraged me to take a husband’s place, giving me

his seat at table, sending me to talk with the bailiff,--all in perfect

innocence, yet not without that inward pleasure the most virtuous woman

in the world will feel when she finds a course where strict obedience to

duty and the satisfaction of her wishes are combined.

Nullified, as it were, by illness, the count no longer oppressed his

wife or his household, the countess then became her natural self; she

busied herself with my affairs and showed me a thousand kindnesses. With

what joy I discovered in her mind a thought, vaguely conceived perhaps,

but exquisitely expressed, namely, to show me the full value of her

person and her qualities and make me see the change that would come over

her if she lived understood. This flower, kept in the cold atmosphere

of such a home, opened to my gaze, and to mine only; she took as much

delight in letting me comprehend her as I felt in studying her with the

searching eyes of love. She proved to me in all the trifling things

of daily life how much I was in her thoughts. When, after my turn of

watching, I went to bed and slept late, Henriette would keep the house

absolutely silent near me; Jacques and Madeleine played elsewhere,

though never ordered to do so; she invented excuses to serve my

breakfast herself--ah, with what sparkling pleasure in her movements,

what swallow-like rapidity, what lynx-eyed perception! and then! what

carnation on her cheeks, what quiverings in her voice!

Can such expansions of the soul be described in words?

Often she was wearied out; but if, at such moments of lassitude my

welfare came in question, for me, as for her children, she found fresh

strength and sprang up eagerly and joyfully. How she loved to shed her

tenderness like sunbeams in the air! Ah, Natalie, some women share

the privileges of angels here below; they diffuse that light which

Saint-Martin, the mysterious philosopher, declared to be intelligent,

melodious, and perfumed. Sure of my discretion, Henriette took pleasure

in raising the curtain which hid the future and in showing me two women

in her,--the woman bound hand and foot who had won me in spite of her

severity, and the woman freed, whose sweetness should make my love

eternal! What a difference. Madame de Mortsauf was the skylark of

Bengal, transported to our cold Europe, mournful on its perch, silent

and dying in the cage of a naturalist; Henriette was the singing bird of

oriental poems in groves beside the Ganges, flying from branch to branch

like a living jewel amid the roses of a volkameria that ever blooms. Her

beauty grew more beautiful, her mind recovered strength. The continual

sparkle of this happiness was a secret between ourselves, for she

dreaded the eye of the Abbe Dominis, the representative of the world;

she masked her contentment with playfulness, and covered the proofs of

her tenderness with the banner of gratitude.

“We have put your friendship to a severe test, Felix; we may give you

the same rights we give to Jacques, may we not, Monsieur l’abbe?” she

said one day.

The stern abbe answered with the smile of a man who can read the human

heart and see its purity; for the countess he always showed the respect

mingled with adoration which the angels inspire. Twice during those

fifty days the countess passed beyond the limits in which we held our

affection. But even these infringements were shrouded in a veil, never

lifted until the final hour when avowal came. One morning, during the

first days of the count’s illness, when she repented her harsh treatment

in withdrawing the innocent privileges she had formerly granted me, I

was expecting her to relieve my watch. Much fatigued, I fell asleep, my

head against the wall. I wakened suddenly at the touch of something

cool upon my forehead which gave me a sensation as if a rose had rested

there. I opened my eyes and saw the countess, standing a few steps

distant, who said, “I have just come.” I rose to leave the room, but as

I bade her good-bye I took her hand; it was moist and trembling.

“Are you ill?” I said.

“Why do you ask that question?” she replied.

I looked at her blushing and confused. “I was dreaming,” I replied.

Another time, when Monsieur Origet had announced positively that the

count was convalescent, I was lying with Jacques and Madeleine on the

step of the portico intent on a game of spillikins which we were playing

with bits of straw and hooks made of pins; Monsieur de Mortsauf was

asleep. The doctor, while waiting for his horse to be harnessed, was

talking with the countess in the salon. Monsieur Origet went away

without my noticing his departure. After he left, Henriette leaned

against the window, from which she watched us for some time without

our seeing her. It was one of those warm evenings when the sky is

copper-colored and the earth sends up among the echoes a myriad mingling

noises. A last ray of sunlight was leaving the roofs, the flowers in

the garden perfumed the air, the bells of the cattle returning to their

stalls sounded in the distance. We were all conforming to the silence

of the evening hour and hushing our voices that we might not wake

the count. Suddenly, I heard the guttural sound of a sob violently

suppressed; I rushed into the salon and found the countess sitting by

the window with her handkerchief to her face. She heard my step and made

me an imperious gesture, commanding me to leave her. I went up to her,

my heart stabbed with fear, and tried to take her handkerchief away by

force. Her face was bathed in tears and she fled into her room, which

she did not leave again until the hour for evening prayer. When that was

over, I led her to the terrace and asked the cause of her emotion; she

affected a wild gaiety and explained it by the news Monsieur Origet had

given her.

“Henriette, Henriette, you knew that news when I saw you weeping.

Between you and me a lie is monstrous. Why did you forbid me to dry your

tears? were they mine?”

“I was thinking,” she said, “that for me this illness has been a halt

in pain. Now that I no longer fear for Monsieur de Mortsauf I fear for

myself.”

She was right. The count’s recovery was soon attested by the return of

his fantastic humor. He began by saying that neither the countess, nor

I, nor the doctor had known how to take care of him; we were ignorant

of his constitution and also of his disease; we misunderstood his

sufferings and the necessary remedies. Origet, infatuated with his own

doctrines, had mistaken the case, he ought to have attended only to

the pylorus. One day he looked at us maliciously, with an air of having

guessed our thoughts, and said to his wife with a smile, “Now, my dear,

if I had died you would have regretted me, no doubt, but pray admit you

would have been quite resigned.”

“Yes, I should have mourned you in pink and black, court mourning,” she

answered laughing, to change the tone of his remarks.

But it was chiefly about his food, which the doctor insisted on

regulating, that scenes of violence and wrangling now took place, unlike

any that had hitherto occurred; for the character of the count was all

the more violent for having slumbered. The countess, fortified by the

doctor’s orders and the obedience of her servants, stimulated too by

me, who thought this struggle a good means to teach her to exercise

authority over the count, held out against his violence. She showed

a calm front to his demented cries, and even grew accustomed to his

insulting epithets, taking him for what he was, a child. I had the

happiness of at last seeing her take the reins in hand and govern that

unsound mind. The count cried out, but he obeyed; and he obeyed all the

better when he had made an outcry. But in spite of the evidence of good

results, Henriette often wept at the spectacle of this emaciated, feeble

old man, with a forehead yellower than the falling leaves, his eyes wan,

his hands trembling. She blamed herself for too much severity, and could

not resist the joy she saw in his eyes when, in measuring out his food,

she gave him more than the doctor allowed. She was even more gentle and

gracious to him than she had been to me; but there were differences

here which filled my heart with joy. She was not unwearying, and she

sometimes called her servants to wait upon the count when his caprices

changed too rapidly, and he complained of not being understood.

The countess wished to return thanks to God for the count’s recovery;

she directed a mass to be said, and asked if I would take her to church.

I did so, but I left her at the door, and went to see Monsieur and

Madame Chessel. On my return she reproached me.

“Henriette,” I said, “I cannot be false. I will throw myself into the

water to save my enemy from drowning, and give him my coat to keep him

warm; I will forgive him, but I cannot forget the wrong.”

She was silent, but she pressed my arm.

“You are an angel, and you were sincere in your thanksgiving,” I said,

continuing. “The mother of the Prince of the Peace was saved from the

hands of an angry populace who sought to kill her, and when the queen

asked, ‘What did you do?’ she answered, ‘I prayed for them.’ Women are

ever thus. I am a man, and necessarily imperfect.”

“Don’t calumniate yourself,” she said, shaking my arm, “perhaps you are

more worthy than I.”

“Yes,” I replied, “for I would give eternity for a day of happiness, and

you--”

“I!” she said haughtily.

I was silent and lowered my eyes to escape the lightning of hers.

“There is many an I in me,” she said. “Of which do you speak? Those

children,” pointing to Jacques and Madeleine, “are one--Felix,” she

cried in a heartrending voice, “do you think me selfish? Ought I to

sacrifice eternity to reward him who devotes to me his life? The thought

is dreadful; it wounds every sentiment of religion. Could a woman so

fallen rise again? Would her happiness absolve her? These are questions

you force me to consider.--Yes, I betray at last the secret of my

conscience; the thought has traversed my heart; often do I expiate it by

penance; it caused the tears you asked me to account for yesterday--”

“Do you not give too great importance to certain things which common

women hold at a high price, and--”

“Oh!” she said, interrupting me; “do you hold them at a lower?”

This logic stopped all argument.

“Know this,” she continued. “I might have the baseness to abandon

that poor old man whose life I am; but, my friend, those other feeble

creatures there before us, Madeleine and Jacques, would remain with

their father. Do you think, I ask you do you think they would be alive

in three months under the insane dominion of that man? If my failure of

duty concerned only myself--” A noble smile crossed her face. “But shall

I kill my children! My God!” she exclaimed. “Why speak of these things?

Marry, and let me die!”

She said the words in a tone so bitter, so hollow, that they stifled the

remonstrances of my passion.

“You uttered cries that day beneath the walnut-tree; I have uttered my

cries here beneath these alders, that is all,” I said; “I will be silent

henceforth.”

“Your generosity shames me,” she said, raising her eyes to heaven.

We reached the terrace and found the count sitting in a chair, in the

sun. The sight of that sunken face, scarcely brightened by a feeble

smile, extinguished the last flames that came from the ashes. I leaned

against the balustrade and considered the picture of that poor wreck,

between his sickly children and his wife, pale with her vigils, worn

out by extreme fatigue, by the fears, perhaps also by the joys of these

terrible months, but whose cheeks now glowed from the emotions she had

just passed through. At the sight of that suffering family beneath the

trembling leafage through which the gray light of a cloudy autumn sky

came dimly, I felt within me a rupture of the bonds which hold the body

to the spirit. There came upon me then that moral spleen which, they

say, the strongest wrestlers know in the crisis of their combats, a

species of cold madness which makes a coward of the bravest man, a bigot

of an unbeliever, and renders those it grasps indifferent to all things,

even to vital sentiments, to honor, to love--for the doubt it brings

takes from us the knowledge of ourselves and disgusts us with life

itself. Poor, nervous creatures, whom the very richness of your

organization delivers over to this mysterious, fatal power, who are your

peers and who your judges? Horrified by the thoughts that rose within

me, and demanding, like the wicked man, “Where is now thy God?” I could

not restrain the tears that rolled down my cheeks.

“What is it, dear Felix?” said Madeleine in her childish voice.

Then Henriette put to flight these dark horrors of the mind by a look of

tender solicitude which shone into my soul like a sunbeam. Just then the

old huntsman brought me a letter from Tours, at sight of which I made a

sudden cry of surprise, which made Madame de Mortsauf tremble. I saw the

king’s signet and knew it contained my recall. I gave her the letter and

she read it at a glance.

“What will become of me?” she murmured, beholding her desert sunless.

We fell into a stupor of thought which oppressed us equally; never

had we felt more strongly how necessary we were to one another. The

countess, even when she spoke indifferently of other things, seemed to

have a new voice, as if the instrument had lost some chords and others

were out of tune. Her movements were apathetic, her eyes without light.

I begged her to tell me her thoughts.

“Have I any?” she replied in a dazed way.

She drew me into her chamber, made me sit upon the sofa, took a package

from the drawer of her dressing-table, and knelt before me, saying:

“This hair has fallen from my head during the last year; take it, it is

yours; you will some day know how and why.”

Slowly I bent to meet her brow, and she did not avoid my lips. I kissed

her sacredly, without unworthy passion, without one impure impulse, but

solemnly, with tenderness. Was she willing to make the sacrifice; or did

she merely come, as I did once, to the verge of the precipice? If love

were leading her to give herself could she have worn that calm, that

holy look; would she have asked, in that pure voice of hers, “You are

not angry with me, are you?”

I left that evening; she wished to accompany me on the road to Frapesle;

and we stopped under my walnut-tree. I showed it to her, and told her

how I had first seen her four years earlier from that spot. “The valley

was so beautiful then!” I cried.

“And now?” she said quickly.

“You are beneath my tree, and the valley is ours!”

She bowed her head and that was our farewell; she got into her carriage

with Madeleine, and I into mine alone.

On my return to Paris I was absorbed in pressing business which took

all my time and kept me out of society, which for a while forgot me.

I corresponded with Madame de Mortsauf, and sent her my journal once a

week. She answered twice a month. It was a life of solitude yet teeming,

like those sequestered spots, blooming unknown, which I had sometimes

found in the depths of woods when gathering the flowers for my poems.

Oh, you who love! take these obligations on you; accept these daily

duties, like those the Church imposes upon Christians. The rigorous

observances of the Roman faith contain a great idea; they plough the

furrow of duty in the soul by the daily repetition of acts which keep

alive the sense of hope and fear. Sentiments flow clearer in furrowed

channels which purify their stream; they refresh the heart, they

fertilize the life from the abundant treasures of a hidden faith, the

source divine in which the single thought of a single love is multiplied

indefinitely.

My love, an echo of the Middle Ages and of chivalry, was known, I know

not how; possibly the king and the Duc de Lenoncourt had spoken of it.

From that upper sphere the romantic yet simple story of a young man

piously adoring a beautiful woman remote from the world, noble in her

solitude, faithful without support to duty, spread, no doubt quickly,

through the faubourg St. Germain. In the salons I was the object of

embarrassing notice; for retired life has advantages which if

once experienced make the burden of a constant social intercourse

insupportable. Certain minds are painfully affected by violent

contrasts, just as eyes accustomed to soft colors are hurt by glaring

light. This was my condition then; you may be surprised at it now, but

have patience; the inconsistencies of the Vandenesse of to-day will be

explained to you.

I found society courteous and women most kind. After the marriage of the

Duc de Berry the court resumed its former splendor and the glory of

the French fetes revived. The Allied occupation was over, prosperity

reappeared, enjoyments were again possible. Noted personages,

illustrious by rank, prominent by fortune, came from all parts of Europe

to the capital of the intellect, where the merits and the vices of

other countries were found magnified and whetted by the charms of French

intellect.

Five months after leaving Clochegourde my good angel wrote me, in the

middle of the winter, a despairing letter, telling me of the serious

illness of her son. He was then out of danger, but there were many fears

for the future; the doctor said that precautions were necessary for

his lungs--the suggestion of a terrible idea which had put the mother’s

heart in mourning. Hardly had Jacques begun to convalesce, and she could

breathe again, when Madeleine made them all uneasy. That pretty plant,

whose bloom had lately rewarded the mother’s culture, was now frail

and pallid and anemic. The countess, worn-out by Jacques’ long illness,

found no courage, she said, to bear this additional blow, and the

ever present spectacle of these two dear failing creatures made her

insensible to the redoubled torment of her husband’s temper. Thus the

storms were again raging; tearing up by the roots the hopes that were

planted deepest in her bosom. She was now at the mercy of the count;

weary of the struggle, she allowed him to regain all the ground he had

lost.

“When all my strength is employed in caring for my children,” she wrote,

“how is it possible to employ it against Monsieur de Mortsauf; how can

I struggle against his aggressions when I am fighting against death?

Standing here to-day, alone and much enfeebled, between these two young

images of mournful fate, I am overpowered with disgust, invincible

disgust for life. What blow can I feel, to what affection can I answer,

when I see Jacques motionless on the terrace, scarcely a sign of life

about him, except in those dear eyes, large by emaciation, hollow as

those of an old man and, oh, fatal sign, full of precocious intelligence

contrasting with his physical debility. When I look at my pretty

Madeleine, once so gay, so caressing, so blooming, now white as death,

her very hair and eyes seem to me to have paled; she turns a languishing

look upon me as if bidding me farewell; nothing rouses her, nothing

tempts her. In spite of all my efforts I cannot amuse my children; they

smile at me, but their smile is only in answer to my endearments, it

does not come from them. They weep because they have no strength to play

with me. Suffering has enfeebled their whole being, it has loosened even

the ties that bound them to me.

“Thus you can well believe that Clochegourde is very sad. Monsieur de

Mortsauf now rules everything--Oh my friend! you, my glory!” she wrote,

farther on, “you must indeed love me well to love me still; to love me

callous, ungrateful, turned to stone by grief.”