In the first place, I found her wanting in the qualities of mind which

distinguish Frenchwomen and make them so delightful to love; as all

those who have had the opportunity of loving in both countries declare.

When a Frenchwoman loves she is metamorphosed; her noted coquetry is

used to deck her love; she abandons her dangerous vanity and lays no

claim to any merit but that of loving well. She espouses the interests,

the hatreds, the friendships, of the man she loves; she acquires in

a day the experience of a man of business; she studies the code, she

comprehends the mechanism of credit, and could manage a banker’s office;

naturally heedless and prodigal, she will make no mistakes and waste not

a single louis. She becomes, in turn, mother, adviser, doctor, giving to

all her transformations a grace of happiness which reveals, in its every

detail, her infinite love. She combines the special qualities of the

women of other countries and gives unity to the mixture by her wit, that

truly French product, which enlivens, sanctions, justifies, and varies

all, thus relieving the monotony of a sentiment which rests on a single

tense of a single verb. The Frenchwoman loves always, without abatement

and without fatigue, in public or in solitude. In public she uses a tone

which has meaning for one only; she speaks by silence; she looks at you

with lowered eyelids. If the occasion prevents both speech and look she

will use the sand and write a word with the point of her little foot;

her love will find expression even in sleep; in short, she bends the

world to her love. The Englishwoman, on the contrary, makes her love

bend to the world. Educated to maintain the icy manners, the Britannic

and egotistic deportment which I described to you, she opens and

shuts her heart with the ease of a British mechanism. She possesses

an impenetrable mask, which she puts on or takes off phlegmatically.

Passionate as an Italian when no eye sees her, she becomes coldly

dignified before the world. A lover may well doubt his empire when he

sees the immobility of face, the aloofness of countenance, and hears

the calm voice, with which an Englishwoman leaves her boudoir. Hypocrisy

then becomes indifference; she has forgotten all.

Certainly the woman who can lay aside her love like a garment may be

thought to be capable of changing it. What tempests arise in the heart

of a man, stirred by wounded self-love, when he sees a woman taking and

dropping and again picking up her love like a piece of embroidery. These

women are too completely mistresses of themselves ever to belong wholly

to you; they are too much under the influence of society ever to let you

reign supreme. Where a Frenchwoman comforts by a look, or betrays her

impatience with visitors by witty jests, an Englishwoman’s silence is

absolute; it irritates the soul and frets the mind. These women are so

constantly, and, under all circumstances, on their dignity, that to

most of them fashion reigns omnipotent even over their pleasures. An

Englishwoman forces everything into form; though in her case the love of

form does not produce the sentiment of art. No matter what may be said

against it, Protestantism and Catholicism explain the differences

which make the love of Frenchwomen so far superior to the calculating,

reasoning love of Englishwomen. Protestantism doubts, searches, and

kills belief; it is the death of art and love. Where worldliness is all

in all, worldly people must needs obey; but passionate hearts flee from

it; to them its laws are insupportable.

You can now understand what a shock my self-love received when I found

that Lady Dudley could not live without the world, and that the English

system of two lives was familiar to her. It was no sacrifice she felt

called upon to make; on the contrary she fell naturally into two forms

of life that were inimical to each other. When she loved she loved

madly,--no woman of any country could be compared to her; but when the

curtain fell upon that fairy scene she banished even the memory of

it. In public she never answered to a look or a smile; she was neither

mistress nor slave; she was like an ambassadress, obliged to round her

phrases and her elbows; she irritated me by her composure, and outraged

my heart with her decorum. Thus she degraded love to a mere need,

instead of raising it to an ideal through enthusiasm. She expressed

neither fear, nor regrets, nor desire; but at a given hour her

tenderness reappeared like a fire suddenly lighted.

In which of these two women ought I to believe? I felt, as it were by

a thousand pin-pricks, the infinite differences between Henriette and

Arabella. When Madame de Mortsauf left me for a while she seemed to

leave to the air the duty of reminding me of her; the folds of her gown

as she went away spoke to the eye, as their undulating sound to the ear

when she returned; infinite tenderness was in the way she lowered her

eyelids and looked on the ground; her voice, that musical voice, was a

continual caress; her words expressed a constant thought; she was always

like unto herself; she did not halve her soul to suit two atmospheres,

one ardent, the other icy. In short, Madame de Mortsauf reserved her

mind and the flower of her thought to express her feelings; she was

coquettish in ideas with her children and with me. But Arabella’s mind

was never used to make life pleasant; it was never used at all for my

benefit; it existed only for the world and by the world, and it was

spent in sarcasm. She loved to rend, to bite, as it were,--not for

amusement but to satisfy a craving. Madame de Mortsauf would have hidden

her happiness from every eye, Lady Dudley chose to exhibit hers to

all Paris; and yet with her impenetrable English mask she kept within

conventions even while parading in the Bois with me. This mixture of

ostentation and dignity, love and coldness, wounded me constantly; for

my soul was both virgin and passionate, and as I could not pass from one

temperature to the other, my temper suffered. When I complained (never

without precaution), she turned her tongue with its triple sting against

me; mingling boasts of her love with those cutting English sarcasms. As

soon as she found herself in opposition to me, she made it an amusement

to hurt my feelings and humiliate my mind; she kneaded me like dough. To

any remark of mine as to keeping a medium in all things, she replied by

caricaturing my ideas and exaggerating them. When I reproached her for

her manner to me, she asked if I wished her to kiss me at the opera

before all Paris; and she said it so seriously that I, knowing her

desire to make people talk, trembled lest she should execute her threat.

In spite of her real passion she was never meditative, self-contained,

or reverent, like Henriette; on the contrary she was insatiable as a

sandy soil. Madame de Mortsauf was always composed, able to feel my soul

in an accent or a glance. Lady Dudley was never affected by a look, or

a pressure of the hand, nor yet by a tender word. No proof of love

surprised her. She felt so strong a necessity for excitement, noise,

celebrity, that nothing attained to her ideal in this respect; hence her

violent love, her exaggerated fancy,--everything concerned herself and

not me.

The letter you have read from Madame de Mortsauf (a light which still

shone brightly on my life), a proof of how the most virtuous of women

obeyed the genius of a Frenchwoman, revealing, as it did, her perpetual

vigilance, her sound understanding of all my prospects--that letter

must have made you see with what care Henriette had studied my material

interests, my political relations, my moral conquests, and with what

ardor she took hold of my life in all permissible directions. On

such points as these Lady Dudley affected the reticence of a mere

acquaintance. She never informed herself about my affairs, nor of my

likings or dislikings as a man. Prodigal for herself without being

generous, she separated too decidedly self-interest and love. Whereas

I knew very well, without proving it, that to save me a pang Henriette

would have sought for me that which she would never seek for herself. In

any great and overwhelming misfortune I should have gone for counsel to

Henriette, but I would have let myself be dragged to prison sooner than

say a word to Lady Dudley.

Up to this point the contrast relates to feelings; but it was the same

in outward things. In France, luxury is the expression of the man,

the reproduction of his ideas, of his personal poetry; it portrays the

character, and gives, between lovers, a precious value to every little

attention by keeping before them the dominant thought of the being

loved. But English luxury, which at first allured me by its choiceness

and delicacy, proved to be mechanical also. The thousand and one

attentions shown me at Clochegourde Arabella would have considered the

business of servants; each one had his own duty and speciality. The

choice of the footman was the business of her butler, as if it were a

matter of horses. She never attached herself to her servants; the death

of the best of them would not have affected her, for money could replace

the one lost by another equally efficient. As to her duty towards her

neighbor, I never saw a tear in her eye for the misfortunes of another;

in fact her selfishness was so naively candid that it absolutely created

a laugh. The crimson draperies of the great lady covered an iron nature.

The delightful siren who sounded at night every bell of her amorous

folly could soon make a young man forget the hard and unfeeling

Englishwoman, and it was only step by step that I discovered the stony

rock on which my seeds were wasted, bringing no harvest. Madame

de Mortsauf had penetrated that nature at a glance in their brief

encounter. I remembered her prophetic words. She was right; Arabella’s

love became intolerable to me. I have since remarked that most women who

ride well on horseback have little tenderness. Like the Amazons, they

lack a breast; their hearts are hard in some direction, but I do not

know in which.

At the moment when I begin to feel the burden of the yoke, when

weariness took possession of soul and body too, when at last I

comprehended the sanctity that true feeling imparts to love, when

memories of Clochegourde were bringing me, in spite of distance, the

fragrance of the roses, the warmth of the terrace, and the warble of

the nightingales,--at this frightful moment, when I saw the stony bed

beneath me as the waters of the torrent receded, I received a blow which

still resounds in my heart, for at every hour its echo wakes.

I was working in the cabinet of the king, who was to drive out at four

o’clock. The Duc de Lenoncourt was on service. When he entered the room

the king asked him news of the countess. I raised my head hastily in too

eager a manner; the king, offended by the action, gave me the look which

always preceded the harsh words he knew so well how to say.

“Sire, my poor daughter is dying,” replied the duke.

“Will the king deign to grant me leave of absence?” I cried, with tears

in my eyes, braving the anger which I saw about to burst.

“Go, _my lord_,” he answered, smiling at the satire in his words, and

withholding his reprimand in favor of his own wit.

More courtier than father, the duke asked no leave but got into the

carriage with the king. I started without bidding Lady Dudley good-bye;

she was fortunately out when I made my preparations, and I left a note

telling her I was sent on a mission by the king. At the Croix de Berny I

met his Majesty returning from Verrieres. He threw me a look full of his

royal irony, always insufferable in meaning, which seemed to say: “If

you mean to be anything in politics come back; don’t parley with the

dead.” The duke waved his hand to me sadly. The two pompous equipages

with their eight horses, the colonels and their gold lace, the escort

and the clouds of dust rolled rapidly away, to cries of “Vive le Roi!”

It seemed to me that the court had driven over the dead body of Madame

de Mortsauf with the utter insensibility which nature shows for our

catastrophes. Though the duke was an excellent man he would no doubt

play whist with Monsieur after the king had retired. As for the duchess,

she had long ago given her daughter the first stab by writing to her of

Lady Dudley.

My hurried journey was like a dream,--the dream of a ruined gambler;

I was in despair at having received no news. Had the confessor

pushed austerity so far as to exclude me from Clochegourde? I accused

Madeleine, Jacques, the Abbe Dominis, all, even Monsieur de Mortsauf.

Beyond Tours, as I came down the road bordered with poplars which leads

to Poncher, which I so much admired that first day of my search for

mine Unknown, I met Monsieur Origet. He guessed that I was going to

Clochegourde; I guessed that he was returning. We stopped our carriages

and got out, I to ask for news, he to give it.

“How is Madame de Mortsauf?” I said.

“I doubt if you find her living,” he replied. “She is dying a frightful

death--of inanition. When she called me in, last June, no medical

power could control the disease; she had the symptoms which Monsieur

de Mortsauf has no doubt described to you, for he thinks he has them

himself. Madame la comtesse was not in any transient condition of

ill-health, which our profession can direct and which is often the cause

of a better state, nor was she in the crisis of a disorder the effects

of which can be repaired; no, her disease had reached a point where

science is useless; it is the incurable result of grief, just as a

mortal wound is the result of a stab. Her physical condition is produced

by the inertia of an organ as necessary to life as the action of

the heart itself. Grief has done the work of a dagger. Don’t deceive

yourself; Madame de Mortsauf is dying of some hidden grief.”

“Hidden!” I exclaimed. “Her children have not been ill?”

“No,” he said, looking at me significantly, “and since she has been so

seriously attacked Monsieur de Mortsauf has ceased to torment her. I am

no longer needed; Monsieur Deslandes of Azay is all-sufficient; nothing

can be done; her sufferings are dreadful. Young, beautiful, and rich, to

die emaciated, shrunken with hunger--for she dies of hunger! During the

last forty days the stomach, being as it were closed up, has rejected

all nourishment, under whatever form we attempt to give it.”

Monsieur Origet pressed my hand with a gesture of respect.

“Courage, monsieur,” he said, lifting his eyes to heaven.

The words expressed his compassion for sufferings he thought shared;

he little suspected the poisoned arrow which they shot into my heart.

I sprang into the carriage and ordered the postilion to drive on,

promising a good reward if I arrived in time.

Notwithstanding my impatience I seemed to do the distance in a few

minutes, so absorbed was I in the bitter reflections that crowded upon

my soul. Dying of grief, yet her children were well? then she died

through me! My conscience uttered one of those arraignments which echo

throughout our lives and sometimes beyond them. What weakness, what

impotence in human justice, which avenges none but open deeds! Why shame

and death to the murderer who kills with a blow, who comes upon you

unawares in your sleep and makes it last eternally, who strikes without

warning and spares you a struggle? Why a happy life, an honored life, to

the murderer who drop by drop pours gall into the soul and saps the body

to destroy it? How many murderers go unpunished! What indulgence for

fashionable vice! What condoning of the homicides caused by moral

wrongs! I know not whose avenging hand it was that suddenly, at that

moment, raised the painted curtain that reveals society. I saw before

me many victims known to you and me,--Madame de Beauseant, dying, and

starting for Normandy only a few days earlier; the Duchesse de Langeais

lost; Lady Brandon hiding herself in Touraine in the little house where

Lady Dudley had stayed two weeks, and dying there, killed by a frightful

catastrophe,--you know it. Our period teems with such events. Who does

not remember that poor young woman who poisoned herself, overcome by

jealousy, which was perhaps killing Madame de Mortsauf? Who has not

shuddered at the fate of that enchanting young girl who perished after

two years of marriage, like a flower torn by the wind, the victim of

her chaste ignorance, the victim of a villain with whom Ronquerolles,

Montriveau, and de Marsay shake hands because he is useful to their

political projects? What heart has failed to throb at the recital of the

last hours of the woman whom no entreaties could soften, and who would

never see her husband after nobly paying his debts? Madame d’Aiglemont

saw death beside her and was saved only by my brother’s care. Society

and science are accomplices in crimes for which there are no assizes.

The world declares that no one dies of grief, or of despair; nor yet of

love, of anguish hidden, of hopes cultivated yet fruitless, again and

again replanted yet forever uprooted. Our new scientific nomenclature

has plenty of words to explain these things; gastritis, pericarditis,

all the thousand maladies of women the names of which are whispered in

the ear, all serve as passports to the coffin followed by hypocritical

tears that are soon wiped by the hand of a notary. Can there be at

the bottom of this great evil some law which we do not know? Must the

centenary pitilessly strew the earth with corpses and dry them to dust

about him that he may raise himself, as the millionaire battens on a

myriad of little industries? Is there some powerful and venomous life

which feasts on these gentle, tender creatures? My God! do I belong to

the race of tigers?

Remorse gripped my heart in its scorching fingers, and my cheeks were

furrowed with tears as I entered the avenue of Clochegourde on a damp

October morning, which loosened the dead leaves of the poplars planted

by Henriette in the path where once she stood and waved her handkerchief

as if to recall me. Was she living? Why did I feel her two white hands

upon my head laid prostrate in the dust? In that moment I paid for all

the pleasures that Arabella had given me, and I knew that I paid dearly.

I swore not to see her again, and a hatred of England took possession of

me. Though Lady Dudley was only a variety of her species, I included all

Englishwomen in my judgment.

I received a fresh shock as I neared Clochegourde. Jacques, Madeleine,

and the Abbe Dominis were kneeling at the foot of a wooden cross placed

on a piece of ground that was taken into the enclosure when the iron

gate was put up, which the count and countess had never been willing

to remove. I sprang from the carriage and went towards them, my heart

aching at the sight of these children and that grave old man imploring

the mercy of God. The old huntsman was there too, with bared head,

standing a little apart.

I stooped to kiss Jacques and Madeleine, who gave me a cold look and

continued praying. The abbe rose from his knees; I took him by the arm

to support myself, saying, “Is she still alive?” He bowed his head

sadly and gently. “Tell me, I implore you for Christ’s sake, why are you

praying at the foot of this cross? Why are you here, and not with her?

Why are the children kneeling here this chilly morning? Tell me all,

that I may do no harm through ignorance.”

“For the last few days Madame le comtesse has been unwilling to see her

children except at stated times.--Monsieur,” he continued after a

pause, “perhaps you had better wait a few hours before seeing Madame

de Mortsauf; she is greatly changed. It is necessary to prepare her for

this interview, or it might cause an increase in her sufferings--death

would be a blessed release from them.”

I wrung the hand of the good man, whose look and voice soothed the pangs

of others without sharpening them.

“We are praying God to help her,” he continued; “for she, so saintly, so

resigned, so fit to die, has shown during the last few weeks a horror of

death; for the first time in her life she looks at others who are full

of health with gloomy, envious eyes. This aberration comes less, I

think, from the fear of death than from some inward intoxication,--from

the flowers of her youth which ferment as they wither. Yes, an evil

angel is striving against heaven for that glorious soul. She is passing

through her struggle on the Mount of Olives; her tears bathe the white

roses of her crown as they fall, one by one, from the head of this

wedded Jephtha. Wait; do not see her yet. You would bring to her the

atmosphere of the court; she would see in your face the reflection of

the things of life, and you would add to the bitterness of her regret.

Have pity on a weakness which God Himself forgave to His Son when He

took our nature upon Him. What merit would there be in conquering if we

had no adversary? Permit her confessor or me, two old men whose worn-out

lives cause her no pain, to prepare her for this unlooked-for meeting,

for emotions which the Abbe Birotteau has required her to renounce.

But, in the things of this world there is an invisible thread of divine

purpose which religion alone can see; and since you have come perhaps

you are led by some celestial star of the moral world which leads to the

tomb as to the manger--”

He then told me, with that tempered eloquence which falls like dew upon

the heart, that for the last six months the countess had suffered daily

more and more, in spite of Monsieur Origet’s care. The doctor had come

to Clochegourde every evening for two months, striving to rescue her

from death; for her one cry had been, “Oh, save me!” “To heal the body

the heart must first be healed,” the doctor had exclaimed one day.

“As the illness increased, the words of this poor woman, once so gentle,

have grown bitter,” said the Abbe. “She calls on earth to keep her,

instead of asking God to take her; then she repents these murmurs

against the divine decree. Such alternations of feeling rend her heart

and make the struggle between body and soul most horrible. Often the

body triumphs. ‘You have cost me dear,’ she said one day to Jacques and

Madeleine; but in a moment, recalled to God by the look on my face, she

turned to Madeleine with these angelic words, ‘The happiness of others

is the joy of those who cannot themselves be happy,’--and the tone with

which she said them brought tears to my eyes. She falls, it is true, but

each time that her feet stumble she rises higher towards heaven.”

Struck by the tone of the successive intimations chance had sent me,

and which in this great concert of misfortunes were like a prelude of

mournful modulations to a funereal theme, the mighty cry of expiring

love, I cried out: “Surely you believe that this pure lily cut from

earth will flower in heaven?”

“You left her still a flower,” he answered, “but you will find her

consumed, purified by the forces of suffering, pure as a diamond buried

in the ashes. Yes, that shining soul, angelic star, will issue glorious

from the clouds and pass into the kingdom of the Light.”

As I pressed the hand of the good evangelist, my heart overflowing with

gratitude, the count put his head, now entirely white, out of the door

and immediately sprang towards me with signs of surprise.

“She was right! He is here! ‘Felix, Felix, Felix has come!’ she kept

crying. My dear friend,” he continued, beside himself with terror,

“death is here. Why did it not take a poor madman like me with one foot

in the grave?”

I walked towards the house summoning my courage, but on the threshold

of the long antechamber which crossed the house and led to the lawn, the

Abbe Birotteau stopped me.

“Madame la comtesse begs you will not enter at present,” he said to me.

Giving a glance within the house I saw the servants coming and going,

all busy, all dumb with grief, surprised perhaps by the orders Manette

gave them.

“What has happened?” cried the count, alarmed by the commotion, as much

from fear of the coming event as from the natural uneasiness of his

character.

“Only a sick woman’s fancy,” said the abbe. “Madame la comtesse does

not wish to receive monsieur le vicomte as she now is. She talks of

dressing; why thwart her?”

Manette came in search of Madeleine, whom I saw leave the house a few

moments after she had entered her mother’s room. We were all, Jacques

and his father, the two abbes and I, silently walking up and down the

lawn in front of the house. I looked first at Montbazon and then at

Azay, noticing the seared and yellow valley which answered in its

mourning (as it ever did on all occasions) to the feelings of my heart.

Suddenly I beheld the dear “mignonne” gathering the autumn flowers, no

doubt to make a bouquet at her mother’s bidding. Thinking of all which

that signified, I was so convulsed within me that I staggered, my sight

was blurred, and the two abbes, between whom I walked, led me to the

wall of a terrace, where I sat for some time completely broken down but

not unconscious.

“Poor Felix,” said the count, “she forbade me to write to you. She knew

how much you loved her.”

Though prepared to suffer, I found I had no strength to bear a scene

which recalled my memories of past happiness. “Ah!” I thought, “I see

it still, that barren moor, dried like a skeleton, lit by a gray sky, in

the centre of which grew a single flowering bush, which again and again

I looked at with a shudder,--the forecast of this mournful hour!”

All was gloom in the little castle, once so animated, so full of life.

The servants were weeping; despair and desolation everywhere. The paths

were not raked, work was begun and left undone, the workmen standing

idly about the house. Though the grapes were being gathered in the

vineyard, not a sound reached us. The place seemed uninhabited, so deep

the silence! We walked about like men whose grief rejects all ordinary

topics, and we listened to the count, the only one of us who spoke.

After a few words prompted by the mechanical love he felt for his wife

he was led by the natural bent of his mind to complain of her. She had

never, he said, taken care of herself or listened to him when he gave

her good advice. He had been the first to notice the symptoms of her

illness, for he had studied them in his own case; he had fought them and

cured them without other assistance than careful diet and the avoidance

of all emotion. He could have cured the countess, but a husband ought

not to take so much responsibility upon himself, especially when he

has the misfortune of finding his experience, in this as in everything,

despised. In spite of all he could say, the countess insisted on seeing

Origet,--Origet, who had managed his case so ill, was now killing his

wife. If this disease was, as they said, the result of excessive grief,

surely he was the one who had been in a condition to have it. What

griefs could the countess have had? She was always happy; she had never

had troubles or annoyances. Their fortune, thanks to his care and to his

sound ideas, was now in a most satisfactory state; he had always allowed

Madame de Mortsauf to reign at Clochegourde; her children, well trained

and now in health, gave her no anxiety,--where, then, did this grief

they talked of come from?

Thus he argued and discussed the matter, mingling his expressions of

despair with senseless accusations. Then, recalled by some sudden memory

to the admiration which he felt for his wife, tears rolled from his eyes

which had been dry so long.

Madeleine came to tell me that her mother was ready. The Abbe Birotteau

followed me. Madeleine, now a grave young girl, stayed with her father,

saying that the countess desired to be alone with me, and also that the

presence of too many persons would fatigue her. The solemnity of

this moment gave me that sense of inward heat and outward cold which

overcomes us often in the great events of life. The Abbe Birotteau, one

of those men whom God marks for his own by investing them with sweetness

and simplicity, together with patience and compassion, took me aside.

“Monsieur,” he said, “I wish you to know that I have done all in my

power to prevent this meeting. The salvation of this saint required it.

I have considered her only, and not you. Now that you are about to see

her to whom access ought to have been denied you by the angels, let me

say that I shall be present to protect you against yourself and perhaps

against her. Respect her weakness. I do not ask this of you as a priest,

but as a humble friend whom you did not know you had, and who would fain

save you from remorse. Our dear patient is dying of hunger and thirst.

Since morning she is a victim to the feverish irritation which precedes

that horrible death, and I cannot conceal from you how deeply she

regrets life. The cries of her rebellious flesh are stifled in my

heart--where they wake echoes of a wound still tender. But Monsieur de

Dominis and I accept this duty that we may spare the sight of this moral

anguish to her family; as it is, they no longer recognize their star by

night and by day in her; they all, husband, children, servants, all

are asking, ‘Where is she?’--she is so changed! When she sees you, her

regrets will revive. Lay aside your thoughts as a man of the world,

forget its vanities, be to her the auxiliary of heaven, not of earth.

Pray God that this dear saint die not in a moment of doubt, giving voice

to her despair.”

I did not answer. My silence alarmed the poor confessor. I saw, I heard,

I walked, and yet I was no longer on the earth. The thought, “In what

state shall I find her? Why do they use these precautions?” gave rise to

apprehensions which were the more cruel because so indefinite; all forms

of suffering crowded my mind.

We reached the door of the chamber and the abbe opened it. I then saw

Henriette, dressed in white, sitting on her little sofa which was placed

before the fireplace, on which were two vases filled with flowers;

flowers were also on a table near the window. The expression of the

abbe’s face, which was that of amazement at the change in the room, now

restored to its former state, showing me that the dying woman had sent

away the repulsive preparations which surround a sick-bed. She had spent

the last waning strength of fever in decorating her room to receive him

whom in that final hour she loved above all things else. Surrounded by

clouds of lace, her shrunken face, which had the greenish pallor of a

magnolia flower as it opens, resembled the first outline of a cherished

head drawn in chalks upon the yellow canvas of a portrait. To feel how

deeply the vulture’s talons now buried themselves in my heart, imagine

the eyes of that outlined face finished and full of life,--hollow

eyes which shone with a brilliancy unusual in a dying person. The calm

majesty given to her in the past by her constant victory over sorrow

was there no longer. Her forehead, the only part of her face which still

kept its beautiful proportions, wore an expression of aggressive will

and covert threats. In spite of the waxy texture of her elongated face,

inward fires were issuing from it like the fluid mist which seems to

flame above the fields of a hot day. Her hollow temples, her sunken

cheeks showed the interior formation of the face, and the smile upon her

whitened lips vaguely resembled the grin of death. Her robe, which was

folded across her breast, showed the emaciation of her beautiful figure.

The expression of her head said plainly that she knew she was changed,

and that the thought filled her with bitterness. She was no longer the

arch Henriette, nor the sublime and saintly Madame de Mortsauf, but the

nameless something of Bossuet struggling against annihilation, driven to

the selfish battle of life against death by hunger and balked desire. I

took her hand, which was dry and burning, to kiss it, as I seated myself

beside her. She guessed my sorrowful surprise from the very effort that

I made to hide it. Her discolored lips drew up from her famished teeth

trying to form a smile,--the forced smile with which we strive to

hide either the irony of vengeance, the expectation of pleasure, the

intoxication of our souls, or the fury of disappointment.

“Ah, my poor Felix, this is death,” she said, “and you do not like

death; odious death, of which every human creature, even the boldest

lover, feels a horror. This is the end of love; I knew it would be so.

Lady Dudley will never see you thus surprised at the change in her. Ah!

why have I so longed for you, Felix? You have come at last, and I reward

your devotion by the same horrible sight that made the Comte de Rance

a Trappist. I, who hoped to remain ever beautiful and noble in your

memory, to live there eternally a lily, I it is who destroy your

illusions! True love cannot calculate. But stay; do not go, stay.

Monsieur Origet said I was much better this morning; I shall recover.

Your looks will bring me back to life. When I regain a little strength,

when I can take some nourishment, I shall be beautiful again. I

am scarcely thirty-five, there are many years of happiness before

me,--happiness renews our youth; yes, I must know happiness! I have made

delightful plans,--we will leave Clochegourde and go to Italy.”

Tears filled my eyes and I turned to the window as if to look at the

flowers. The abbe followed me hastily, and bending over the bouquet

whispered, “No tears!”

“Henriette, do you no longer care for our dear valley,” I said, as if to

explain my sudden movement.

“Oh, yes!” she said, turning her forehead to my lips with a fond motion.

“But without you it is fatal to me,--without _thee_,” she added, putting

her burning lips to my ear and whispering the words like a sigh.

I was horror-struck at the wild caress, and my will was not strong

enough to repress the nervous agitation I felt throughout this scene. I

listened without reply; or rather I replied by a fixed smile and signs

of comprehension; wishing not to thwart her, but to treat her as a

mother does a child. Struck at first with the change in her person, I

now perceived that the woman, once so dignified in her bearing, showed

in her attitude, her voice, her manners, in her looks and her ideas, the

naive ignorance of a child, its artless graces, its eager movements,

its careless indifference to everything that is not its own desire,--in

short all the weaknesses which commend a child to our protection. Is it

so with all dying persons? Do they strip off social disguises till

they are like children who have never put them on? Or was it that the

countess feeling herself on the borders of eternity, rejected every

human feeling except love?

“You will bring me health as you used to do, Felix,” she said, “and our

valley will still be my blessing. How can I help eating what you will

give me? You are such a good nurse. Besides, you are so rich in health

and vigor that life is contagious beside you. My friend, prove to me

that I need not die--die blighted. They think my worst suffering is

thirst. Oh, yes, my thirst is great, dear friend. The waters of the

Indre are terrible to see; but the thirst of my heart is greater far.

I thirsted for thee,” she said in a smothered voice, taking my hands in

hers, which were burning, and drawing me close that she might whisper

in my ear. “My anguish has been in not seeing thee! Did you not bid

me live? I will live; I too will ride on horseback; I will know life,

Paris, fetes, pleasures, all!”

Ah! Natalie, that awful cry--which time and distance render cold--rang

in the ears of the old priest and in mine; the tones of that glorious

voice pictured the battles of a lifetime, the anguish of a true love

lost. The countess rose with an impatient movement like that of a child

which seeks a plaything. When the confessor saw her thus the poor man

fell upon his knees and prayed with clasped hands.

“Yes, to live!” she said, making me rise and support her; “to live with

realities and not with delusions. All has been delusions in my life; I

have counted them up, these lies, these impostures! How can I die, I

who have never lived? I who have never roamed a moor to meet him!” She

stopped, seemed to listen, and to smell some odor through the walls.

“Felix, the vintagers are dining, and I, I,” she said, in the voice of

a child, “I, the mistress, am hungry. It is so in love,--they are happy,

they, they!--”

“Kyrie eleison!” said the poor abbe, who with clasped hands and eyes

raised to heaven was reciting his litanies.

She flung an arm around my neck, kissed me violently, and pressed me to

her, saying, “You shall not escape me now!” She gave the little nod with

which in former days she used, when leaving me for an instant, to say

she would return. “We will dine together,” she said; “I will go and tell

Manette.” She turned to go, but fainted; and I laid her, dressed as she

was, upon the bed.

“You carried me thus before,” she murmured, opening her eyes.

She was very light, but burning; as I took her in my arms I felt the

heat of her body. Monsieur Deslandes entered and seemed surprised at the

decoration of the room; but seeing me, all was explained to him.

“We must suffer much to die,” she said in a changed voice.

The doctor sat down and felt her pulse, then he rose quickly and said a

few words in a low voice to the priest, who left the room beckoning me

to follow him.

“What are you going to do?” I said to the doctor.

“Save her from intolerable agony,” he replied. “Who could have believed

in so much strength? We cannot understand how she can have lived in this

state so long. This is the forty-second day since she has either eaten

or drunk.”

Monsieur Deslandes called for Manette. The Abbe Birotteau took me to the

gardens.

“Let us leave her to the doctor,” he said; “with Manette’s help he will

wrap her in opium. Well, you have heard her now--if indeed it is she

herself.”

“No,” I said, “it is not she.”

I was stupefied with grief. I left the grounds by the little gate of the

lower terrace and went to the punt, in which I hid to be alone with my

thoughts. I tried to detach myself from the being in which I lived,--a

torture like that with which the Tartars punish adultery by fastening a

limb of the guilty man in a piece of wood and leaving him with a knife

to cut it off if he would not die of hunger. My life was a failure, too!

Despair suggested many strange ideas to me. Sometimes I vowed to die

beside her; sometimes to bury myself at Meilleraye among the Trappists.

I looked at the windows of the room where Henriette was dying, fancying

I saw the light that was burning there the night I betrothed my soul to

hers. Ah! ought I not to have followed the simple life she had created

for me, keeping myself faithfully to her while I worked in the world?

Had she not bidden me become a great man expressly that I might be

saved from base and shameful passions? Chastity! was it not a sublime

distinction which I had not know how to keep? Love, as Arabella

understood it, suddenly disgusted me. As I raised my humbled head asking

myself where, in future, I could look for light and hope, what interest

could hold me to life, the air was stirred by a sudden noise. I turned

to the terrace and there saw Madeleine walking alone, with slow steps.

During the time it took me to ascend the terrace, intending to ask the

dear child the reason of the cold look she had given me when kneeling at

the foot of the cross, she had seated herself on the bench. When she saw

me approach her, she rose, pretending not to have seen me, and returned

towards the house in a significantly hasty manner. She hated me; she

fled from her mother’s murderer.

When I reached the portico I saw Madeleine like a statue, motionless and

erect, evidently listening to the sound of my steps. Jacques was sitting

in the portico. His attitude expressed the same insensibility to what

was going on about him that I had noticed when I first saw him; it

suggested ideas such as we lay aside in some corner of our mind to take

up and study at our leisure. I have remarked that young persons who

carry death within them are usually unmoved at funerals. I longed to

question that gloomy spirit. Had Madeleine kept her thoughts to herself,

or had she inspired Jacques with her hatred?

“You know, Jacques,” I said, to begin the conversation, “that in me you

have a most devoted brother.”

“Your friendship is useless to me; I shall follow my mother,” he said,

giving me a sullen look of pain.

“Jacques!” I cried, “you, too, against me?”

He coughed and walked away; when he returned he showed me his

handkerchief stained with blood.

“Do you understand that?” he said.

Thus they had each of them a fatal secret. I saw before long that the

brother and sister avoided each other. Henriette laid low, all was in

ruins at Clochegourde.

“Madame is asleep,” Manette came to say, quite happy in knowing that the

countess was out of pain.

In these dreadful moments, though each person knows the inevitable end,

strong affections fasten on such minor joys. Minutes are centuries which

we long to make restorative; we wish our dear ones to lie on roses,

we pray to bear their sufferings, we cling to the hope that their last

moment may be to them unexpected.

“Monsieur Deslandes has ordered the flowers taken away; they excited

Madame’s nerves,” said Manette.

Then it was the flowers that caused her delirium; she herself was not a

part of it.

“Come, Monsieur Felix,” added Manette, “come and see Madame; she is

beautiful as an angel.”

I returned to the dying woman just as the setting sun was gilding the

lace-work on the roofs of the chateau of Azay. All was calm and pure.

A soft light lit the bed on which my Henriette was lying, wrapped in

opium. The body was, as it were, annihilated; the soul alone reigned

on that face, serene as the skies when the tempest is over. Blanche and

Henriette, two sublime faces of the same woman, reappeared; all the more

beautiful because my recollection, my thought, my imagination, aiding

nature, repaired the devastation of each dear feature, where now the

soul triumphant sent its gleams through the calm pulsations of her

breathing. The two abbes were sitting at the foot of the bed. The count

stood, as though stupefied by the banners of death which floated above

that adored being. I took her seat on the sofa. We all four turned to

each other looks in which admiration for that celestial beauty mingled

with tears of mourning. The lights of thought announced the return of

the Divine Spirit to that glorious tabernacle.

The Abbe Dominis and I spoke in signs, communicating to each other our

mutual ideas. Yes, the angels were watching her! yes, their flaming

swords shone above that noble brow, which the august expression of her

virtue made, as it were, a visible soul conversing with the spirits of

its sphere. The lines of her face cleared; all in her was exalted and

became majestic beneath the unseen incense of the seraphs who guarded

her. The green tints of bodily suffering gave place to pure white tones,

the cold wan pallor of approaching death. Jacques and Madeleine entered.

Madeleine made us quiver by the adoring impulse which flung her on her

knees beside the bed, crying out, with clasped hand: “My mother! here is

my mother!” Jacques smiled; he knew he would follow her where she went.

“She is entering the haven,” said the Abbe Birotteau.

The Abbe Dominis looked at me as if to say: “Did I not tell you the star

would rise in all its glory?”

Madeleine knelt with her eyes fixed on her mother, breathing when she

breathed, listening to the soft breath, the last thread by which she

held to life, and which we followed in terror, fearing that every effort

of respiration might be the last. Like an angel at the gates of the

sanctuary, the young girl was eager yet calm, strong but reverent. At

that moment the Angelus rang from the village clock-tower. Waves of

tempered air brought its reverberations to remind us that this was the

sacred hour when Christianity repeats the words said by the angel to the

woman who has redeemed the faults of her sex. “Ave Maria!”--surely, at

this moment the words were a salutation from heaven. The prophecy was so

plain, the event so near that we burst into tears. The murmuring sounds

of evening, melodious breezes in the leafage, last warbling of the

birds, the hum and echo of the insects, the voices of the waters,

the plaintive cry of the tree-frog,--all country things were bidding

farewell to the loveliest lily of the valley, to her simple, rural life.

The religious poesy of the hour, now added to that of Nature, expressed

so vividly the psalm of the departing soul that our sobs redoubled.

Though the door of the chamber was open we were all so plunged in

contemplation of the scene, as if to imprint its memories forever on our

souls, that we did not notice the family servants who were kneeling as

a group and praying fervently. These poor people, living on hope, had

believed their mistress might be spared, and this plain warning overcame

them. At a sign from the Abbe Birotteau the old huntsman went to fetch

the curate of Sache. The doctor, standing by the bed, calm as science,

and holding the hand of the still sleeping woman, had made the confessor

a sign to say that this sleep was the only hour without pain which

remained for the recalled angel. The moment had come to administer the

last sacraments of the Church. At nine o’clock she awoke quietly, looked

at us with surprised but gentle eyes, and we beheld our idol once more

in all the beauty of former days.

“Mother! you are too beautiful to die--life and health are coming back

to you!” cried Madeleine.

“Dear daughter, I shall live--in thee,” she answered, smiling.

Then followed heart-rending embraces of the mother and her children.

Monsieur de Mortsauf kissed his wife upon her brow. She colored when she

saw me.

“Dear Felix,” she said, “this is, I think, the only grief that I shall

ever have caused you. Forget all that I may have said,--I, a poor

creature much beside myself.” She held out her hand; I took it and

kissed it. Then she said, with her chaste and gracious smile, “As in the

old days, Felix?”

We all left the room and went into the salon during the last confession.

I approached Madeleine. In presence of others she could not escape me

without a breach of civility; but, like her mother, she looked at

no one, and kept silence without even once turning her eyes in my

direction.

“Dear Madeleine,” I said in a low voice, “What have you against me?

Why do you show such coldness in the presence of death, which ought to

reconcile us all?”

“I hear in my heart what my mother is saying at this moment,” she

replied, with a look which Ingres gave to his “Mother of God,”--that

virgin, already sorrowful, preparing herself to protect the world for

which her son was about to die.

“And you condemn me at the moment when your mother absolves me,--if

indeed I am guilty.”

“You, _you_,” she said, “always _your self_!”

The tones of her voice revealed the determined hatred of a Corsican,

implacable as the judgments of those who, not having studied life, admit

of no extenuation of faults committed against the laws of the heart.

An hour went by in deepest silence. The Abbe Birotteau came to us after

receiving the countess’s general confession, and we followed him back to

the room where Henriette, under one of those impulses which often come

to noble minds, all sisters of one intent, had made them dress her in

the long white garment which was to be her shroud. We found her sitting

up; beautiful from expiation, beautiful in hope. I saw in the fireplace

the black ashes of my letters which had just been burned, a sacrifice

which, as her confessor afterwards told me, she had not been willing to

make until the hour of her death. She smiled upon us all with the smile

of other days. Her eyes, moist with tears, gave evidence of inward

lucidity; she saw the celestial joys of the promised land.

“Dear Felix,” she said, holding out her hand and pressing mine, “stay

with us. You must be present at the last scene of my life, not the least

painful among many such, but one in which you are concerned.”

She made a sign and the door was closed. At her request the count sat

down; the Abbe Birotteau and I remained standing. Then with Manette’s

help the countess rose and knelt before the astonished count, persisting

in remaining there. A moment after, when Manette had left the room, she

raised her head which she had laid upon her husband’s knees.

“Though I have been a faithful wife to you,” she said, in a faint voice,

“I have sometimes failed in my duty. I have just prayed to God to give

me strength to ask your pardon. I have given to a friendship outside

of my family more affectionate care than I have shown to you. Perhaps

I have sometimes irritated you by the comparisons you may have made

between these cares, these thoughts, and those I gave to you. I have

had,” she said, in a sinking voice, “a deep friendship, which no one,

not even he who has been its object, has fully known. Though I have

continued virtuous according to all human laws, though I have been

a irreproachable wife to you, still other thoughts, voluntary or

involuntary, have often crossed my mind and, in this hour, I fear I

have welcomed them too warmly. But as I have tenderly loved you, and

continued to be your submissive wife, and as the clouds passing beneath

the sky do not alter its purity, I now pray for your blessing with a

clean heart. I shall die without one bitter thought if I can hear

from your lips a tender word for your Blanche, for the mother of your

children,--if I know that you forgive her those things for which she did

not forgive herself till reassured by the great tribunal which pardons

all.”

“Blanche, Blanche!” cried the broken man, shedding tears upon his wife’s

head, “Would you kill me?” He raised her with a strength unusual to him,

kissed her solemnly on the forehead, and thus holding her continued:

“Have I no forgiveness to ask of you? Have I never been harsh? Are you

not making too much of your girlish scruples?”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But, dear friend, indulge the weakness of a dying

woman; tranquillize my mind. When you reach this hour you will remember

that I left you with a blessing. Will you grant me permission to leave

to our friend now here that pledge of my affection?” she continued,

showing a letter that was on the mantelshelf. “He is now my adopted son,

and that is all. The heart, dear friend, makes its bequests; my last

wishes impose a sacred duty on that dear Felix. I think I do not put

too great a burden on him; grant that I do not ask too much of you in

desiring to leave him these last words. You see, I am always a woman,”

she said, bending her head with mournful sweetness; “after obtaining

pardon I ask a gift--Read this,” she added, giving me the letter; “but

not until after my death.”

The count saw her color change: he lifted her and carried her himself to

the bed, where we all surrounded her.

“Felix,” she said, “I may have done something wrong to you. Often I gave

you pain by letting you hope for that I could not give you; but see,

it was that very courage of wife and mother that now enables me to die

forgiven of all. You will forgive me too; you who have so often blamed

me, and whose injustice was so dear--”

The Abbe Birotteau laid a finger on his lips. At that sign the dying

woman bowed her head, faintness overcame her; presently she waved her

hands as if summoning the clergy and her children and the servants to

her presence, and then, with an imploring gesture, she showed me the

desolate count and the children beside him. The sight of that father,

the secret of whose insanity was known to us alone, now to be left sole

guardian of those delicate beings, brought mute entreaties to her face,

which fell upon my heart like sacred fire. Before receiving extreme

unction she asked pardon of her servants if by a hasty word she had

sometimes hurt them; she asked their prayers and commended each one,

individually, to the count; she nobly confessed that during the last two

months she had uttered complaints that were not Christian and might

have shocked them; she had repulsed her children and clung to life

unworthily; but she attributed this failure of submission to the will

of God to her intolerable sufferings. Finally, she publicly thanked the

Abbe Birotteau with heartfelt warmth for having shown her the illusion

of all earthly things.

When she ceased to speak, prayers were said again, and the curate of

Sache gave her the viaticum. A few moments later her breathing became

difficult; a film overspread her eyes, but soon they cleared again; she

gave me a last look and died to the eyes of earth, hearing perhaps the

symphony of our sobs. As her last sigh issued from her lips,--the effort

of a life that was one long anguish,--I felt a blow within me that

struck on all my faculties. The count and I remained beside the bier all

night with the two abbes and the curate, watching, in the glimmer of the

tapers, the body of the departed, now so calm, laid upon the mattress of

her bed, where once she had suffered cruelly. It was my first communion

with death. I remained the whole of that night with my eyes fixed

on Henriette, spell-bound by the pure expression that came from the

stilling of all tempests, by the whiteness of that face where still I

saw the traces of her innumerable affections, although it made no answer

to my love. What majesty in that silence, in that coldness! How many

thoughts they expressed! What beauty in that cold repose, what power in

that immobility! All the past was there and futurity had begun. Ah! I

loved her dead as much as I had loved her living. In the morning the

count went to bed; the three wearied priests fell asleep in that heavy

hour of dawn so well known to those who watch. I could then, without

witnesses, kiss that sacred brow with all the love I had never been

allowed to utter.

The third day, in a cool autumn morning, we followed the countess to her

last home. She was carried by the old huntsman, the two Martineaus, and

Manette’s husband. We went down by the road I had so joyously ascended

the day I first returned to her. We crossed the valley of the Indre to

the little cemetery of Sache--a poor village graveyard, placed behind

the church on the slope of the hill, where with true humility she had

asked to be buried beneath a simple cross of black wood, “like a poor

country-woman,” she said. When I saw, from the centre of the valley,

the village church and the place of the graveyard a convulsive shudder

seized me. Alas! we have all our Golgothas, where we leave the first

thirty-three years of our lives, with the lance-wound in our side, the

crown of thorns and not of roses on our brow--that hill-slope was to me

the mount of expiation.

We were followed by an immense crowd, seeking to express the grief of

the valley where she had silently buried so many noble actions. Manette,

her faithful woman, told me that when her savings did not suffice to

help the poor she economized upon her dress. There were babes to be

provided for, naked children to be clothed, mothers succored in their

need, sacks of flour brought to the millers in winter for helpless

old men, a cow sent to some poor home,--deeds of a Christian woman,

a mother, and the lady of the manor. Besides these things, there were

dowries paid to enable loving hearts to marry; substitutes bought for

youths to whom the draft had brought despair, tender offerings of the

loving woman who had said: “The happiness of others is the consolation

of those who cannot themselves be happy.” Such things, related at the

“veillees,” made the crowd immense. I walked with Jacques and the two

abbes behind the coffin. According to custom neither the count nor

Madeleine were present; they remained alone at Clochegourde. But Manette

insisted in coming with us. “Poor madame! poor madame! she is happy

now,” I heard her saying to herself amid her sobs.

As the procession left the road to the mills I heard a simultaneous moan

and a sound of weeping as though the valley were lamenting for its soul.

The church was filled with people. After the service was over we went to

the graveyard where she wished to be buried near the cross. When I heard

the pebbles and the gravel falling upon the coffin my courage gave way;

I staggered and asked the two Martineaus to steady me. They took me,

half-dead, to the chateau of Sache, where the owners very kindly invited

me to stay, and I accepted. I will own to you that I dreaded a return

to Clochegourde, and it was equally repugnant to me to go to Frapesle,

where I could see my Henriette’s windows. Here, at Sache, I was near

her. I lived for some days in a room which looked on the tranquil,

solitary valley I have mentioned to you. It is a deep recess among the

hills, bordered by oaks that are doubly centenarian, through which a

torrent rushes after rain. The scene was in keeping with the stern and

solemn meditations to which I desired to abandon myself.

I had perceived, during the day which followed the fatal night, how

unwelcome my presence might be at Clochegourde. The count had gone

through violent emotions at the death of his wife; but he had expected

the event; his mind was made up to it in a way that was something like

indifference. I had noticed this several times, and when the countess

gave me that letter (which I still dared not read) and when she spoke

of her affection for me, I remarked that the count, usually so quick

to take offence, made no sign of feeling any. He attributed Henriette’s

wording to the extreme sensitiveness of a conscience which he knew to be

pure. This selfish insensibility was natural to him. The souls of these

two beings were no more married than their bodies; they had never

had the intimate communion which keeps feeling alive; they had shared

neither pains nor pleasures, those strong links which tear us by a

thousand edges when broken, because they touch on all our fibers, and

are fastened to the inmost recesses of our hearts.

Another consideration forbade my return to Clochegourde,--Madeleine’s

hostility. That hard young girl was not disposed to modify her hatred

beside her mother’s coffin. Between the count, who would have talked to

me incessantly of himself, and the new mistress of the house, who would

have shown me invincible dislike, I should have found myself horribly

annoyed. To be treated thus where once the very flowers welcomed me,

where the steps of the portico had a voice, where my memory clothed with

poetry the balconies, the fountains, the balustrades, the trees, the

glimpses of the valleys! to be hated where I once was loved--the thought

was intolerable to me. So, from the first, my mind was made up.

Alas! alas! was this the end of the keenest love that ever entered

the heart of man? To the eyes of strangers my conduct might be

reprehensible, but it had the sanction of my own conscience. It is thus

that the noblest feelings, the sublimest dramas of our youth must end.

We start at dawn, as I from Tours to Clochegourde, we clutch the world,

our hearts hungry for love; then, when our treasure is in the crucible,

when we mingle with men and circumstances, all becomes gradually debased

and we find but little gold among the ashes. Such is life! life as it

is; great pretensions, small realities. I meditated long about myself,

debating what I could do after a blow like this which had mown down

every flower of my soul. I resolved to rush into the science of

politics, into the labyrinth of ambition, to cast woman from my life and

to make myself a statesman, cold and passionless, and so remain true to

the saint I loved. My thoughts wandered into far-off regions while my

eyes were fastened on the splendid tapestry of the yellowing oaks, the

stern summits, the bronzed foothills. I asked myself if Henriette’s

virtue were not, after all, that of ignorance, and if I were indeed

guilty of her death. I fought against remorse. At last, in the sweetness

of an autumn midday, one of those last smiles of heaven which are so

beautiful in Touraine, I read the letter which at her request I was not

to open before her death. Judge of my feelings as I read it.

Madame de Mortsauf to the Vicomte Felix de Vandenesse:

Felix, friend, loved too well, I must now lay bare my heart to

you,--not so much to prove my love as to show you the weight of

obligation you have incurred by the depth and gravity of the

wounds you have inflicted on it. At this moment, when I sink

exhausted by the toils of life, worn out by the shocks of its

battle, the woman within me is, mercifully, dead; the mother alone

survives. Dear, you are now to see how it was that you were the

original cause of all my sufferings. Later, I willingly received

your blows; to-day I am dying of the final wound your hand has

given,--but there is joy, excessive joy in feeling myself

destroyed by him I love.

My physical sufferings will soon put an end to my mental strength;

I therefore use the last clear gleams of intelligence to implore

you to befriend my children and replace the heart of which you

have deprived them. I would solemnly impose this duty upon you if

I loved you less; but I prefer to let you choose it for yourself

as an act of sacred repentance, and also in faithful continuance

of your love--love, for us, was ever mingled with repentant

thoughts and expiatory fears! but--I know it well--we shall

forever love each other. Your wrong to me was not so fatal an act

in itself as the power which I let it have within me. Did I not

tell you I was jealous, jealous unto death? Well, I die of it.

But, be comforted, we have kept all human laws. The Church has

told me, by one of her purest voices, that God will be forgiving

to those who subdue their natural desires to His commandments. My

beloved, you are now to know all, for I would not leave you in

ignorance of any thought of mine. What I confide to God in my last

hour you, too, must know,--you, king of my heart as He is King of

Heaven.

Until the ball given to the Duc d’Angouleme (the only ball at

which I was ever present), marriage had left me in that ignorance

which gives to the soul of a young girl the beauty of the angels.

True, I was a mother, but love had never surrounded me with its

permitted pleasures. How did this happen? I do not know; neither

do I know by what law everything within me changed in a moment.

You remember your kisses? they have mastered my life, they have

furrowed my soul; the ardor of your blood awoke the ardor of mine;

your youth entered my youth, your desires my soul. When I rose and

left you proudly I was filled with an emotion for which I know no

name in any language--for children have not yet found a word to

express the marriage of their eyes with light, nor the kiss of

life laid upon their lips. Yes, it was sound coming in the echo,

light flashing through the darkness, motion shaking the universe;

at least, it was rapid like all these things, but far more

beautiful, for it was the birth of the soul! I comprehended then

that something, I knew not what, existed for me in the world,--a

force nobler than thought; for it was all thoughts, all forces, it

was the future itself in a shared emotion. I felt I was but half a

mother. Falling thus upon my heart this thunderbolt awoke desires

which slumbered there without my knowledge; suddenly I divined all

that my aunt had meant when she kissed my forehead, murmuring,

“Poor Henriette!”

When I returned to Clochegourde, the springtime, the first leaves,

the fragrance of the flowers, the white and fleecy clouds, the

Indre, the sky, all spoke to me in a language till then unknown.

If you have forgotten those terrible kisses, I have never been

able to efface them from my memory,--I am dying of them! Yes, each

time that I have met you since, their impress is revived. I was

shaken from head to foot when I first saw you; the mere

presentiment of your coming overcame me. Neither time nor my firm

will has enabled me to conquer that imperious sense of pleasure. I

asked myself involuntarily, “What must be such joys?” Our mutual

looks, the respectful kisses you laid upon my hand, the pressure

of my arm on yours, your voice with its tender tones,--all, even

the slightest things, shook me so violently that clouds obscured

my sight; the murmur of rebellious senses filled my ears. Ah! if

in those moments when outwardly I increased my coldness you had

taken me in your arms I should have died of happiness. Sometimes I

desired it, but prayer subdued the evil thought. Your name uttered

by my children filled my heart with warmer blood, which gave color

to my cheeks; I laid snares for my poor Madeleine to induce her to

say it, so much did I love the tumults of that sensation. Ah! what

shall I say to you? Your writing had a charm; I gazed at your

letters as we look at a portrait.

If on that first day you obtained some fatal power over me,

conceive, dear friend, how infinite that power became when it was

given to me to read your soul. What delights filled me when I

found you so pure, so absolutely truthful, gifted with noble

qualities, capable of noblest things, and already so tried! Man

and child, timid yet brave! What joy to find we both were

consecrated by a common grief! Ever since that evening when we

confided our childhoods to each other, I have known that to lose

you would be death,--yes, I have kept you by me selfishly. The

certainty felt by Monsieur de la Berge that I should die if I lost

you touched him deeply, for he read my soul. He knew how necessary

I was to my children and the count; he did not command me to

forbid you my house, for I promised to continue pure in deed and

thought. “Thought,” he said to me, “is involuntary, but it can be

watched even in the midst of anguish.” “If I think,” I replied,

“all will be lost; save me from myself. Let him remain beside me

and keep me pure!” The good old man, though stern, was moved by my

sincerity. “Love him as you would a son, and give him your

daughter,” he said. I accepted bravely that life of suffering that

I might not lose you, and I suffered joyfully, seeing that we were

called to bear the same yoke--My God! I have been firm, faithful

to my husband; I have given you no foothold, Felix, in your

kingdom. The grandeur of my passion has reacted on my character; I

have regarded the tortures Monsieur de Mortsauf has inflicted on

me as expiations; I bore them proudly in condemnation of my faulty

desires. Formerly I was disposed to murmur at my life, but since

you entered it I have recovered some gaiety, and this has been the

better for the count. Without this strength, which I derived

through you, I should long since have succumbed to the inward life

of which I told you.

If you have counted for much in the exercise of my duty so have my

children also. I felt I had deprived them of something, and I

feared I could never do enough to make amends to them; my life was

thus a continual struggle which I loved. Feeling that I was less a

mother, less an honest wife, remorse entered my heart; fearing to

fail in my obligations, I constantly went beyond them. Often have

I put Madeleine between you and me, giving you to each other,

raising barriers between us,--barriers that were powerless! for

what could stifle the emotions which you caused me? Absent or

present, you had the same power. I preferred Madeleine to Jacques

because Madeleine was sometime to be yours. But I did not yield

you to my daughter without a struggle. I told myself that I was

only twenty-eight when I first met you, and you were nearly

twenty-two; I shortened the distance between us; I gave myself up

to delusive hopes. Oh, Felix! I tell you these things to save you

from remorse; also, perhaps, to show you that I was not cold and

insensible, that our sufferings were cruelly mutual; that Arabella

had no superiority of love over mine. I too am the daughter of a

fallen race, such as men love well.

There came a moment when the struggle was so terrible that I wept

the long nights through; my hair fell off,--you have it! Do you

remember the count’s illness? Your nobility of soul far from

raising my soul belittled it. Alas! I dreamed of giving myself to

you some day as the reward of so much heroism; but the folly was a

brief one. I laid it at the feet of God during the mass that day

when you refused to be with me. Jacques’ illness and Madeleine’s

sufferings seemed to me the warnings of God calling back to Him

His lost sheep.

Then your love--which is so natural--for that Englishwoman

revealed to me secrets of which I had no knowledge. I loved you

better than I knew. The constant emotions of this stormy life, the

efforts that I made to subdue myself with no other succor than

that religion gave me, all, all has brought about the malady of

which I die. The terrible shocks I have undergone brought on

attacks about which I kept silence. I saw in death the sole

solution of this hidden tragedy. A lifetime of anger, jealousy,

and rage lay in those two months between the time my mother told

me of your relations with Lady Dudley, and your return to

Clochegourde. I wished to go to Paris; murder was in my heart; I

desired that woman’s death; I was indifferent to my children.

Prayer, which had hitherto been to me a balm, was now without

influence on my soul. Jealousy made the breach through which death

has entered. And yet I have kept a placid brow. Yes, that period

of struggle was a secret between God and myself. After your return

and when I saw that I was loved, even as I loved you, that nature

had betrayed me and not your thought, I wished to live,--it was

then too late! God had taken me under His protection, filled no

doubt with pity for a being true with herself, true with Him,

whose sufferings had often led her to the gates of the sanctuary.

My beloved! God has judged me, Monsieur de Mortsauf will pardon

me, but you--will you be merciful? Will you listen to this voice

which now issues from my tomb? Will you repair the evils of which

we are equally guilty?--you, perhaps, less than I. You know what I

wish to ask of you. Be to Monsieur de Mortsauf what a sister of

charity is to a sick man; listen to him, love him--no one loves

him. Interpose between him and his children as I have done. Your

task will not be a long one. Jacques will soon leave home to be in

Paris near his grandfather, and you have long promised me to guide

him through the dangers of that life. As for Madeleine, she will

marry; I pray that you may please her. She is all myself, but

stronger; she has the will in which I am lacking; the energy

necessary for the companion of a man whose career destines him to

the storms of political life; she is clever and perceptive. If

your lives are united she will be happier than her mother. By

acquiring the right to continue my work at Clochegourde you will

blot out the faults I have not sufficiently expiated, though they

are pardoned in heaven and also on earth, for _he_ is generous and

will forgive me. You see I am ever selfish; is it not the proof of

a despotic love? I wish you to still love me in mine. Unable to be

yours in life, I bequeath to you my thoughts and also my duties.

If you do not wish to marry Madeleine you will at least seek the

repose of my soul by making Monsieur de Mortsauf as happy as he

ever can be.

Farewell, dear child of my heart; this is the farewell of a mind

absolutely sane, still full of life; the farewell of a spirit on

which thou hast shed too many and too great joys to suffer thee to

feel remorse for the catastrophe they have caused. I use that word

“catastrophe” thinking of you and how you love me; as for me, I

reach the haven of my rest, sacrificed to duty and not without

regret--ah! I tremble at that thought. God knows better than I

whether I have fulfilled his holy laws in accordance with their

spirit. Often, no doubt, I have tottered, but I have not fallen;

the most potent cause of my wrong-doing lay in the grandeur of the

seductions that encompassed me. The Lord will behold me trembling

when I enter His presence as though I had succumbed. Farewell

again, a long farewell like that I gave last night to our dear

valley, where I soon shall rest and where you will often--will you

not?--return.

Henriette.

I fell into an abyss of terrible reflections, as I perceived the depths

unknown of the life now lighted up by this expiring flame. The clouds of

my egotism rolled away. She had suffered as much as I--more than I, for

she was dead. She believed that others would be kind to her friend;

she was so blinded by love that she had never so much as suspected the

enmity of her daughter. That last proof of her tenderness pained

me terribly. Poor Henriette wished to give me Clochegourde and her

daughter.

Natalie, from that dread day when first I entered a graveyard following

the remains of my noble Henriette, whom now you know, the sun has been

less warm, less luminous, the nights more gloomy, movement less agile,

thought more dull. There are some departed whom we bury in the

earth, but there are others more deeply loved for whom our souls are

winding-sheets, whose memory mingles daily with our heart-beats; we

think of them as we breathe; they are in us by the tender law of a

metempsychosis special to love. A soul is within my soul. When some good

thing is done by me, when some true word is spoken, that soul acts

and speaks. All that is good within me issues from that grave, as the

fragrance of a lily fills the air; sarcasm, bitterness, all that you

blame in me is mine. Natalie, when next my eyes are darkened by a cloud

or raised to heaven after long contemplation of earth, when my lips make

no reply to your words or your devotion, do not ask me again, “Of what

are you thinking?”

* * * * *

Dear Natalie, I ceased to write some days ago; these memories were too

bitter for me. Still, I owe you an account of the events which followed

this catastrophe; they need few words. When a life is made up of action

and movement it is soon told, but when it passes in the higher regions

of the soul its story becomes diffuse. Henriette’s letter put the star

of hope before my eyes. In this great shipwreck I saw an isle on which

I might be rescued. To live at Clochegourde with Madeleine, consecrating

my life to hers, was a fate which satisfied the ideas of which my

heart was full. But it was necessary to know the truth as to her

real feelings. As I was bound to bid the count farewell, I went to

Clochegourde to see him, and met him on the terrace. We walked up and

down for some time. At first he spoke of the countess like a man who

knew the extent of his loss, and all the injury it was doing to his

inner self. But after the first outbreak of his grief was over he

seemed more concerned about the future than the present. He feared his

daughter, who, he told me, had not her mother’s gentleness. Madeleine’s

firm character, in which there was something heroic blending with her

mother’s gracious nature, alarmed the old man, used to Henriette’s

tenderness, and he now foresaw the power of a will that never yielded.

His only consolation for his irreparable loss, he said, was the

certainty of soon rejoining his wife; the agitations, the griefs of

these last few weeks had increased his illness and brought back all his

former pains; the struggle which he foresaw between his authority as a

father and that of his daughter, now mistress of the house, would end

his days in bitterness; for though he should have struggled against

his wife, he should, he knew, be forced to give way before his child.

Besides, his son was soon to leave him; his daughter would marry, and

what sort of son-in-law was he likely to have? Though he thus talked of

dying, his real distress was in feeling himself alone for many years to

come without sympathy.

During this hour when he spoke only of himself, and asked for my

friendship in his wife’s name, he completed a picture in my mind of the

remarkable figure of the Emigre,--one of the most imposing types of

our period. In appearance he was frail and broken, but life seemed

persistent in him because of his sober habits and his country

avocations. He is still living.

Though Madeleine could see me on the terrace, she did not come down.

Several times she came out upon the portico and went back in again, as

if to signify her contempt. I seized a moment when she appeared to beg

the count to go to the house and call her, saying I had a last wish of

her mother to convey to her, and this would be my only opportunity

of doing so. The count brought her, and left us alone together on the

terrace.

“Dear Madeleine,” I said, “if I am to speak to you, surely it should be

here where your mother listened to me when she felt she had less

reason to complain of me than of the circumstances of life. I know

your thoughts; but are you not condemning me without a knowledge of the

facts? My life and happiness are bound up in this place; you know that,

and yet you seek to banish me by the coldness you show, in place of the

brotherly affection which has always united us, and which death should

have strengthened by the bonds of a common grief. Dear Madeleine, you

for whom I would gladly give my life without hope of recompense, without

your even knowing it,--so deeply do we love the children of those who

have succored us,--you are not aware of the project your adorable mother

cherished during the last seven years. If you knew it your feelings

would doubtless soften towards me; but I do not wish to take advantage

of you now. All that I ask is that you do not deprive me of the right

to come here, to breathe the air on this terrace, and to wait until time

has changed your ideas of social life. At this moment I desire not to

ruffle them; I respect a grief which misleads you, for it takes even

from me the power of judging soberly the circumstances in which I find

myself. The saint who now looks down upon us will approve the reticence

with which I simply ask that you stand neutral between your present

feelings and my wishes. I love you too well, in spite of the aversion

you are showing me, to say one word to the count of a proposal he would

welcome eagerly. Be free. Later, remember that you know no one in

the world as you know me, that no man will ever have more devoted

feelings--”

Up to this moment Madeleine had listened with lowered eyes; now she

stopped me by a gesture.

“Monsieur,” she said, in a voice trembling with emotion. “I know all

your thoughts; but I shall not change my feelings towards you. I would

rather fling myself into the Indre than ally myself to you. I will not

speak to you of myself, but if my mother’s name still possesses any

power over you, in her name I beg you never to return to Clochegourde

so long as I am in it. The mere sight of you causes me a repugnance I

cannot express, but which I shall never overcome.”

She bowed to me with dignity, and returned to the house without looking

back, impassible as her mother had been for one day only, but more

pitiless. The searching eye of that young girl had discovered, though

tardily, the secrets of her mother’s heart, and her hatred to the man

whom she fancied fatal to her mother’s life may have been increased by a

sense of her innocent complicity.

All before me was now chaos. Madeleine hated me, without considering

whether I was the cause or the victim of these misfortunes. She might

have hated us equally, her mother and me, had we been happy. Thus it was

that the edifice of my happiness fell in ruins. I alone knew the life of

that unknown, noble woman. I alone had entered every region of her

soul; neither mother, father, husband, nor children had ever known

her.--Strange truth! I stir this heap of ashes and take pleasure in

spreading them before you; all hearts may find something in them of

their closest experience. How many families have had their Henriette!

How many noble feelings have left this earth with no historian to fathom

their hearts, to measure the depth and breadth of their spirits. Such is

human life in all its truth! Often mothers know their children as little

as their children know them. So it is with husbands, lovers, brothers.

Did I imagine that one day, beside my father’s coffin, I should contend

with my brother Charles, for whose advancement I had done so much? Good

God! how many lessons in the simplest history.

When Madeleine disappeared into the house, I went away with a broken

heart. Bidding farewell to my host at Sache, I started for Paris,

following the right bank of the Indre, the one I had taken when I

entered the valley for the first time. Sadly I drove through the pretty

village of Pont-de-Ruan. Yet I was rich, political life courted me;

I was not the weary plodder of 1814. Then my heart was full of eager

desires, now my eyes were full of tears; once my life was all before

me to fill as I could, now I knew it to be a desert. I was still

young,--only twenty-nine,--but my heart was withered. A few years had

sufficed to despoil that landscape of its early glory, and to disgust

me with life. You can imagine my feelings when, on turning round, I saw

Madeleine on the terrace.

A prey to imperious sadness, I gave no thought to the end of my journey.

Lady Dudley was far, indeed, from my mind, and I entered the courtyard

of her house without reflection. The folly once committed, I was forced

to carry it out. My habits were conjugal in her house, and I went

upstairs thinking of the annoyances of a rupture. If you have fully

understood the character and manners of Lady Dudley, you can imagine

my discomfiture when her majordomo ushered me, still in my travelling

dress, into a salon where I found her sumptuously dressed and surrounded

by four persons. Lord Dudley, one of the most distinguished old

statesmen of England, was standing with his back to the fireplace,

stiff, haughty, frigid, with the sarcastic air he doubtless wore in

parliament; he smiled when he heard my name. Arabella’s two children,

who were amazingly like de Marsay (a natural son of the old lord), were

near their mother; de Marsay himself was on the sofa beside her. As

soon as Arabella saw me she assumed a distant air, and glanced at my

travelling cap as if to ask what brought me there. She looked me

over from head to foot, as though I were some country gentlemen just

presented to her. As for our intimacy, that eternal passion, those vows

of suicide if I ceased to love her, those visions of Armida, all had

vanished like a dream. I had never clasped her hand; I was a stranger;

she knew me not. In spite of the diplomatic self-possession to which

I was gradually being trained, I was confounded; and all others in my

place would have felt the same. De Marsay smiled at his boots, which

he examined with remarkable interest. I decided at once upon my course.

From any other woman I should modestly have accepted my defeat; but,

outraged at the glowing appearance of the heroine who had vowed to

die for love, and who had scoffed at the woman who was really dead,

I resolved to meet insolence with insolence. She knew very well the

misfortunes of Lady Brandon; to remind her of them was to send a dagger

to her heart, though the weapon might be blunted by the blow.

“Madame,” I said, “I am sure you will pardon my unceremonious entrance,

when I tell you that I have just arrived from Touraine, and that Lady

Brandon has given me a message for you which allows of no delay. I

feared you had already started for Lancashire, but as you are still

in Paris I will await your orders at any hour you may be pleased to

appoint.”

She bowed, and I left the room. Since that day I have only met her in

society, where we exchange a friendly bow, and occasionally a sarcasm. I

talk to her of the inconsolable women of Lancashire; she makes allusion

to Frenchwomen who dignify their gastric troubles by calling them

despair. Thanks to her, I have a mortal enemy in de Marsay, of whom she

is very fond. In return, I call her the wife of two generations.

So my disaster was complete; it lacked nothing. I followed the plan I

had laid out for myself during my retreat at Sache; I plunged into work

and gave myself wholly to science, literature, and politics. I entered

the diplomatic service on the accession of Charles X., who suppressed

the employment I held under the late king. From that moment I was

firmly resolved to pay no further attention to any woman, no matter how

beautiful, witty, or loving she might be. This determination succeeded

admirably; I obtained a really marvellous tranquillity of mind, and

great powers of work, and I came to understand how much these women

waste our lives, believing, all the while, that a few gracious words

will repay us.

But--all my resolutions came to naught; you know how and why. Dear

Natalie, in telling you my life, without reserve, without concealment,

precisely as I tell it to myself, in relating to you feelings in which

you have had no share, perhaps I have wounded some corner of your

sensitive and jealous heart. But that which might anger a common woman

will be to you--I feel sure of it--an additional reason for loving me.

Noble women have indeed a sublime mission to fulfil to suffering and

sickened hearts,--the mission of the sister of charity who stanches the

wound, of the mother who forgives a child. Artists and poets are not

the only ones who suffer; men who work for their country, for the future

destiny of the nations, enlarging thus the circle of their passions and

their thoughts, often make for themselves a cruel solitude. They need

a pure, devoted love beside them,--believe me, they understand its

grandeur and its worth.

To-morrow I shall know if I have deceived myself in loving you.

Felix.

ANSWER TO THE ENVOI

Madame la Comtesse Natalie de Manerville to Monsieur le Comte

Felix de Vandenesse.

Dear Count,--You received a letter from poor Madame de Mortsauf,

which, you say, was of use in guiding you through the world,--a

letter to which you owe your distinguished career. Permit me to

finish your education.

Give up, I beg of you, a really dreadful habit; do not imitate

certain widows who talk of their first husband and throw the

virtues of the deceased in the face of their second. I am a

Frenchwoman, dear count; I wish to marry the whole of the man I

love, and I really cannot marry Madame de Mortsauf too. Having

read your tale with all the attention it deserves,--and you know

the interest I feel in you,--it seems to me that you must have

wearied Lady Dudley with the perfections of Madame de Mortsauf,

and done great harm to the countess by overwhelming her with the

experiences of your English love. Also you have failed in tact to

me, poor creature without other merit than that of pleasing you;

you have given me to understand that I cannot love as Henriette or

Arabella loved you. I acknowledge my imperfections; I know them;

but why so roughly make me feel them?

Shall I tell you whom I pity?--the fourth woman whom you love. She

will be forced to struggle against three others. Therefore, in

your interests as well as in hers, I must warn you against the

dangers of your tale. For myself, I renounce the laborious glory

of loving you,--it needs too many virtues, Catholic or Anglican,

and I have no fancy for rivalling phantoms. The virtues of the

virgin of Clochegourde would dishearten any woman, however sure of

herself she might be, and your intrepid English amazon discourages

even a wish for that sort of happiness. No matter what a poor

woman may do, she can never hope to give you the joys she will

aspire to give. Neither heart nor senses can triumph against these

memories of yours. I own that I have never been able to warm the

sunshine chilled for you by the death of your sainted Henriette. I

have felt you shuddering beside me.

My friend,--for you will always be my friend,--never make such

confidences again; they lay bare your disillusions; they

discourage love, and compel a woman to feel doubtful of herself.

Love, dear count, can only live on trustfulness. The woman who

before she says a word or mounts her horse, must ask herself

whether a celestial Henriette might not have spoken better,

whether a rider like Arabella was not more graceful, that woman

you may be very sure, will tremble in all her members. You

certainly have given me a desire to receive a few of those

intoxicating bouquets--but you say you will make no more. There

are many other things you dare no longer do; thoughts and

enjoyments you can never reawaken. No woman, and you ought to know

this, will be willing to elbow in your heart the phantom whom you

hold there.

You ask me to love you out of Christian charity. I could do much,

I candidly admit, for charity; in fact I could do all--except

love. You are sometimes wearisome and wearied; you call your

dulness melancholy. Very good,--so be it; but all the same it is

intolerable, and causes much cruel anxiety to one who loves you. I

have often found the grave of that saint between us. I have

searched my own heart, I know myself, and I own I do not wish to

die as she did. If you tired out Lady Dudley, who is a very

distinguished woman, I, who have not her passionate desires,

should, I fear, turn coldly against you even sooner than she did.

Come, let us suppress love between us, inasmuch as you can find

happiness only with the dead, and let us be merely friends--I wish

it.

Ah! my dear count, what a history you have told me! At your

entrance into life you found an adorable woman, a perfect

mistress, who thought of your future, made you a peer, loved you

to distraction, only asked that you would be faithful to her, and

you killed her! I know nothing more monstrous. Among all the

passionate and unfortunate young men who haunt the streets of

Paris, I doubt if there is one who would not stay virtuous ten

years to obtain one half of the favors you did not know how to

value! When a man is loved like that how can he ask more? Poor

woman! she suffered indeed; and after you have written a few

sentimental phrases you think you have balanced your account with

her coffin. Such, no doubt, is the end that awaits my tenderness

for you. Thank you, dear count, I will have no rival on either

side of the grave. When a man has such a crime upon his

conscience, at least he ought not to tell of it. I made you an

imprudent request; but I was true to my woman’s part as a daughter

of Eve,--it was your part to estimate the effect of the answer.

You ought to have deceived me; later I should have thanked you. Is

it possible that you have never understood the special virtue of

lovers? Can you not feel how generous they are in swearing that

they have never loved before, and love at last for the first time?

No, your programme cannot be carried out. To attempt to be both

Madame de Mortsauf and Lady Dudley,--why, my dear friend, it would

be trying to unite fire and water within me! Is it possible that

you don’t know women? Believe me, they are what they are, and they

have therefore the defects of their virtues. You met Lady Dudley

too early in life to appreciate her, and the harm you say of her

seems to me the revenge of your wounded vanity. You understood

Madame de Mortsauf too late; you punished one for not being the

other,--what would happen to me if I were neither the one nor the

other? I love you enough to have thought deeply about your future;

in fact, I really care for you a great deal. Your air of the

Knight of the Sad Countenance has always deeply interested me; I

believed in the constancy of melancholy men; but I little thought

that you had killed the loveliest and the most virtuous of women

at the opening of your life.

Well, I ask myself, what remains for you to do? I have thought it

over carefully. I think, my friend, that you will have to marry a

Mrs. Shandy, who will know nothing of love or of passion, and will

not trouble herself about Madame de Mortsauf or Lady Dudley; who

will be wholly indifferent to those moments of ennui which you

call melancholy, during which you are as lively as a rainy day,--a

wife who will be to you, in short, the excellent sister of charity

whom you are seeking. But as for loving, quivering at a word,

anticipating happiness, giving it, receiving it, experiencing all

the tempests of passion, cherishing the little weaknesses of a

beloved woman--my dear count, renounce it all! You have followed

the advice of your good angel about young women too closely; you

have avoided them so carefully that now you know nothing about

them. Madame de Mortsauf was right to place you high in life at

the start; otherwise all women would have been against you, and

you never would have risen in society.

It is too late now to begin your training over again; too late to

learn to tell us what we long to hear; to be superior to us at the

right moment, or to worship our pettiness when it pleases us to be

petty. We are not so silly as you think us. When we love we place

the man of our choice above all else. Whatever shakes our faith in

our supremacy shakes our love. In flattering us men flatter

themselves. If you intend to remain in society, to enjoy an

intercourse with women, you must carefully conceal from them all

that you have told me; they will not be willing to sow the flowers

of their love upon the rocks or lavish their caresses to soothe a

sickened spirit. Women will discover the barrenness of your heart

and you will be ever more and more unhappy. Few among them would

be frank enough to tell you what I have told you, or sufficiently

good-natured to leave you without rancor, offering their

friendship, like the woman who now subscribes herself

Your devoted friend,

Natalie de Manerville.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Birotteau, Abbe Francois

Cesar Birotteau

The Vicar of Tours

Blamont-Chauvry, Princesse de

The Thirteen

Madame Firmiani

Brandon, Lady Marie Augusta

The Member for Arcis

La Grenadiere

Chessel, Madame de

The Government Clerks

Dudley, Lord

The Thirteen

A Man of Business

Another Study of Woman

A Daughter of Eve

Dudley, Lady Arabella

The Ball at Sceaux

The Magic Skin

The Secrets of a Princess

A Daughter of Eve

Letters of Two Brides

Givry

Letters of Two Brides

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Lenoncourt, Duc de

Cesar Birotteau

Jealousies of a Country Town

The Gondreville Mystery

Beatrix

Lenoncourt-Givry, Duchesse de

Letters of Two Brides

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Listomere, Marquis de

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

A Study of Woman

Listomere, Marquise de

Lost Illusions

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

A Study of Woman

A Daughter of Eve

Louis XVIII., Louis-Stanislas-Xavier

The Chouans

The Seamy Side of History

The Gondreville Mystery

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

The Ball at Sceaux

Colonel Chabert

The Government Clerks

Manerville, Comtesse Paul de

A Marriage Settlement

A Daughter of Eve

Marsay, Henri de

The Thirteen

The Unconscious Humorists

Another Study of Woman

Father Goriot

Jealousies of a Country Town

Ursule Mirouet

A Marriage Settlement

Lost Illusions

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Letters of Two Brides

The Ball at Sceaux

Modeste Mignon

The Secrets of a Princess

The Gondreville Mystery

A Daughter of Eve

Stanhope, Lady Esther

Lost Illusions

Vandenesse, Comte Felix de

Lost Illusions

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Cesar Birotteau

Letters of Two Brides

A Start in Life

The Marriage Settlement

The Secrets of a Princess

Another Study of Woman

The Gondreville Mystery

A Daughter of Eve

End of Project Gutenberg’s The Lily of the Valley, by Honore de Balzac