The Lily of the Valley

CHAPTER III

THE TWO WOM­EN

It was at this time, when I was nev­er more deeply moved in my whole be­ing, when I lived in that soul to which I strove to send the lu­mi­nous breeze of the morn­ings and the hope of the crim­soned evenings, that I met, in the sa­lons of the El­ysee-​Bour­bon, one of those il­lus­tri­ous ladies who reign as sovereigns in so­ci­ety. Im­mense­ly rich, born of a fam­ily whose blood was pure from all mis­al­liance since the Con­quest, mar­ried to one of the most dis­tin­guished old men of the British peer­age, it was nev­er­the­less ev­ident that these ad­van­tages were mere ac­ces­sories height­en­ing this la­dy's beau­ty, graces, man­ners, and wit, all of which had a bril­liant qual­ity which daz­zled be­fore it charmed. She was the idol of the day; reign­ing the more se­cure­ly over Parisian so­ci­ety be­cause she pos­sessed the qual­ity most nec­es­sary to suc­cess,--the hand of iron in the vel­vet glove spo­ken of by Bernadotte.

You know the sin­gu­lar char­ac­ter­is­tics of En­glish peo­ple, the dis­tance and cold­ness of their own Chan­nel which they put be­tween them and who­ev­er has not been pre­sent­ed to them in a prop­er man­ner. Hu­man­ity seems to be an ant-​hill on which they tread; they know none of their species ex­cept the few they ad­mit in­to their cir­cle; they ig­nore even the lan­guage of the rest; tongues may move and eyes may see in their pres­ence but nei­ther sound nor look has reached them; to them, the peo­ple are as if they were not. The British present an im­age of their own is­land, where law rules ev­ery­thing, where all is au­to­mat­ic in ev­ery sta­tion of life, where the ex­er­cise of virtue ap­pears to be the nec­es­sary work­ing of a ma­chine which goes by clock­work. For­ti­fi­ca­tions of pol­ished steel rise around the En­glish­wom­an be­hind the gold­en wires of her house­hold cage (where the feed-​box and the drink­ing-​cup, the perch­es and the food are exquisite in qual­ity), but they make her ir­re­sistibly at­trac­tive. No peo­ple ev­er trained mar­ried wom­en so care­ful­ly to hypocrisy by hold­ing them rigid­ly be­tween the two ex­tremes of death or so­cial sta­tion; for them there is no mid­dle path be­tween shame and hon­or; ei­ther the wrong is com­plet­ed or it does not ex­ist; it is all or noth­ing,--Ham­let's “To be or not to be.” This al­ter­na­tive, cou­pled with the scorn to which the cus­toms of her coun­try have trained her, make an En­glish­wom­an a be­ing apart in the world. She is a help­less crea­ture, forced to be vir­tu­ous yet ready to yield, con­demned to live a lie in her heart, yet de­light­ful in out­ward ap­pear­ance--for these En­glish rest ev­ery­thing on ap­pear­ances. Hence the spe­cial charms of their wom­en: the en­thu­si­asm for a love which is all their life; the minute­ness of their care for their per­sons; the del­ica­cy of their pas­sion, so charm­ing­ly ren­dered in the fa­mous scene of Romeo and Juli­et in which, with one stroke, Shake­speare's ge­nius de­pict­ed his coun­try-​wom­en.

You, who en­vy them so many things, what can I tell you that you do not know of these white sirens, im­pen­etra­ble ap­par­ent­ly but eas­ily fath­omed, who be­lieve that love suf­fices love, and turn en­joy­ments to sati­ety by nev­er vary­ing them; whose soul has one note on­ly, their voice one syl­la­ble--an ocean of love in them­selves, it is true, and he who has nev­er swum there miss­es part of the po­et­ry of the sens­es, as he who has nev­er seen the sea has lost some strings of his lyre. You know the why and where­fore of these words. My re­la­tions with the Mar­chioness of Dud­ley had a dis­as­trous celebri­ty. At an age when the sens­es have do­min­ion over our con­duct, and when in my case they had been vi­olent­ly re­pressed by cir­cum­stances, the im­age of the saint bear­ing her slow mar­tyr­dom at Clochegourde shone so vivid­ly be­fore my mind that I was able to re­sist all se­duc­tions. It was the lus­tre of this fi­deli­ty which at­tract­ed La­dy Dud­ley's at­ten­tion. My re­sis­tance stim­ulat­ed her pas­sion. What she chiefly de­sired, like many En­glish­wom­an, was the spice of sin­gu­lar­ity; she want­ed pep­per, cap­sicum, with her heart's food, just as En­glish­men need condi­ments to ex­cite their ap­petite. The dull lan­guor forced in­to the lives of these wom­en by the con­stant per­fec­tion of ev­ery­thing about them, the me­thod­ical reg­ular­ity of their habits, leads them to adore the ro­man­tic and to wel­come dif­fi­cul­ty. I was whol­ly un­able to judge of such a char­ac­ter. The more I re­treat­ed to a cold dis­tance the more im­pas­sioned La­dy Dud­ley be­came. The strug­gle, in which she glo­ried, ex­cit­ed the cu­rios­ity of sev­er­al per­sons, and this in it­self was a form of hap­pi­ness which to her mind made ul­ti­mate tri­umph oblig­atory. Ah! I might have been saved if some good friend had then re­peat­ed to me her cru­el com­ment on my re­la­tions with Madame de Mort­sauf.

“I am wea­ried to death,” she said, “of these tur­tle-​dove sigh­ings.”

With­out seek­ing to jus­ti­fy my crime, I ask you to ob­serve, Na­tal­ie, that a man has few­er means of re­sist­ing a wom­an than she has of es­cap­ing him. Our code of man­ners for­bids the bru­tal­ity of re­press­ing a wom­an, where­as re­pres­sion with your sex is not on­ly al­lure­ment to ours, but is im­posed up­on you by con­ven­tions. With us, on the con­trary, some un­writ­ten law of mas­cu­line self-​con­ceit ridicules a man's mod­esty; we leave you the monopoly of that virtue, that you may have the priv­ilege of grant­ing us fa­vors; but re­verse the case, and man suc­cumbs be­fore sar­casm.

Though pro­tect­ed by my love, I was not of an age to be whol­ly in­sen­si­ble to the triple se­duc­tions of pride, de­vo­tion, and beau­ty. When Ara­bel­la laid at my feet the homage of a ball-​room where she reigned a queen, when she watched by glance to know if my taste ap­proved of her dress, and when she trem­bled with plea­sure on see­ing that she pleased me, I was af­fect­ed by her emo­tion. Be­sides, she oc­cu­pied a so­cial po­si­tion where I could not es­cape her; I could not refuse in­vi­ta­tions in the diplo­mat­ic cir­cle; her rank ad­mit­ted her ev­ery­where, and with the clev­er­ness all wom­en dis­play to ob­tain what pleas­es them, she of­ten con­trived that the mis­tress of the house should place me be­side her at din­ner. On such oc­ca­sions she spoke in low tones to my ear. “If I were loved like Madame de Mort­sauf,” she said once, “I should sac­ri­fice all.” She did sub­mit her­self with a laugh in many hum­ble ways; she promised me a dis­cre­tion equal to any test, and even asked that I would mere­ly suf­fer her to love me. “Your friend al­ways, your mis­tress when you will,” she said. At last, af­ter an evening when she had made her­self so beau­ti­ful that she was cer­tain to have ex­cit­ed my de­sires, she came to me. The scan­dal re­sound­ed through Eng­land, where the aris­toc­ra­cy was hor­ri­fied like heav­en it­self at the fall of its high­est an­gel. La­dy Dud­ley aban­doned her place in the British empyre­an, gave up her wealth, and en­deav­ored to eclipse by her sac­ri­fices _her_ whose virtue had been the cause of this great dis­as­ter. She took de­light, like the dev­il on the pin­na­cle of the tem­ple, in show­ing me all the rich­es of her pas­sion­ate king­dom.

Read me, I pray you, with in­dul­gence. The mat­ter con­cerns one of the most in­ter­est­ing prob­lems of hu­man life,--a cri­sis to which most men are sub­ject­ed, and which I de­sire to ex­plain, if on­ly to place a warn­ing light up­on the reef. This beau­ti­ful wom­an, so slen­der, so frag­ile, this milk-​white crea­ture, so yield­ing, so sub­mis­sive, so gen­tle, her brow so en­dear­ing, the hair that crowns it so fair and fine, this ten­der wom­an, whose bril­lian­cy is phos­pho­res­cent and fugi­tive, has, in truth, an iron na­ture. No horse, no mat­ter how fiery he may be, can con­quer her vig­or­ous wrist, or strive against that hand so soft in ap­pear­ance, but nev­er tired. She has the foot of a doe, a thin, mus­cu­lar lit­tle foot, in­de­scrib­ably grace­ful in out­line. She is so strong that she fears no strug­gle; men can­not fol­low her on horse­back; she would win a steeple-​chase against a cen­taur; she can bring down a stag with­out stop­ping her horse. Her body nev­er per­spires; it in­hales the fire of the at­mo­sphere, and lives in wa­ter un­der pain of not liv­ing at all. Her love is African; her de­sires are like the whirl­winds of the desert--the desert, whose tor­rid ex­panse is in her eyes, the azure, love-​laden desert, with its change­less skies, its cool and star­ry nights. What a con­trast to Clochegourde! the east and the west! the one draw­ing in­to her ev­ery drop of mois­ture for her own nour­ish­ment, the oth­er ex­ud­ing her soul, wrap­ping her dear ones in her lu­mi­nous at­mo­sphere; the one quick and slen­der; the oth­er slow and mas­sive.

Have you ev­er re­flect­ed on the ac­tu­al mean­ing of the man­ners and cus­toms and morals of Eng­land? Is it not the de­ifi­ca­tion of mat­ter? a well-​de­fined, care­ful­ly con­sid­ered Epi­cure­anism, ju­di­cious­ly ap­plied? No mat­ter what may be said against the state­ment, Eng­land is ma­te­ri­al­ist,--pos­si­bly she does not know it her­self. She lays claim to re­li­gion and moral­ity, from which, how­ev­er, di­vine spir­itu­al­ity, the catholic soul, is ab­sent; and its fruc­ti­fy­ing grace can­not be re­placed by any coun­ter­feit, how­ev­er well pre­sent­ed it may be. Eng­land pos­sess­es in the high­est de­gree that sci­ence of ex­is­tence which turns to ac­count ev­ery par­ti­cle of ma­te­ri­al­ity; the sci­ence that makes her wom­en's slip­pers the most exquisite slip­pers in the world, gives to their linen in­ef­fa­ble fra­grance, lines their draw­ers with cedar, serves tea care­ful­ly drawn, at a cer­tain hour, ban­ish­es dust, nails the car­pets to the floors in ev­ery cor­ner of the house, brush­es the cel­lar walls, pol­ish­es the knock­er of the front door, oils the springs of the car­riage,--in short, makes mat­ter a nu­tri­tive and downy pulp, clean and shin­ing, in the midst of which the soul ex­pires of en­joy­ment and the fright­ful monotony of com­fort in a life with­out con­trasts, de­prived of spon­tane­ity, and which, to sum all in one word, makes a ma­chine of you.

Thus I sud­den­ly came to know, in the bo­som of this British lux­ury, a wom­an who is per­haps unique among her sex; who caught me in the nets of a love ex­cit­ed by my in­dif­fer­ence, and to the warmth of which I op­posed a stern con­ti­nence,--one of those loves pos­sessed of over­whelm­ing charm, an elec­tric­ity of their own, which lead us to the skies through the ivory gates of slum­ber, or bear us thith­er on their pow­er­ful pin­ions. A love mon­strous­ly un­grate­ful, which laughs at the bod­ies of those it kills; love with­out mem­ory, a cru­el love, re­sem­bling the pol­icy of the En­glish na­tion; a love to which, alas, most men yield. You un­der­stand the prob­lem? Man is com­posed of mat­ter and spir­it; an­imal­ity comes to its end in him, and the an­gel be­gins in him. There lies the strug­gle we all pass through, be­tween the fu­ture des­tiny of which we are con­scious and the in­flu­ence of an­te­ri­or in­stincts from which we are not whol­ly de­tached,--car­nal love and di­vine love. One man com­bines them, an­oth­er ab­stains al­to­geth­er; some there are who seek the sat­is­fac­tion of their an­te­ri­or ap­petites from the whole sex; oth­ers ide­al­ize their love in one wom­an who is to them the uni­verse; some float ir­res­olute­ly be­tween the de­lights of mat­ter and the joys of soul, oth­ers spir­itu­al­ize the body, re­quir­ing of it that which it can­not give.

If, think­ing over these lead­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of love, you take in­to ac­count the dis­likes and the affini­ties which re­sult from the di­ver­si­ty of or­gan­isms, and which soon­er or lat­er break all ties be­tween those who have not ful­ly tried each oth­er; if you add to this the mis­takes aris­ing from the hopes of those who live more par­tic­ular­ly ei­ther by their minds, or by their hearts, or by ac­tion, who ei­ther think, or feel, or act, and whose ten­den­cy is mis­un­der­stood in the close as­so­ci­ation in which two per­sons, equal coun­ter­parts, find them­selves, you will have great in­dul­gence for sor­rows to which the world is piti­less. Well, La­dy Dud­ley grat­ified the in­stincts, or­gans, ap­petites, the vices and virtues of the sub­tile mat­ter of which we are made; she was the mis­tress of the body; Madame de Mort­sauf was the wife of the soul. The love which the mis­tress sat­is­fies has its lim­its; mat­ter is fi­nite, its in­her­ent qual­ities have an as­cer­tained force, it is ca­pa­ble of sat­ura­tion; of­ten I felt a void even in Paris, near La­dy Dud­ley. In­fini­tude is the re­gion of the heart, love had no lim­its at Clochegourde. I loved La­dy Dud­ley pas­sion­ate­ly; and cer­tain­ly, though the an­imal in her was mag­nif­icent, she was al­so su­pe­ri­or in mind; her sparkling and satir­ical con­ver­sa­tion had a wide range. But I adored Hen­ri­ette. At night I wept with hap­pi­ness, in the morn­ing with re­morse.

Some wom­en have the art to hide their jeal­ousy un­der a tone of an­gel­ic kind­ness; they are, like La­dy Dud­ley, over thir­ty years of age. Such wom­en know how to feel and how to cal­cu­late; they press out the juices of to-​day and think of the fu­ture al­so; they can sti­fle a moan, of­ten a nat­ural one, with the will of a hunts­man who pays no heed to a wound in the ar­dor of the chase. With­out ev­er speak­ing of Madame de Mort­sauf, Ara­bel­la en­deav­ored to kill her in my soul, where she ev­er found her, her own pas­sion in­creas­ing with the con­scious­ness of that in­vin­ci­ble love. In­tend­ing to tri­umph by com­par­isons which would turn to her ad­van­tage, she was nev­er sus­pi­cious, or com­plain­ing, or in­quis­itive, as are most young wom­en; but, like a li­oness who has seized her prey and car­ries it to her lair to de­vour, she watched that noth­ing should dis­turb her feast, and guard­ed me like a re­bel­lious cap­tive. I wrote to Hen­ri­ette un­der her very eyes, but she nev­er read a line of my let­ters; she nev­er sought in any way to know to whom they were ad­dressed. I had my lib­er­ty; she seemed to say to her­self, “If I lose him it shall be my own fault,” and she proud­ly re­lied on a love that would have giv­en me her life had I asked for it,--in fact she of­ten told me that if I left her she would kill her­self. I have heard her praise the cus­tom of In­di­an wid­ows who burn them­selves up­on their hus­band's grave. “In In­dia that is a dis­tinc­tion re­served for the high­er class­es,” she said, “and is very lit­tle un­der­stood by Eu­ro­peans, who are in­ca­pable of un­der­stand­ing the grandeur of the priv­ilege; you must ad­mit, how­ev­er, that on the dead lev­el of our mod­ern cus­toms aris­toc­ra­cy can rise to great­ness on­ly through un­par­al­leled de­vo­tions. How can I prove to the mid­dle class­es that the blood in my veins is not the same as theirs, un­less I show them that I can die as they can­not? Wom­en of no birth can have di­amonds and satins and hors­es--even coats-​of-​arms, which ought to be sa­cred to us, for any one can buy a name. But to love, with our heads up, in de­fi­ance of law; to die for the idol we have cho­sen, with the sheets of our bed for a shroud; to lay earth and heav­en at his feet, rob­bing the Almighty of his right to make a god, and nev­er to be­tray that man, nev­er, nev­er, even for virtue's sake,--for, to refuse him any­thing in the name of du­ty is to de­vote our­selves to some­thing that is not _he_, and let that some­thing be a man or an idea, it is be­tray­al all the same,--these are heights to which com­mon wom­en can­not at­tain; they know but two mat­ter-​of-​fact ways; the great high-​road of virtue, or the mud­dy path of the cour­te­san.”

Pride, you see, was her in­stru­ment; she flat­tered all van­ities by de­ify­ing them. She put me so high that she might live at my feet; in fact, the se­duc­tions of her spir­it were lit­er­al­ly ex­pressed by an at­ti­tude of sub­servien­cy and her com­plete sub­mis­sion. In what words shall I de­scribe those first six months when I was lost in en­er­vat­ing en­joy­ments, in the mesh­es of a love fer­tile in plea­sures and know­ing how to vary them with a clev­er­ness learned by long ex­pe­ri­ence, yet hid­ing that knowl­edge be­neath the trans­ports of pas­sion. These plea­sures, the sud­den rev­ela­tion of the po­et­ry of the sens­es, con­sti­tute the pow­er­ful tie which binds young men to wom­en old­er than they. It is the chain of the gal­ley-​slave; it leaves an in­ef­face­able brand up­on the soul, fill­ing it with dis­gust for pure and in­no­cent love decked with flow­ers on­ly, which serves no al­co­hol in cu­ri­ous­ly chased cups in­laid with jew­els and sparkling with un­quench­able fires.

Re­call­ing my ear­ly dreams of plea­sures I knew noth­ing of, ex­pressed at Clochegourde in my “se­lams,” the voice of my flow­ers, plea­sures which the union of souls ren­ders all the more ar­dent, I found many sophistries by which I ex­cused to my­self the de­light with which I drained that jew­elled cup. Of­ten, when, lost in in­fi­nite las­si­tude, my soul dis­en­gaged it­self from the body and float­ed far from earth, I thought that these plea­sures might be the means of abol­ish­ing mat­ter and of ren­der­ing to the spir­it its pow­er to soar. Some­times La­dy Dud­ley, like oth­er wom­en, prof­it­ed by the ex­al­ta­tion in which I was to bind me by promis­es; un­der the lash of a de­sire she wrung blas­phemies from my lips against the an­gel at Clochegourde. Once a traitor I be­came a scoundrel. I con­tin­ued to write to Madame de Mort­sauf, in the tone of the lad she had first known in his strange blue coat; but, I ad­mit it, her gift of sec­ond-​sight ter­ri­fied me when I thought what ru­in the in­dis­cre­tion of a word might bring to the dear cas­tle of my hopes. Of­ten, in the midst of my plea­sure a sud­den hor­ror seized me; I heard the name of Hen­ri­ette ut­tered by a voice above me, like that in the Scrip­tures, de­mand­ing: “Cain, where is thy broth­er Abel?”

At last my let­ters re­mained unan­swered. I was seized with hor­ri­ble anx­iety and wished to leave for Clochegourde. Ara­bel­la did not op­pose it, but she talked of ac­com­pa­ny­ing me to Touraine. Her wom­an's wit told her that the jour­ney might be a means of fi­nal­ly de­tach­ing me from her ri­val; while I, blind with fear and guile­less­ly un­sus­pi­cious, did not see the trap she set for me. La­dy Dud­ley her­self pro­posed the hum­blest con­ces­sions. She would stay near Tours, at a lit­tle coun­try-​place, alone, dis­guised; she would re­frain from go­ing out in the day-​time, and on­ly meet me in the evening when peo­ple were not like­ly to be about. I left Tours on horse­back. I had my rea­sons for this; my evening ex­cur­sions to meet her would re­quire a horse, and mine was an Arab which La­dy Hes­ter Stan­hope had sent to the mar­chioness, and which she had late­ly ex­changed with me for that fa­mous pic­ture of Rem­brandt which I ob­tained in so sin­gu­lar a way, and which now hangs in her draw­ing-​room in Lon­don. I took the road I had tra­versed on foot six years ear­li­er and stopped be­neath my wal­nut-​tree. From there I saw Madame de Mort­sauf in a white dress stand­ing at the edge of the ter­race. In­stant­ly I rode to­wards her with the speed of light­ning, in a straight line and across coun­try. She heard the stride of the swal­low of the desert and when I pulled him up sud­den­ly at the ter­race, she said to me: “Oh, you here!”

Those three words blast­ed me. She knew my treach­ery. Who had told her? her moth­er, whose hate­ful let­ter she af­ter­wards showed me. The fee­ble, in­dif­fer­ent voice, once so full of life, the dull pal­lor of its tones re­vealed a set­tled grief, ex­hal­ing the breath of flow­ers cut and left to with­er. The tem­pest of in­fi­deli­ty, like those freshets of the Loire which bury the mead­ows for all time in sand, had torn its way through her soul, leav­ing a desert where once the ver­dure clothed the fields. I led my horse through the lit­tle gate; he lay down on the grass at my com­mand and the count­ess, who came for­ward slow­ly, ex­claimed, “What a fine an­imal!” She stood with fold­ed arms lest I should try to take her hand; I guessed her mean­ing.

“I will let Mon­sieur de Mort­sauf know you are here,” she said, leav­ing me.

I stood still, con­found­ed, let­ting her go, watch­ing her, al­ways no­ble, slow, and proud,--whiter than I had ev­er seen her; on her brow the yel­low im­print of bit­ter­est melan­choly, her head bent like a lily heavy with rain.

“Hen­ri­ette!” I cried in the agony of a man about to die.

She did not turn or pause; she dis­dained to say that she with­drew from me that name, but she did not an­swer to it and con­tin­ued on. I may feel pal­try and small in this dread­ful vale of life where myr­iads of hu­man be­ings now dust make the sur­face of the globe, small in­deed among that crowd, hur­ry­ing be­neath the lu­mi­nous spaces which light them; but what sense of hu­mil­ia­tion could equal that with which I watched her calm white fig­ure in­flex­ibly mount­ing with even steps the ter­races of her chateau of Clochegourde, the pride and the tor­ture of that Chris­tian Di­do? I cursed Ara­bel­la in a sin­gle im­pre­ca­tion which might have killed her had she heard it, she who had left all for me as some leave all for God. I re­mained lost in a world of thought, con­scious of ut­ter mis­ery on all sides. Present­ly I saw the whole fam­ily com­ing down; Jacques, run­ning with the ea­ger­ness of his age. Madeleine, a gazelle with mourn­ful eyes, walked with her moth­er. Mon­sieur de Mort­sauf came to me with open arms, pressed me to him and kissed me on both cheeks cry­ing out, “Fe­lix, I know now that I owed you my life.”

Madame de Mort­sauf stood with her back to­wards me dur­ing this lit­tle scene, un­der pre­text of show­ing the horse to Madeleine.

“Ha, the dev­il! that's what wom­en are,” cried the count; “ad­mir­ing your horse!”

Madeleine turned, came up to me, and I kissed her hand, look­ing at the count­ess, who col­ored.

“Madeleine seems much bet­ter,” I said.

“Poor lit­tle girl!” said the count­ess, kiss­ing her on her fore­head.

“Yes, for the time be­ing they are all well,” an­swered the count. “Ex­cept me, Fe­lix; I am as bat­tered as an old tow­er about to fall.”

“The gen­er­al is still de­pressed,” I re­marked to Madame de Mort­sauf.

“We all have our blue dev­ils--is not that the En­glish term?” she replied.

The whole par­ty walked on to­wards the vine­yard with the feel­ing that some se­ri­ous event had hap­pened. She had no wish to be alone with me. Still, I was her guest.

“But about your horse? why isn't he at­tend­ed to?” said the count.

“You see I am wrong if I think of him, and wrong if I do not,” re­marked the count­ess.

“Well, yes,” said her hus­band; “there is a time to do things, and a time not to do them.”

“I will at­tend to him,” I said, find­ing this sort of greet­ing in­tol­er­able. “No one but my­self can put him in­to his stall; my groom is com­ing by the coach from Chi­non; he will rub him down.”

“I sup­pose your groom is from Eng­land,” she said.

“That is where they all come from,” re­marked the count, who grew cheer­ful in pro­por­tion as his wife seemed de­pressed. Her cold­ness gave him an op­por­tu­ni­ty to op­pose her, and he over­whelmed me with friend­li­ness.

“My dear Fe­lix,” he said, tak­ing my hand, and press­ing it af­fec­tion­ate­ly, “pray for­give Madame de Mort­sauf; wom­en are so whim­si­cal. But it is ow­ing to their weak­ness; they can­not have the even­ness of tem­per we owe to our strength of char­ac­ter. She re­al­ly loves you, I know it; on­ly--”

While the count was speak­ing Madame de Mort­sauf grad­ual­ly moved away from us so as to leave us alone.

“Fe­lix,” said the count, in a low voice, look­ing at his wife, who was now go­ing up to the house with her two chil­dren, “I don't know what is go­ing on in Madame de Mort­sauf's mind, but for the last six weeks her dis­po­si­tion has com­plete­ly changed. She, so gen­tle, so de­vot­ed hith­er­to, is now ex­traor­di­nar­ily pee­vish.”

Manette told me lat­er that the count­ess had fall­en in­to a state of de­pres­sion which made her in­dif­fer­ent to the count's provo­ca­tions. No longer find­ing a soft sub­stance in which he could plant his ar­rows, the man be­came as un­easy as a child when the poor in­sect it is tor­ment­ing ceas­es to move. He now need­ed a con­fi­dant, as the hang­man needs a helper.

“Try to ques­tion Madame de Mort­sauf,” he said af­ter a pause, “and find out what is the mat­ter. A wom­an al­ways has se­crets from her hus­band; but per­haps she will tell you what trou­bles her. I would sac­ri­fice ev­ery­thing to make her hap­py, even to half my re­main­ing days or half my for­tune. She is nec­es­sary to my very life. If I have not that an­gel at my side as I grow old I shall be the most wretched of men. I do de­sire to die easy. Tell her I shall not be here long to trou­ble her. Yes, Fe­lix, my poor friend, I am go­ing fast, I know it. I hide the fa­tal truth from ev­ery one; why should I wor­ry them be­fore­hand? The trou­ble is in the ori­fice of the stom­ach, my friend. I have at last dis­cov­ered the true cause of this dis­ease; it is my sen­si­bil­ity that is killing me. In­deed, all our feel­ings af­fect the gas­tric cen­tre.”

“Then do you mean,” I said, smil­ing, “that the best-​heart­ed peo­ple die of their stom­achs?”

“Don't laugh, Fe­lix; noth­ing is more ab­so­lute­ly true. Too keen a sen­si­bil­ity in­creas­es the play of the sym­pa­thet­ic nerve; these ex­cite­ments of feel­ing keep the mu­cous mem­brane of the stom­ach in a state of con­stant ir­ri­ta­tion. If this state con­tin­ues it de­ranges, at first in­sen­si­bly, the di­ges­tive func­tions; the se­cre­tions change, the ap­petite is im­paired, and the di­ges­tion be­comes capri­cious; sharp pains are felt; they grow worse day by day, and more fre­quent; then the dis­or­der comes to a cri­sis, as if a slow poi­son were pass­ing the al­imen­ta­ry canal; the mu­cous mem­brane thick­ens, the valve of the py­lorus be­comes in­durat­ed and forms a scir­rhus, of which the pa­tient dies. Well, I have reached that point, my dear friend. The in­dura­tion is pro­ceed­ing and noth­ing checks it. Just look at my yel­low skin, my fever­ish eyes, my ex­ces­sive thin­ness. I am with­er­ing away. But what is to be done? I brought the seeds of the dis­ease home with me from the em­igra­tion; heav­en knows what I suf­fered then! My mar­riage, which might have re­paired the wrong, far from sooth­ing my ul­cer­at­ed mind in­creased the wound. What did I find? cease­less fears for the chil­dren, do­mes­tic jars, a for­tune to re­make, economies which re­quired great pri­va­tions, which I was obliged to im­pose up­on my wife, but which I was the one to suf­fer from; and then,--I can tell this to none but you, Fe­lix,--I have a worse trou­ble yet. Though Blanche is an an­gel, she does not un­der­stand me; she knows noth­ing of my suf­fer­ings and she ag­gra­vates them; but I for­give her. It is a dread­ful thing to say, my friend, but a less vir­tu­ous wom­an might have made me more hap­py by lend­ing her­self to con­so­la­tions which Blanche nev­er thinks of, for she is as sil­ly as a child. More­over my ser­vants tor­ment me; block­heads who take my French for Greek! When our for­tune was fi­nal­ly re­made inch by inch, and I had some re­lief from care, it was too late, the harm was done; I had reached the pe­ri­od when the ap­petite is vi­ti­at­ed. Then came my se­vere ill­ness, so ill-​man­aged by Origet. In short, I have not six months to live.”

I lis­tened to the count in ter­ror. On meet­ing the count­ess I had been struck with her yel­low skin and the fever­ish bril­lian­cy of her eyes. I led the count to­wards the house while seem­ing to lis­ten to his com­plaints and his med­ical dis­ser­ta­tions; but my thoughts were all with Hen­ri­ette, and I want­ed to ob­serve her. We found her in the sa­lon, where she was lis­ten­ing to a les­son in math­emat­ics which the Abbe Do­mi­nis was giv­ing Jacques, and at the same time show­ing Madeleine a stitch of em­broi­dery. For­mer­ly she would have laid aside ev­ery oc­cu­pa­tion the day of my ar­rival to be with me. But my love was so deeply re­al that I drove back in­to my heart the grief I felt at this con­trast be­tween the past and the present, and thought on­ly of the fa­tal yel­low tint on that ce­les­tial face, which re­sem­bled the ha­lo of di­vine light Ital­ian painters put around the faces of their saints. I felt the icy wind of death pass over me. Then when the fire of her eyes, no longer soft­ened by the liq­uid light in which in for­mer times they moved, fell up­on me, I shud­dered; I no­ticed sev­er­al changes, caused by grief, which I had not seen in the open air. The slen­der lines which, at my last vis­it, were so light­ly marked up­on her fore­head had deep­ened; her tem­ples with their vi­olet veins seemed burn­ing and con­cave; her eyes were sunk be­neath the brows, their cir­cles browned;--alas! she was dis­col­ored like a fruit when de­cay is be­gin­ning to show up­on the sur­face, or a worm is at the core. I, whose whole am­bi­tion had been to pour hap­pi­ness in­to her soul, I it was who em­bit­tered the spring from which she had hoped to re­fresh her life and re­new her courage. I took a seat be­side her and said in a voice filled with tears of re­pen­tance, “Are you sat­is­fied with your own health?”

“Yes,” she an­swered, plung­ing her eyes in­to mine. “My health is there,” she added, mo­tion­ing to Jacques and Madeleine.

The lat­ter, just fif­teen, had come vic­to­ri­ous­ly out of her strug­gle with anaemia, and was now a wom­an. She had grown tall; the Ben­gal ros­es were bloom­ing in her once sal­low cheeks. She had lost the un­con­cern of a child who looks ev­ery one in the face, and now dropped her eyes; her move­ments were slow and in­fre­quent, like those of her moth­er; her fig­ure was slim, but the grace­ful­ness of the bust was al­ready de­vel­op­ing; al­ready an in­stinct of co­quetry had smoothed the mag­nif­icent black hair which lay in bands up­on her Span­ish brow. She was like those pret­ty stat­uettes of the Mid­dle Ages, so del­icate in out­line, so slen­der in form that the eye as it seizes their charm fears to break them. Health, the fruit of un­told ef­forts, had made her cheeks as vel­vety as a peach and giv­en to her throat the silken down which, like her moth­er's, caught the light. She was to live! God had writ­ten it, dear bud of the loveli­est of hu­man flow­ers, on the long lash­es of her eye­lids, on the curve of those shoul­ders which gave promise of a de­vel­op­ment as su­perb as her moth­er's! This brown young girl, erect as a poplar, con­trast­ed with Jacques, a frag­ile youth of sev­en­teen, whose head had grown im­mense­ly, caus­ing anx­iety by the rapid ex­pan­sion of the fore­head, while his fever­ish, weary eyes were in keep­ing with a voice that was deep and sonorous. The voice gave forth too strong a vol­ume of tone, the eye too many thoughts. It was Hen­ri­ette's in­tel­lect and soul and heart that were here de­vour­ing with swift flames a body with­out stami­na; for Jacques had the milk-​white skin and high col­or which char­ac­ter­ize young En­glish wom­en doomed soon­er or lat­er to the con­sump­tive curse,--an ap­pear­ance of health that de­ceives the eye. Fol­low­ing a sign by which Hen­ri­ette, af­ter show­ing me Madeleine, made me look at Jacques draw­ing ge­omet­ri­cal fig­ures and al­ge­bra­ic cal­cu­la­tions on a board be­fore the Abbe Do­mi­nis, I shiv­ered at the sight of death hid­den be­neath the ros­es, and was thank­ful for the self-​de­cep­tion of his moth­er.

“When I see my chil­dren thus, hap­pi­ness stills my griefs--just as those griefs are dumb, and even dis­ap­pear, when I see them fail­ing. My friend,” she said, her eyes shin­ing with ma­ter­nal plea­sure, “if oth­er af­fec­tions fail us, the feel­ings re­ward­ed here, the du­ties done and crowned with suc­cess, are com­pen­sa­tion enough for de­feat else­where. Jacques will be, like you, a man of the high­est ed­uca­tion, pos­sessed of the wor­thi­est knowl­edge; he will be, like you, an hon­or to his coun­try, which he may as­sist in gov­ern­ing, helped by you, whose stand­ing will be so high; but I will strive to make him faith­ful to his first af­fec­tions. Madeleine, dear crea­ture, has a no­ble heart; she is pure as the snows on the high­est Alps; she will have a wom­an's de­vo­tion and a wom­an's grace­ful in­tel­lect. She is proud; she is wor­thy of be­ing a Lenon­court. My moth­er­hood, once so tried, so tor­tured, is hap­py now, hap­py with an in­fi­nite hap­pi­ness, un­mixed with pain. Yes, my life is full, my life is rich. You see, God makes my joy to blos­som in the heart of these sanc­ti­fied af­fec­tions, and turns to bit­ter­ness those that might have led me astray--”

“Good!” cried the abbe, joy­ful­ly. “Mon­sieur le vi­comte be­gins to know as much as I--”

Just then Jacques coughed.

“Enough for to-​day, my dear abbe,” said the count­ess, “above all, no chem­istry. Go for a ride on horse­back, Jacques,” she added, let­ting her son kiss her with the ten­der and yet dig­ni­fied plea­sure of a moth­er. “Go, dear, but take care of your­self.”

“But,” I said, as her eyes fol­lowed Jacques with a lin­ger­ing look, “you have not an­swered me. Do you feel ill?”

“Oh, some­times, in my stom­ach. If I were in Paris I should have the hon­ors of gas­tri­tis, the fash­ion­able dis­ease.”

“My moth­er suf­fers very much and very of­ten,” said Madeleine.

“Ah!” she said, “does my health in­ter­est you?”

Madeleine, as­ton­ished at the irony of these words, looked from one to the oth­er; my eyes count­ed the ros­es on the cush­ion of the gray and green so­fa which was in the sa­lon.

“This sit­ua­tion is in­tol­er­able,” I whis­pered in her ear.

“Did I cre­ate it?” she asked. “Dear child,” she said aloud, with one of those cru­el lev­ities by which wom­en point their vengeance, “don't you read his­to­ry? France and Eng­land are en­emies, and ev­er have been. Madeleine knows that; she knows that a broad sea, and a cold and stormy one, sep­arates them.”

The vas­es on the man­telshelf had giv­en place to can­de­labra, no doubt to de­prive me of the plea­sure of fill­ing them with flow­ers; I found them lat­er in my own room. When my ser­vant ar­rived I went out to give him some or­ders; he had brought me cer­tain things I wished to place in my room.

“Fe­lix,” said the count­ess, “do not make a mis­take. My aunt's old room is now Madeleine's. Yours is over the count's.”

Though guilty, I had a heart; those words were dag­ger thrusts cold­ly giv­en at its ten­der­est spot, for which she seemed to aim. Moral suf­fer­ings are not fixed quan­ti­ties; they de­pend on the sen­si­tive­ness of souls. The count­ess had trod each round of the lad­der of pain; but, for that very rea­son, the kind­est of wom­en was now as cru­el as she was once benef­icent. I looked at Hen­ri­ette, but she avert­ed her head. I went to my new room, which was pret­ty, white and green. Once there I burst in­to tears. Hen­ri­ette heard me as she en­tered with a bunch of flow­ers in her hand.

“Hen­ri­ette,” I said, “will you nev­er for­give a wrong that is in­deed ex­cus­able?”

“Do not call me Hen­ri­ette,” she said. “She no longer ex­ists, poor soul; but you may feel sure of Madame de Mort­sauf, a de­vot­ed friend, who will lis­ten to you and who will love you. Fe­lix, we will talk of these things lat­er. If you have still any ten­der­ness for me let me grow ac­cus­tomed to see­ing you. When­ev­er words will not rend my heart, if the day should ev­er come when I re­cov­er courage, I will speak to you, but not till then. Look at the val­ley,” she said, point­ing to the In­dre, “it hurts me, I love it still.”

“Ah, per­ish Eng­land and all her wom­en! I will send my res­ig­na­tion to the king; I will live and die here, par­doned.”

“No, love her; love that wom­an! Hen­ri­ette is not. This is no play, and you should know it.”

She left the room, be­tray­ing by the tone of her last words the ex­tent of her wounds. I ran af­ter her and held her back, say­ing, “Do you no longer love me?”

“You have done me more harm than all my oth­er trou­bles put to­geth­er. To-​day I suf­fer less, there­fore I love you less. Be kind; do not in­crease my pain; if you suf­fer, re­mem­ber that--I--live.”

She with­drew her hand, which I held, cold, mo­tion­less, but moist, in mine, and dart­ed like an ar­row through the cor­ri­dor in which this scene of ac­tu­al tragedy took place.

At din­ner, the count sub­ject­ed me to a tor­ture I had lit­tle ex­pect­ed. “So the Mar­chioness of Dud­ley is not in Paris?” he said.

I blushed ex­ces­sive­ly, but an­swered, “No.”

“She is not in Tours,” con­tin­ued the count.

“She is not di­vorced, and she can go back to Eng­land. Her hus­band would be very glad if she would re­turn to him,” I said, ea­ger­ly.

“Has she chil­dren?” asked Madame de Mort­sauf, in a changed voice.

“Two sons,” I replied.

“Where are they?”

“In Eng­land, with their fa­ther.”

“Come, Fe­lix,” in­ter­posed the count; “be frank; is she as hand­some as they say?”

“How can you ask him such a ques­tion?” cried the count­ess. “Is not the wom­an you love al­ways the hand­somest of wom­en?”

“Yes, al­ways,” I said, firm­ly, with a glance which she could not sus­tain.

“You are a hap­py fel­low,” said the count; “yes, a very hap­py one. Ha! in my young days, I should have gone mad over such a con­quest--”

“Hush!” said Madame de Mort­sauf, re­mind­ing the count of Madeleine by a look.

“I am not a child,” he said.

When we left the ta­ble I fol­lowed the count­ess to the ter­race. When we were alone she ex­claimed, “How is it pos­si­ble that some wom­en can sac­ri­fice their chil­dren to a man? Wealth, po­si­tion, the world, I can con­ceive of; eter­ni­ty? yes, pos­si­bly; but chil­dren! de­prive one's self of one's chil­dren!”

“Yes, and such wom­en would give even more if they had it; they sac­ri­fice ev­ery­thing.”

The world was sud­den­ly re­versed be­fore her, her ideas be­came con­fused. The grandeur of that thought struck her; a sus­pi­cion en­tered her mind that sac­ri­fice, im­mo­la­tion jus­ti­fied hap­pi­ness; the echo of her own in­ward cry for love came back to her; she stood dumb in pres­ence of her wast­ed life. Yes, for a mo­ment hor­ri­ble doubts pos­sessed her; then she rose, grand and saint­ly, her head erect.

“Love her well, Fe­lix,” she said, with tears in her eyes; “she shall be my hap­py sis­ter. I will for­give her the harm she has done me if she gives you what you could not have here. You are right; I have nev­er told you that I loved you, and I nev­er have loved you as the world loves. But if she is a moth­er how can she love you so?”

“Dear saint,” I an­swered, “I must be less moved than I am now, be­fore I can ex­plain to you how it is that you soar vic­to­ri­ous­ly above her. She is a wom­an of earth, the daugh­ter of de­cay­ing races; you are the child of heav­en, an an­gel wor­thy of wor­ship; you have my heart, she my flesh on­ly. She knows this and it fills her with de­spair; she would change parts with you even though the cru­ellest mar­tyr­dom were the price of the change. But all is ir­re­me­di­able. To you the soul, to you the thoughts, the love that is pure, to you youth and old age; to her the de­sires and joys of pass­ing pas­sion; to you re­mem­brance for­ev­er, to her obliv­ion--”

“Tell me, tell me that again, oh, my friend!” she turned to a bench and sat down, burst­ing in­to tears. “If that be so, Fe­lix, virtue, pu­ri­ty of life, a moth­er's love, are not mis­takes. Oh, pour that balm up­on my wounds! Re­peat the words which bear me back to heav­en, where once I longed to rise with you. Bless me by a look, by a sa­cred word, --I for­give you for the suf­fer­ings you have caused me the last two months.”

“Hen­ri­ette, there are mys­ter­ies in the life of men of which you know noth­ing. I met you at an age when the feel­ings of the heart sti­fle the de­sires im­plant­ed in our na­ture; but many scenes, the mem­ory of which will kin­dle my soul to the hour of death, must have told you that this age was draw­ing to a close, and it was your con­stant tri­umph still to pro­long its mute de­lights. A love with­out pos­ses­sion is main­tained by the ex­as­per­ation of de­sire; but there comes a mo­ment when all is suf­fer­ing with­in us--for in this we have no re­sem­blance to you. We pos­sess a pow­er we can­not ab­di­cate, or we cease to be men. De­prived of the nour­ish­ment it needs, the heart feeds up­on it­self, feel­ing an ex­haus­tion which is not death, but which pre­cedes it. Na­ture can­not long be si­lenced; some tri­fling ac­ci­dent awak­ens it to a vi­olence that seems like mad­ness. No, I have not loved, but I have thirst­ed in the desert.”

“The desert!” she said bit­ter­ly, point­ing to the val­ley. “Ah!” she ex­claimed, “how he rea­sons! what sub­tle dis­tinc­tions! Faith­ful hearts are not so learned.”

“Hen­ri­ette,” I said, “do not quar­rel with me for a chance ex­pres­sion. No, my soul has not vac­il­lat­ed, but I have not been mas­ter of my sens­es. That wom­an is not ig­no­rant that you are the on­ly one I ev­er loved. She plays a sec­ondary part in my life; she knows it and is re­signed. I have the right to leave her as men leave cour­te­sans.”

“And then?”

“She tells me that she will kill her­self,” I an­swered, think­ing that this re­solve would star­tle Hen­ri­ette. But when she heard it a dis­dain­ful smile, more ex­pres­sive than the thoughts it con­veyed, flick­ered on her lips. “My dear con­science,” I con­tin­ued, “if you would take in­to ac­count my re­sis­tance and the se­duc­tions that led to my fall you would un­der­stand the fa­tal--”

“Yes, fa­tal!” she cried. “I be­lieved in you too much. I be­lieved you ca­pa­ble of the virtue a priest prac­tis­es. All is over,” she con­tin­ued, af­ter a pause. “I owe you much, my friend; you have ex­tin­guished in me the fires of earth­ly life. The worst of the way is over; age is com­ing on. I am ail­ing now, soon I may be ill; I can nev­er be the bril­liant fairy who show­ers you with fa­vors. Be faith­ful to La­dy Dud­ley. Madeleine, whom I was train­ing to be yours, ah! who will have her now? Poor Madeleine, poor Madeleine!” she re­peat­ed, like the mourn­ful bur­den of a song. “I would you had heard her say to me when you came: 'Moth­er, you are not kind to Fe­lix!' Dear crea­ture!”

She looked at me in the warm rays of the set­ting sun as they glid­ed through the fo­liage. Seized with com­pas­sion for the ship­wreck of our lives she turned back to mem­ories of our pure past, yield­ing to med­ita­tions which were mu­tu­al. We were silent, re­call­ing past scenes; our eyes went from the val­ley to the fields, from the win­dows of Clochegourde to those of Frapesle, peo­pling the dream with my bou­quets, the fra­grant lan­guage of our de­sires. It was her last hour of plea­sure, en­joyed with the pu­ri­ty of her Catholic soul. This scene, so grand to each of us, cast its melan­choly on both. She be­lieved my words, and saw where I placed her--in the skies.

“My friend,” she said, “I obey God, for his hand is in all this.”

I did not know un­til much lat­er the deep mean­ing of her words. We slow­ly re­turned up the ter­races. She took my arm and leaned up­on it re­signed­ly, bleed­ing still, but with a ban­dage on her wound.

“Hu­man life is thus,” she said. “What had Mon­sieur de Mort­sauf done to de­serve his fate? It proves the ex­is­tence of a bet­ter world. Alas, for those who walk in hap­pi­er ways!”

She went on, es­ti­mat­ing life so tru­ly, con­sid­er­ing its di­verse as­pects so pro­found­ly that these cold judg­ments re­vealed to me the dis­gust that had come up­on her for all things here be­low. When we reached the por­ti­co she dropped my arm and said these last words: “If God has giv­en us the sen­ti­ment and the de­sire for hap­pi­ness ought he not to take charge him­self of in­no­cent souls who have found sor­row on­ly in this low world? Ei­ther that must be so, or God is not, and our life is no more than a cru­el jest.”

She en­tered and turned the house quick­ly; I found her on the so­fa, crouch­ing, as though blast­ed by the voice which flung Saul to the ground.

“What is the mat­ter?” I asked.

“I no longer know what is virtue,” she replied; “I have no con­scious­ness of my own.”

We were silent, pet­ri­fied, lis­ten­ing to the echo of those words which fell like a stone cast in­to a gulf.

“If I am mis­tak­en in my life _she_ is right in _hers_,” Hen­ri­ette said at last.

Thus her last strug­gle fol­lowed her last hap­pi­ness. When the count came in she com­plained of ill­ness, she who nev­er com­plained. I con­jured her to tell me ex­act­ly where she suf­fered; but she re­fused to ex­plain and went to bed, leav­ing me a prey to un­end­ing re­morse. Madeleine went with her moth­er, and the next day I heard that the count­ess had been seized with nau­sea, caused, she said, by the vi­olent ex­cite­ments of that day. Thus I, who longed to give my life for hers, I was killing her.

“Dear count,” I said to Mon­sieur de Mort­sauf, who obliged me to play backgam­mon, “I think the count­ess very se­ri­ous­ly ill. There is still time to save her; pray send for Origet, and per­suade her to fol­low his ad­vice.”

“Origet, who half killed me?” cried the count. “No, no; I'll con­sult Car­bon­neau.”

Dur­ing this week, es­pe­cial­ly the first days of it, ev­ery­thing was an­guish to me--the be­gin­ning of paral­ysis of the heart--my van­ity was mor­ti­fied, my soul rent. One must needs have been the cen­tre of all looks and as­pi­ra­tions, the main­spring of the life about him, the torch from which all oth­ers drew their light, to un­der­stand the hor­ror of the void that was now about me. All things were there, the same, but the spir­it that gave life to them was ex­tinct, like a blown-​out flame. I now un­der­stood the des­per­ate de­sire of lovers nev­er to see each oth­er again when love has flown. To be noth­ing where we were once so much! To find the chill­ing si­lence of the grave where life so late­ly sparkled! Such com­par­isons are over­whelm­ing. I came at last to en­vy the dis­mal ig­no­rance of all hap­pi­ness which had dark­ened my youth. My de­spair be­came so great that the count­ess, I thought, felt pity for it. One day af­ter din­ner as we were walk­ing on the mead­ows be­side the riv­er I made a last ef­fort to ob­tain for­give­ness. I told Jacques to go on with his sis­ter, and leav­ing the count to walk alone, I took Hen­ri­ette to the punt.

“Hen­ri­ette,” I said; “one word of for­give­ness, or I fling my­self in­to the In­dre! I have sinned,--yes, it is true; but am I not like a dog in his faith­ful at­tach­ments? I re­turn like him, like him ashamed. If he does wrong he is struck, but he loves the hand that strikes him; strike me, bruise me, but give me back your heart.”

“Poor child,” she said, “are you not al­ways my son?”

She took my arm and silent­ly re­joined her chil­dren, with whom she re­turned to Clochegourde, leav­ing me to the count, who be­gan to talk pol­itics apro­pos of his neigh­bors.

“Let us go in,” I said; “you are bare-​head­ed, and the dew may do you an in­jury.”

“You pity me, my dear Fe­lix,” he an­swered; “you un­der­stand me, but my wife nev­er tries to com­fort me,--on prin­ci­ple, per­haps.”

Nev­er would she have left me to walk home with her hus­band; it was now I who had to find ex­cus­es to join her. I found her with her chil­dren, ex­plain­ing the rules of backgam­mon to Jacques.

“See there,” said the count, who was al­ways jeal­ous of the af­fec­tion she showed for her chil­dren; “it is for them that I am ne­glect­ed. Hus­bands, my dear Fe­lix, are al­ways sup­pressed. The most vir­tu­ous wom­an in the world has ways of sat­is­fy­ing her de­sire to rob con­ju­gal af­fec­tion.”

She said noth­ing and con­tin­ued as be­fore.

“Jacques,” he said, “come here.”

Jacques ob­ject­ed slight­ly.

“Your fa­ther wants you; go at once, my son,” said his moth­er, push­ing him.

“They love me by or­der,” said the old man, who some­times per­ceived his sit­ua­tion.

“Mon­sieur,” she an­swered, pass­ing her hand over Madeleine's smooth tress­es, which were dressed that day “a la belle Fer­ronniere”; “do not be un­just to us poor wom­en; life is not so easy for us to bear. Per­haps the chil­dren are the virtues of a moth­er.”

“My dear,” said the count, who took it in­to his head to be log­ical, “what you say sig­ni­fies that wom­en who have no chil­dren would have no virtue, and would leave their hus­bands in the lurch.”

The count­ess rose hasti­ly and took Madeleine to the por­ti­co.

“That's mar­riage, my dear fel­low,” re­marked the count to me. “Do you mean to im­ply by go­ing off in that man­ner that I am talk­ing non­sense?” he cried to his wife, tak­ing his son by the hand and go­ing to the por­ti­co af­ter her with a fu­ri­ous look in his eyes.

“On the con­trary, Mon­sieur, you fright­ened me. Your words hurt me cru­el­ly,” she added, in a hol­low voice. “If virtue does not con­sist in sac­ri­fic­ing ev­ery­thing to our chil­dren and our hus­band, what is virtue?”

“Sac-​ri-​fic­ing!” cried the count, mak­ing each syl­la­ble the blow of a sledge-​ham­mer on the heart of his vic­tim. “What have you sac­ri­ficed to your chil­dren? What do you sac­ri­fice to me? Speak! what means all this? An­swer. What is go­ing on here? What did you mean by what you said?”

“Mon­sieur,” she replied, “would you be sat­is­fied to be loved for love of God, or to know your wife vir­tu­ous for virtue's sake?”

“Madame is right,” I said, in­ter­pos­ing in a shak­en voice which vi­brat­ed in two hearts; “yes, the no­blest priv­ilege con­ferred by rea­son is to at­tribute our virtues to the be­ings whose hap­pi­ness is our work, and whom we ren­der hap­py, not from pol­icy, nor from du­ty, but from an in­ex­haustible and vol­un­tary af­fec­tion--”

A tear shone in Hen­ri­ette's eyes.

“And, dear count,” I con­tin­ued, “if by chance a wom­an is in­vol­un­tar­ily sub­ject­ed to feel­ings oth­er than those so­ci­ety im­pos­es on her, you must ad­mit that the more ir­re­sistible that feel­ing is, the more vir­tu­ous she is in smoth­er­ing it, in sac­ri­fic­ing her­self to her hus­band and chil­dren. This the­ory is not ap­pli­ca­ble to me who un­for­tu­nate­ly show an ex­am­ple to the con­trary, nor to you whom it will nev­er con­cern.”

“You have a no­ble soul, Fe­lix,” said the count, slip­ping his arm, not un­grace­ful­ly, round his wife's waist and draw­ing her to­wards him to say: “For­give a poor sick man, dear, who wants to be loved more than he de­serves.”

“There are some hearts that are all gen­eros­ity,” she said, rest­ing her head up­on his shoul­der. The scene made her trem­ble to such a de­gree that her comb fell, her hair rolled down, and she turned pale. The count, hold­ing her up, gave a sort of groan as he felt her faint­ing; he caught her in his arms as he might a child, and car­ried her to the so­fa in the sa­lon, where we all sur­round­ed her. Hen­ri­ette held my hand in hers as if to tell me that we two alone knew the se­cret of that scene, so sim­ple in it­self, so heart-​rend­ing to her.

“I do wrong,” she said to me in a low voice, when the count left the room to fetch a glass of or­ange-​flow­er wa­ter. “I have many wrongs to re­pent of to­wards you; I wished to fill you with de­spair when I ought to have re­ceived you mer­ci­ful­ly. Dear, you are kind­ness it­self, and I alone can ap­pre­ci­ate it. Yes, I know there is a kind­ness prompt­ed by pas­sion. Men have var­ious ways of be­ing kind; some from con­tempt, oth­ers from im­pulse, from cal­cu­la­tion, through in­do­lence of na­ture; but you, my friend, you have been ab­so­lute­ly kind.”

“If that be so,” I replied, “re­mem­ber that all that is good or great in me comes through you. You know well that I am of your mak­ing.”

“That word is enough for any wom­an's hap­pi­ness,” she said, as the count re-​en­tered the room. “I feel bet­ter,” she said, ris­ing; “I want air.”

We went down to the ter­race, fra­grant with the aca­cias which were still in bloom. She had tak­en my right arm, and pressed it against her heart, thus ex­press­ing her sad thoughts; but they were, she said, of a sad­ness dear to her. No doubt she would glad­ly have been alone with me; but her imag­ina­tion, in­ex­pert in wom­en's wiles, did not sug­gest to her any way of send­ing her chil­dren and the count back to the house. We there­fore talked on in­dif­fer­ent sub­jects, while she pon­dered a means of pour­ing a few last thoughts from her heart to mine.

“It is a long time since I have driv­en out,” she said, look­ing at the beau­ty of the evening. “Mon­sieur, will you please or­der the car­riage that I may take a turn?”

She knew that af­ter evening prayer she could not speak with me, for the count was sure to want his backgam­mon. She might have re­turned to the warm and fra­grant ter­race af­ter her hus­band had gone to bed, but she feared, per­haps, to trust her­self be­neath those shad­ows, or to walk by the balustrade where our eyes could see the course of the In­dre through the dear val­ley. As the silent and som­bre vaults of a cathe­dral lift the soul to prayer, so leafy ways, light­ed by the moon, per­fumed with pen­etrat­ing odors, alive with the mur­mur­ing nois­es of the spring-​tide, stir the fi­bres and weak­en the re­solves of those who love. The coun­try calms the old, but ex­cites the young. We knew it well. Two strokes of the bell an­nounced the hour of prayer. The count­ess shiv­ered.

“Dear Hen­ri­ette, are you ill?”

“There is no Hen­ri­ette,” she said. “Do not bring her back. She was capri­cious and ex­act­ing; now you have a friend whose courage has been strength­ened by the words which heav­en it­self dic­tat­ed to you. We will talk of this lat­er. We must be punc­tu­al at prayers, for it is my day to lead them.”

As Madame de Mort­sauf said the words in which she begged the help of God through all the ad­ver­si­ties of life, a tone came in­to her voice which struck all present. Did she use her gift of sec­ond sight to fore­see the ter­ri­ble emo­tion she was about to en­dure through my for­get­ful­ness of an en­gage­ment made with Ara­bel­la?

“We have time to make three kings be­fore the hors­es are har­nessed,” said the count, drag­ging me back to the sa­lon. “You can go and drive with my wife, and I'll go to bed.”

The game was stormy, like all oth­ers. The count­ess heard the count's voice ei­ther from her room or from Madeleine's.

“You show a strange hos­pi­tal­ity,” she said, re-​en­ter­ing the sa­lon.

I looked at her with amaze­ment; I could not get ac­cus­tomed to the change in her; for­mer­ly she would have been most care­ful not to pro­tect me against the count; then it glad­dened her that I should share her suf­fer­ings and bear them with pa­tience for love of her.

“I would give my life,” I whis­pered in her ear, “if I could hear you say again, as you once said, 'Poor dear, poor dear!'”

She low­ered her eyes, re­mem­ber­ing the mo­ment to which I al­lud­ed, yet her glance turned to me be­neath her eye­lids, ex­press­ing the joy of a wom­an who finds the mere pass­ing tones from her heart pre­ferred to the de­lights of an­oth­er love. The count was los­ing the game; he said he was tired, as an ex­cuse to give it up, and we went to walk on the lawn while wait­ing for the car­riage. When the count left us, such plea­sure shone on my face that Madame de Mort­sauf ques­tioned me by a look of sur­prise and cu­rios­ity.

“Hen­ri­ette does ex­ist,” I said. “You love me still. You wound me with an ev­ident in­ten­tion to break my heart. I may yet be hap­py!”

“There was but a frag­ment of that poor wom­an left, and you have now de­stroyed even that,” she said. “God be praised; he gives me strength to bear my righ­teous mar­tyr­dom. Yes, I still love you, and I might have erred; the En­glish wom­an shows me the abyss.”

We got in­to the car­riage and the coach­man asked for or­ders.

“Take the road to Chi­non by the av­enue, and come back by the Charle­magne moor and the road to Sache.”

“What day is it?” I asked, with too much ea­ger­ness.

“Sat­ur­day.”

“Then don't go that way, madame, the road will be crowd­ed with poul­try-​men and their carts re­turn­ing from Tours.”

“Do as I told you,” she said to the coach­man. We knew the tones of our voic­es too well to be able to hide from each oth­er our least emo­tion. Hen­ri­ette un­der­stood all.

“You did not think of the poul­try-​men when you ap­point­ed this evening,” she said with a tinge of irony. “La­dy Dud­ley is at Tours, and she is com­ing here to meet you; do not de­ny it. 'What day is it?--the poul­try-​men--their carts!' Did you ev­er take no­tice of such things in our old drives?”

“It on­ly shows that at Clochegourde I for­get ev­ery­thing,” I an­swered, sim­ply.

“She is com­ing to meet you?”

“Yes.”

“At what hour?”

“Half-​past eleven.”

“Where?”

“On the moor.”

“Do not de­ceive me; is it not at the wal­nut-​tree?”

“On the moor.”

“We will go there,” she said, “and I shall see her.”

When I heard these words I re­gard­ed my fu­ture life as set­tled. I at once re­solved to mar­ry La­dy Dud­ley and put an end to the mis­er­able strug­gle which threat­ened to ex­haust my sen­si­bil­ities and de­stroy by these re­peat­ed shocks the del­icate de­lights which had hith­er­to re­sem­bled the flow­er of fruits. My sullen si­lence wound­ed the count­ess, the grandeur of whose mind I mis­judged.

“Do not be an­gry with me,” she said, in her gold­en voice. “This, dear, is my pun­ish­ment. You can nev­er be loved as you are here,” she con­tin­ued, lay­ing my hand up­on her heart. “I now con­fess it; but La­dy Dud­ley has saved me. To her the stains,--I do not en­vy them,--to me the glo­ri­ous love of an­gels! I have tra­versed vast tracts of thought since you re­turned here. I have judged life. Lift up the soul and you rend it; the high­er we go the less sym­pa­thy we meet; in­stead of suf­fer­ing in the val­ley, we suf­fer in the skies, as the soar­ing ea­gle bears in his heart the ar­row of some com­mon herds­man. I com­pre­hend at last that earth and heav­en are in­com­pat­ible. Yes, to those who would live in the ce­les­tial sphere God must be all in all. We must love our friends as we love our chil­dren,--for them, not for our­selves. Self is the cause of mis­ery and grief. My soul is ca­pa­ble of soar­ing high­er than the ea­gle; there is a love which can­not fail me. But to live for this earth­ly life is too de­bas­ing,--here the self­ish­ness of the sens­es reigns supreme over the spir­itu­al­ity of the an­gel that is with­in us. The plea­sures of pas­sion are stormy, fol­lowed by en­er­vat­ing anx­ieties which im­pair the vig­or of the soul. I came to the shores of the sea where such tem­pests rage; I have seen them too near; they have wrapped me in their clouds; the bil­lows did not break at my feet, they caught me in a rough em­brace which chilled my heart. No! I must es­cape to high­er re­gions; I should per­ish on the shores of this vast sea. I see in you, as in all oth­ers who have grieved me, the guardian of my virtue. My life has been min­gled with an­guish, for­tu­nate­ly pro­por­tioned to my strength; it has thus been kept free from evil pas­sions, from se­duc­tive peace, and ev­er near to God. Our at­tach­ment was the mis­tak­en at­tempt, the in­no­cent ef­fort of two chil­dren striv­ing to sat­is­fy their own hearts, God, and men--fol­ly, Fe­lix! Ah,” she said quick­ly, “what does that wom­an call you?”

“'Amedee,'” I an­swered, “'Fe­lix' is a be­ing apart, who be­longs to none but you.”

“'Hen­ri­ette' is slow to die,” she said, with a gen­tle smile, “but die she will at the first ef­fort of the hum­ble Chris­tian, the self-​re­spect­ing moth­er; she whose virtue tot­tered yes­ter­day and is firm to-​day. What may I say to you? This. My life has been, and is, con­sis­tent with it­self in all its cir­cum­stances, great and small. The heart to which the rootlets of my first af­fec­tion should have clung, my moth­er's heart, was closed to me, in spite of my per­sis­tence in seek­ing a cleft through which they might have slipped. I was a girl; I came af­ter the death of three boys; and I vain­ly strove to take their place in the hearts of my par­ents; the wound I gave to the fam­ily pride was nev­er healed. When my gloomy child­hood was over and I knew my aunt, death took her from me all too soon. Mon­sieur de Mort­sauf, to whom I vowed my­self, has re­peat­ed­ly, nay with­out respite, smit­ten me, not be­ing him­self aware of it, poor man! His love has the sim­ple-​mind­ed ego­tism our chil­dren show to us. He has no con­cep­tion of the harm he does me, and he is hearti­ly for­giv­en for it. My chil­dren, those dear chil­dren who are bound to my flesh through their suf­fer­ings, to my soul by their char­ac­ters, to my na­ture by their in­no­cent hap­pi­ness,--those chil­dren were sure­ly giv­en to show me how much strength and pa­tience a moth­er's breast con­tains. Yes, my chil­dren are my virtues. You know how my heart has been har­rowed for them, by them, in spite of them. To be a moth­er was, for me, to buy the right to suf­fer. When Ha­gar cried in the desert an an­gel came and opened a spring of liv­ing wa­ter for that poor slave; but I, when the limpid stream to which (do you re­mem­ber?) you tried to guide me flowed past Clochegourde, its wa­ters changed to bit­ter­ness for me. Yes, the suf­fer­ings you have in­flict­ed on my soul are ter­ri­ble. God, no doubt, will par­don those who know af­fec­tion on­ly through its pains. But if the keen­est of these pains has come to me through you, per­haps I de­served them. God is not un­just. Ah, yes, Fe­lix, a kiss furtive­ly tak­en may be a crime. Per­haps it is just that a wom­an should harsh­ly ex­pi­ate the few steps tak­en apart from hus­band and chil­dren that she might walk alone with thoughts and mem­ories that were not of them, and so walk­ing, mar­ry her soul to an­oth­er. Per­haps it is the worst of crimes when the in­ward be­ing low­ers it­self to the re­gion of hu­man kiss­es. When a wom­an bends to re­ceive her hus­band's kiss with a mask up­on her face, that is a crime! It is a crime to think of a fu­ture spring­ing from a death, a crime to imag­ine a moth­er­hood with­out ter­rors, hand­some chil­dren play­ing in the evening with a beloved fa­ther be­fore the eyes of a hap­py moth­er. Yes, I sinned, sinned great­ly. I have loved the penances in­flict­ed by the Church,--which did not re­deem the faults, for the priest was too in­dul­gent. God has placed the pun­ish­ment in the faults them­selves, com­mit­ting the ex­ecu­tion of his vengeance to the one for whom the faults were com­mit­ted. When I gave my hair, did I not give my­self? Why did I so of­ten dress in white? be­cause I seemed the more your lily; did you not see me here, for the first time, all in white? Alas! I have loved my chil­dren less, for all in­tense af­fec­tion is stolen from the nat­ural af­fec­tions. Fe­lix, do you not see that all suf­fer­ing has its mean­ing. Strike me, wound me even more than Mon­sieur de Mort­sauf and my chil­dren's state have wound­ed me. That wom­an is the in­stru­ment of God's anger; I will meet her with­out ha­tred; I will smile up­on her; un­der pain of be­ing nei­ther Chris­tian, wife, nor moth­er, I ought to love her. If, as you tell me, I con­tribut­ed to keep your heart un­soiled by the world, that En­glish­wom­an ought not to hate me. A wom­an should love the moth­er of the man she loves, and I am your moth­er. What place have I sought in your heart? that left emp­ty by Madame de Van­de­nesse. Yes, yes, you have al­ways com­plained of my cold­ness; yes, I am in­deed your moth­er on­ly. For­give me there­fore the in­vol­un­tary harsh­ness with which I met you on your re­turn; a moth­er ought to re­joice that her son is so well loved--”

She laid her head for a mo­ment on my breast, re­peat­ing the words, “For­give me! oh, for­give me!” in a voice that was nei­ther her girl­ish voice with its joy­ous notes, nor the wom­an's voice with despot­ic end­ings; not the sigh­ing sound of the moth­er's woe, but an ag­oniz­ing new voice for new sor­rows.

“You, Fe­lix,” she present­ly con­tin­ued, grow­ing an­imat­ed; “you are the friend who can do no wrong. Ah! you have lost noth­ing in my heart; do not blame your­self, do not feel the least re­morse. It was the height of self­ish­ness in me to ask you to sac­ri­fice the joys of life to an im­pos­si­ble fu­ture; im­pos­si­ble, be­cause to re­al­ize it a wom­an must aban­don her chil­dren, ab­di­cate her po­si­tion, and re­nounce eter­ni­ty. Many a time I have thought you high­er than I; you were great and no­ble, I, pet­ty and crim­inal. Well, well, it is set­tled now; I can be to you no more than a light from above, sparkling and cold, but un­chang­ing. On­ly, Fe­lix, let me not love the broth­er I have cho­sen with­out re­turn. Love me, cher­ish me! The love of a sis­ter has no dan­ger­ous to-​mor­row, no hours of dif­fi­cul­ty. You will nev­er find it nec­es­sary to de­ceive the in­dul­gent heart which will live in fu­ture with­in your life, grieve for your griefs, be joy­ous with your joys, which will love the wom­en who make you hap­py, and re­sent their treach­ery. I nev­er had a broth­er to love in that way. Be no­ble enough to lay aside all self-​love and turn our at­tach­ment, hith­er­to so doubt­ful and full of trou­ble, in­to this sweet and sa­cred love. In this way I shall be en­abled to still live. I will be­gin to-​night by tak­ing La­dy Dud­ley's hand.”

She did not weep as she said these words so full of bit­ter knowl­edge, by which, cast­ing aside the last re­main­ing veil which hid her soul from mine, she showed by how many ties she had linked her­self to me, how many chains I had hewn apart. Our emo­tions were so great that for a time we did not no­tice it was rain­ing heav­ily.

“Will Madame la comtesse wait here un­der shel­ter?” asked the coach­man, point­ing to the chief inn of Bal­lan.

She made a sign of as­sent, and we stayed near­ly half an hour un­der the vault­ed en­trance, to the great sur­prise of the inn-​peo­ple who won­dered what brought Madame de Mort­sauf on that road at eleven o'clock at night. Was she go­ing to Tours? Had she come from there? When the storm ceased and the rain turned to what is called in Touraine a “brouee,” which does not hin­der the moon from shin­ing through the high­er mists as the wind with its up­per cur­rents whirls them away, the coach­man drove from our shel­ter, and, to my great de­light, turned to go back the way we came.

“Fol­low my or­ders,” said the count­ess, gen­tly.

We now took the road across the Charle­magne moor, where the rain be­gan again. Half-​way across I heard the bark­ing of Ara­bel­la's dog; a horse came sud­den­ly from be­neath a clump of oaks, jumped the ditch which own­ers of prop­er­ty dig around their cleared lands when they con­sid­er them suit­able for cul­ti­va­tion, and car­ried La­dy Dud­ley to the moor to meet the car­riage.

“What plea­sure to meet a love thus if it can be done with­out sin,” said Hen­ri­ette.

The bark­ing of the dog had told La­dy Dud­ley that I was in the car­riage. She thought, no doubt, that I had brought it to meet her on ac­count of the rain. When we reached the spot where she was wait­ing, she urged her horse to the side of the road with the eques­tri­an dex­ter­ity for which she was fa­mous, and which to Hen­ri­ette seemed mar­vel­lous.

“Amedee,” she said, and the name in her En­glish pro­nun­ci­ation had a fairy-​like charm.

“He is here, madame,” said the count­ess, look­ing at the fan­tas­tic crea­ture plain­ly vis­ible in the moon­light, whose im­pa­tient face was odd­ly swathed in locks of hair now out of curl.

You know with what swift­ness two wom­en ex­am­ine each oth­er. The En­glish­wom­an rec­og­nized her ri­val, and was glo­ri­ous­ly En­glish; she gave us a look full of in­su­lar con­tempt, and dis­ap­peared in the un­der­brush with the ra­pid­ity of an ar­row.

“Drive on quick­ly to Clochegourde,” cried the count­ess, to whom that cut­ting look was like the blow of an axe up­on her heart.

The coach­man turned to get up­on the road to Chi­non which was bet­ter than that to Sache. As the car­riage again ap­proached the moor we heard the fu­ri­ous gal­lop­ing of Ara­bel­la's horse and the steps of her dog. All three were skirt­ing the wood be­hind the bush­es.

“She is go­ing; you will lose her for­ev­er,” said Hen­ri­ette.

“Let her go,” I an­swered, “and with­out a re­gret.”

“Oh, poor wom­an!” cried the count­ess, with a sort of com­pas­sion­ate hor­ror. “Where will she go?”

“Back to La Grenadiere,--a lit­tle house near Saint-​Cyr,” I said, “where she is stay­ing.”

Just as we were en­ter­ing the av­enue of Clochegourde Ara­bel­la's dog barked joy­ful­ly and bound­ed up to the car­riage.

“She is here be­fore us!” cried the count­ess; then af­ter a pause she added, “I have nev­er seen a more beau­ti­ful wom­an. What a hand and what a fig­ure! Her com­plex­ion out­does the lily, her eyes are lit­er­al­ly bright as di­amonds. But she rides too well; she loves to dis­play her strength; I think her vi­olent and too ac­tive,--al­so too bold for our con­ven­tions. The wom­an who rec­og­nizes no law is apt to lis­ten on­ly to her caprices. Those who seek to shine, to make a stir, have not the gift of con­stan­cy. Love needs tran­quil­li­ty; I pic­ture it to my­self like a vast lake in which the lead can find no bot­tom; where tem­pests may be vi­olent, but are rare and con­trolled with­in cer­tain lim­its; where two be­ings live on a flow­ery isle far from the world whose lux­ury and dis­play of­fend them. Still, love must take the im­print of the char­ac­ter. Per­haps I am wrong. If na­ture's el­ements are com­pelled to take cer­tain forms de­ter­mined by cli­mate, why is it not the same with the feel­ings of in­di­vid­uals? No doubt sen­ti­ments, feel­ings, which hold to the gen­er­al law in the mass, dif­fer in ex­pres­sion on­ly. Each soul has its own method. La­dy Dud­ley is the strong wom­an who can tra­verse dis­tances and act with the vig­or of a man; she would res­cue her lover and kill jail­ers and guards; while oth­er wom­en can on­ly love with their whole souls; in mo­ments of dan­ger they kneel down to pray, and die. Which of the two wom­en suits you best? That is the ques­tion. Yes, yes, La­dy Dud­ley must sure­ly love; she has made many sac­ri­fices. Per­haps she will love you when you have ceased to love her!”

“Dear an­gel,” I said, “let me ask the ques­tion you asked me; how is it that you know these things?”

“Ev­ery sor­row teach­es a les­son, and I have suf­fered on so many points that my knowl­edge is vast.”

My ser­vant had heard the or­der giv­en, and think­ing we should re­turn by the ter­races he held my horse ready for me in the av­enue. Ara­bel­la's dog had scent­ed the horse, and his mis­tress, drawn by very nat­ural cu­rios­ity, had fol­lowed the an­imal through the woods to the av­enue.

“Go and make your peace,” said Hen­ri­ette, smil­ing with­out a tinge of sad­ness. “Say to La­dy Dud­ley how much she mis­takes my in­ten­tion; I wished to show her the true val­ue of the trea­sure which has fall­en to her; my heart holds none but kind feel­ings, above all nei­ther anger nor con­tempt. Ex­plain to her that I am her sis­ter, and not her ri­val.”

“I shall not go,” I said.

“Have you nev­er dis­cov­ered,” she said with lofty pride, “that cer­tain pro­pi­ti­ations are in­sult­ing? Go!”

I rode to­wards La­dy Dud­ley wish­ing to know the state of her mind. “If she would on­ly be an­gry and leave me,” I thought, “I could re­turn to Clochegourde.”

The dog led me to an oak, from which, as I came up, Ara­bel­la gal­loped cry­ing out to me, “Come! away! away!” All that I could do was to fol­low her to Saint Cyr, which we reached about mid­night.

“That la­dy is in per­fect health,” said Ara­bel­la as she dis­mount­ed.

Those who know her can alone imag­ine the satire con­tained in that re­mark, dry­ly said in a tone which meant, “I should have died!”

“I for­bid you to ut­ter any of your sar­casms about Madame de Mort­sauf,” I said.

“Do I dis­please your Grace in re­mark­ing up­on the per­fect health of one so dear to your pre­cious heart? French­wom­en hate, so I am told, even their lover's dog. In Eng­land we love all that our mas­ters love; we hate all they hate, be­cause we are flesh of their flesh. Per­mit me there­fore to love this la­dy as much as you your­self love her. On­ly, my dear child,” she added, clasp­ing me in her arms which were damp with rain, “if you be­tray me, I shall not be found ei­ther ly­ing down or stand­ing up, not in a car­riage with liv­er­ied lack­eys, nor on horse­back on the moors of Charle­magne, nor on any oth­er moor be­neath the skies, nor in my own bed, nor be­neath a roof of my fore­fa­thers; I shall not be any­where, for I will live no longer. I was born in Lan­cashire, a coun­try where wom­en die for love. Know you, and give you up? I will yield you to none, not even to Death, for I should die with you.”

She led me to her rooms, where com­fort had al­ready spread its charms.

“Love her, dear,” I said warm­ly. “She loves you sin­cere­ly, not in jest.”

“Sin­cere­ly! you poor child!” she said, un­fas­ten­ing her habit.

With a lover's van­ity I tried to ex­hib­it Hen­ri­ette's no­ble char­ac­ter to this im­pe­ri­ous crea­ture. While her wait­ing-​wom­an, who did not un­der­stand a word of French, ar­ranged her hair I en­deav­ored to pic­ture Madame de Mort­sauf by sketch­ing her life; I re­peat­ed many of the great thoughts she had ut­tered at a cri­sis when near­ly all wom­en be­come ei­ther pet­ty or bad. Though Ara­bel­la ap­peared to be pay­ing no at­ten­tion she did not lose a sin­gle word.

“I am de­light­ed,” she said when we were alone, “to learn your taste for pi­ous con­ver­sa­tion. There's an old vicar on one of my es­tates who un­der­stands writ­ing ser­mons bet­ter than any one I know; the coun­try-​peo­ple like him, for he suits his pros­ing to his hear­ers. I'll write to my fa­ther to-​mor­row and ask him to send the good man here by steam­boat; you can meet him in Paris, and when once you have heard him you will nev­er wish to lis­ten to any one else,--all the more be­cause his health is per­fect. His moral­ities won't give you shocks that make you weep; they flow along with­out tem­pests, like a limpid stream, and will send you to sleep. Ev­ery evening you can if you like sat­is­fy your pas­sion for ser­mons by di­gest­ing one with your din­ner. En­glish moral­ity, I do as­sure you, is as su­pe­ri­or to that of Touraine as our cut­lery, our plate, and our hors­es are to your knives and your turf. Do me the kind­ness to lis­ten to my vicar; promise me. I am on­ly a wom­an, my dear­est; I can love, I can die for you if you will; but I have nev­er stud­ied at Eton, or at Ox­ford, or in Ed­in­burgh. I am nei­ther a doc­tor of laws nor a rev­erend; I can't preach moral­ity; in fact, I am al­to­geth­er un­fit for it, I should be awk­ward if I tried. I don't blame your tastes; you might have oth­ers more de­praved, and I should still en­deav­or to con­form to them, for I want you to find near me all you like best,--plea­sures of love, plea­sures of food, plea­sures of piety, good claret, and vir­tu­ous Chris­tians. Shall I wear hair-​cloth to-​night? She is very lucky, that wom­an, to suit you in moral­ity. From what col­lege did she grad­uate? Poor I, who can on­ly give you my­self, who can on­ly be your slave--”

“Then why did you rush away when I want­ed to bring you to­geth­er?”

“Are you crazy, Amedee? I could go from Paris to Rome dis­guised as a valet; I would do the most un­rea­son­able thing for your sake; but how can you ex­pect me to speak to a wom­an on the pub­lic roads who has nev­er been pre­sent­ed to me,--and who, be­sides, would have preached me a ser­mon un­der three heads? I speak to peas­ants, and if I am hun­gry I would ask a work­man to share his bread with me and pay him in guineas, --that is all prop­er enough; but to stop a car­riage on the high­way, like the gen­tle­men of the road in Eng­land, is not at all with­in my code of man­ners. You poor child, you know on­ly how to love; you don't know how to live. Be­sides, I am not like you as yet, dear an­gel; I don't like moral­ity. Still, I am ca­pa­ble of great ef­forts to please you. Yes, I will go to work; I will learn how to preach; you shall have no more kiss­es with­out vers­es of the Bible in­ter­lard­ed.”

She used her pow­er and abused it as soon as she saw in my eyes the ar­dent ex­pres­sion which was al­ways there when she be­gan her sor­ceries. She tri­umphed over ev­ery­thing, and I com­pla­cent­ly told my­self that the wom­an who los­es all, sac­ri­fices the fu­ture, and makes love her on­ly virtue, is far above Catholic polemics.

“So she loves her­self bet­ter than she loves you?” Ara­bel­la went on. “She sets some­thing that is not you above you. Is that love? how can we wom­en find any­thing to val­ue in our­selves ex­cept that which you val­ue in us? No wom­an, no mat­ter how fine a moral­ist she may be, is the equal of a man. Tread up­on us, kill us; nev­er em­bar­rass your lives on our ac­count. It is for us to die, for you to live, great and hon­ored. For us the dag­ger in your hand; for you our par­don­ing love. Does the sun think of the gnats in his beams, that live by his light? they stay as long as they can and when he with­draws his face they die--”

“Or fly some­where else,” I said in­ter­rupt­ing her.

“Yes, some­where else,” she replied, with an in­dif­fer­ence that would have piqued any man in­to us­ing the pow­er with which she in­vest­ed him. “Do you re­al­ly think it is wor­thy of wom­an­hood to make a man eat his bread but­tered with virtue, and to per­suade him that re­li­gion is in­com­pat­ible with love? Am I a repro­bate? A wom­an ei­ther gives her­self or she re­fus­es. But to refuse and mor­al­ize is a dou­ble wrong, and is con­trary to the rule of the right in all lands. Here, you will get on­ly ex­cel­lent sand­wich­es pre­pared by the hand of your ser­vant Ara­bel­la, whose sole moral­ity is to imag­ine ca­ress­es no man has yet felt and which the an­gels in­spire.”

I know noth­ing more de­struc­tive than the wit of an En­glish­wom­an; she gives it the elo­quent grav­ity, the tone of pompous con­vic­tion with which the British hide the ab­sur­di­ties of their life of prej­udice. French wit and hu­mor, on the oth­er hand, is like a lace with which our wom­en adorn the joys they give and the quar­rels they in­vent; it is a men­tal jew­el­ry, as charm­ing as their pret­ty dress­es. En­glish wit is an acid which cor­rodes all those on whom it falls un­til it bares their bones, which it scrapes and pol­ish­es. The tongue of a clever En­glish­wom­an is like that of a tiger tear­ing the flesh from the bone when he is on­ly in play. All-​pow­er­ful weapon of a sneer­ing dev­il, En­glish satire leaves a dead­ly poi­son in the wound it makes. Ara­bel­la chose to show her pow­er like the sul­tan who, to prove his dex­ter­ity, cut off the heads of un­of­fend­ing be­ings with his own scim­itar.

“My an­gel,” she said, “I can talk moral­ity too if I choose. I have asked my­self whether I com­mit a crime in lov­ing you; whether I vi­olate the di­vine laws; and I find that my love for you is both nat­ural and pi­ous. Why did God cre­ate some be­ings hand­somer than oth­ers if not to show us that we ought to adore them? The crime would be in not lov­ing you. This la­dy in­sults you by con­found­ing you with oth­er men; the laws of moral­ity are not ap­pli­ca­ble to you; for God has cre­at­ed you above them. Am I not draw­ing near­er to di­vine love in lov­ing you? will God pun­ish a poor wom­an for seek­ing the di­vine? Your great and lu­mi­nous heart so re­sem­bles the heav­ens that I am like the gnats which flut­ter about the torch­es of a fete and burn them­selves; are they to be pun­ished for their er­ror? be­sides, is it an er­ror? may it not be pure wor­ship of the light? They per­ish of too much piety,--if you call it per­ish­ing to fling one's self on the breast of him we love. I have the weak­ness to love you, where­as that wom­an has the strength to re­main in her Catholic shrine. Now, don't frown. You think I wish her ill. No, I do not. I adore the moral­ity which has led her to leave you free, and en­ables me to win you and hold you for­ev­er--for you are mine for­ev­er, are you not?”

“Yes.”

“For­ev­er and ev­er?”

“Yes.”

“Ah! I have found fa­vor in my lord! I alone have un­der­stood his worth! She knows how to cul­ti­vate her es­tate, you say. Well, I leave that to farm­ers; I cul­ti­vate your heart.”

I try to re­call this in­tox­icat­ing bab­ble, that I may pic­ture to you the wom­an as she is, con­firm all I have said of her, and let you in­to the se­cret of what hap­pened lat­er. But how shall I de­scribe the ac­com­pa­ni­ment of the words? She sought to an­ni­hi­late by the pas­sion of her im­petu­ous love the im­pres­sions left in my heart by the chaste and dig­ni­fied love of my Hen­ri­ette. La­dy Dud­ley had seen the count­ess as plain­ly as the count­ess had seen her; each had judged the oth­er. The force of Ara­bel­la's at­tack re­vealed to me the ex­tent of her fear, and her se­cret ad­mi­ra­tion for her ri­val. In the morn­ing I found her with tear­ful eyes, com­plain­ing that she had not slept.

“What trou­bles you?” I said.

“I fear that my ex­ces­sive love will ru­in me,” she an­swered; “I have giv­en all. Wis­er than I, that wom­an pos­sess­es some­thing that you still de­sire. If you pre­fer her, for­get me; I will not trou­ble you with my sor­rows, my re­morse, my suf­fer­ings; no, I will go far away and die, like a plant de­prived of the life-​giv­ing sun.”

She was able to wring protes­ta­tions of love from my re­luc­tant lips, which filled her with joy.

“Ah!” she ex­claimed, dry­ing her eyes, “I am hap­py. Go back to her; I do not choose to owe you to the force of my love, but to the ac­tion of your own will. If you re­turn here I shall know that you love me as much as I love you, the pos­si­bil­ity of which I have al­ways doubt­ed.”

She per­suad­ed me to re­turn to Clochegourde. The false po­si­tion in which I thus placed my­self did not strike me while still un­der the in­flu­ence of her wiles. Yet, had I re­fused to re­turn I should have giv­en La­dy Dud­ley a tri­umph over Hen­ri­ette. Ara­bel­la would then have tak­en me to Paris. To go now to Clochegourde was an open in­sult to Madame de Mort­sauf; in that case Ara­bel­la was sure of me. Did any wom­an ev­er par­don such crimes against love? Un­less she were an an­gel de­scend­ed from the skies, in­stead of a pu­ri­fied spir­it as­cend­ing to them, a lov­ing wom­an would rather see her lover die than know him hap­py with an­oth­er. Thus, look at it as I would, my sit­ua­tion, af­ter I had once left Clochegourde for the Grenadiere, was as fa­tal to the love of my choice as it was prof­itable to the tran­sient love that held me. La­dy Dud­ley had cal­cu­lat­ed all this with con­sum­mate clev­er­ness. She owned to me lat­er that if she had not met Madame de Mort­sauf on the moor she had in­tend­ed to com­pro­mise me by haunt­ing Clochegourde un­til she did so.

When I met the count­ess that morn­ing, and found her pale and de­pressed like one who has not slept all night, I was con­scious of ex­er­cis­ing the in­stinc­tive per­cep­tion giv­en to hearts still fresh and gen­er­ous to show them the true bear­ing of ac­tions lit­tle re­gard­ed by the world at large, but judged as crim­inal by lofty spir­its. Like a child go­ing down a precipice in play and gath­er­ing flow­ers, who sees with dread that it can nev­er climb that height again, feels it­self alone, with night ap­proach­ing, and hears the howls of an­imals, so I now knew that she and I were sep­arat­ed by a uni­verse. A wail arose with­in our souls like an echo of that woe­ful “Con­sum­ma­tum est” heard in the church­es on Good Fri­day at the hour the Saviour died,--a dread­ful scene which awes young souls whose first love is re­li­gion. All Hen­ri­ette's il­lu­sions were killed at one blow; her heart had en­dured its pas­sion. She did not look at me; she re­fused me the light that for six long years had shone up­on my life. She knew well that the spring of the ef­ful­gent rays shed by our eyes was in our souls, to which they served as path­ways to reach each oth­er, to blend them in one, meet­ing, part­ing, play­ing, like two con­fid­ing wom­en who tell each oth­er all. Bit­ter­ly I felt the wrong of bring­ing be­neath this roof, where plea­sure was un­known, a face on which the wings of plea­sure had shak­en their pris­mat­ic dust. If, the night be­fore, I had al­lowed La­dy Dud­ley to de­part alone, if I had then re­turned to Clochegourde, where, it may be, Hen­ri­ette await­ed me, per­haps--per­haps Madame de Mort­sauf might not so cru­el­ly have re­solved to be my sis­ter. But now she paid me many os­ten­ta­tious at­ten­tions,--play­ing her part ve­he­ment­ly for the very pur­pose of not chang­ing it. Dur­ing break­fast she showed me a thou­sand ci­vil­ities, hu­mil­iat­ing at­ten­tions, car­ing for me as though I were a sick man whose fate she pitied.

“You were out walk­ing ear­ly,” said the count; “I hope you have brought back a good ap­petite, you whose stom­ach is not yet de­stroyed.”

This re­mark, which brought the smile of a sis­ter to Hen­ri­ette's lips, com­plet­ed my sense of the ridicule of my po­si­tion. It was im­pos­si­ble to be at Clochegourde by day and Saint-​Cyr by night. Dur­ing the day I felt how dif­fi­cult it was to be­come the friend of a wom­an we have long loved. The tran­si­tion, easy enough when years have brought it about, is like an ill­ness in youth. I was ashamed; I cursed the plea­sure La­dy Dud­ley gave me; I wished that Hen­ri­ette would de­mand my blood. I could not tear her ri­val in pieces be­fore her, for she avoid­ed speak­ing of her; in­deed, had I spo­ken of Ara­bel­la, Hen­ri­ette, no­ble and sub­lime to the in­most re­cess­es of her heart, would have de­spised my in­famy. Af­ter five years of de­light­ful in­ter­course we now had noth­ing to say to each oth­er; our words had no con­nec­tion with our thoughts; we were hid­ing from each oth­er our in­tol­er­able pain,--we, whose mu­tu­al suf­fer­ings had been our first in­ter­preter.

Hen­ri­ette as­sumed a cheer­ful look for me as for her­self, but she was sad. She spoke of her­self as my sis­ter, and yet found no ground on which to con­verse; and we re­mained for the greater part of the time in con­strained si­lence. She in­creased my in­ward mis­ery by feign­ing to be­lieve that she was the on­ly vic­tim.

“I suf­fer more than you,” I said to her at a mo­ment when my self-​styled sis­ter was be­trayed in­to a fem­inine sar­casm.

“How so?” she said haugh­ti­ly.

“Be­cause I am the one to blame.”

At last her man­ner be­came so cold and in­dif­fer­ent that I re­solved to leave Clochegourde. That evening, on the ter­race, I said farewell to the whole fam­ily, who were there as­sem­bled. They all fol­lowed me to the lawn where my horse was wait­ing. The count­ess came to me as I took the bri­dle in my hand.

“Let us walk down the av­enue to­geth­er, alone,” she said.

I gave her my arm, and we passed through the court­yard with slow and mea­sured steps, as though our rhyth­mic move­ment were con­sol­ing to us. When we reached the grove of trees which forms a cor­ner of the bound­ary she stopped.

“Farewell, my friend,” she said, throw­ing her head up­on my breast and her arms around my neck, “Farewell, we shall nev­er meet again. God has giv­en me the sad pow­er to look in­to the fu­ture. Do you re­mem­ber the ter­ror that seized me the day you first came back, so young, so hand­some! and I saw you turn your back on me as you do this day when you are leav­ing Clochegourde and go­ing to Saint-​Cyr? Well, once again, dur­ing the past night I have seen in­to the fu­ture. Friend, we are speak­ing to­geth­er for the last time. I can hard­ly now say a few words to you, for it is but a part of me that speaks at all. Death has al­ready seized on some­thing in me. You have tak­en the moth­er from her chil­dren, I now ask you to take her place to them. You can; Jacques and Madeleine love you--as if you had al­ways made them suf­fer.”

“Death!” I cried, fright­ened as I looked at her and be­held the fire of her shin­ing eyes, of which I can give no idea to those who have nev­er known their dear ones struck down by her fa­tal mal­ady, un­less I com­pare those eyes to balls of bur­nished sil­ver. “Die!” I said. “Hen­ri­ette, I com­mand you to live. You used to ask an oath of me, I now ask one of you. Swear to me that you will send for Origet and obey him in ev­ery­thing.”

“Would you op­pose the mer­cy of God?” she said, in­ter­rupt­ing me with a cry of de­spair at be­ing thus mis­un­der­stood.

“You do not love me enough to obey me blind­ly, as that mis­er­able La­dy Dud­ley does?”

“Yes, yes, I will do all you ask,” she cried, goad­ed by jeal­ousy.

“Then I stay,” I said, kiss­ing her on the eye­lids.

Fright­ened at the words, she es­caped from my arms and leaned against a tree; then she turned and walked rapid­ly home­ward with­out look­ing back. But I fol­lowed her; she was weep­ing and pray­ing. When we reached the lawn I took her hand and kissed it re­spect­ful­ly. This sub­mis­sion touched her.

“I am yours--for­ev­er, and as you will,” I said; “for I love you as your aunt loved you.”

She trem­bled and wrung my hand.

“One look,” I said, “one more, one last of our old looks! The wom­an who gives her­self whol­ly,” I cried, my soul il­lu­mined by the glance she gave me, “gives less of life and soul than I have now re­ceived. Hen­ri­ette, thou art my best-​beloved--my on­ly love.”

“I shall live!” she said; “but cure your­self as well.”

That look had ef­faced the mem­ory of Ara­bel­la's sar­casms. Thus I was the play­thing of the two ir­rec­on­cil­able pas­sions I have now de­scribed to you; I was in­flu­enced by each al­ter­nate­ly. I loved an an­gel and a de­mon; two wom­en equal­ly beau­ti­ful,--one adorned with all the virtues which we de­cry through ha­tred of our own im­per­fec­tions, the oth­er with all the vices which we de­ify through self­ish­ness. Re­turn­ing along that av­enue, look­ing back again and again at Madame de Mort­sauf, as she leaned against a tree sur­round­ed by her chil­dren who waved their hand­ker­chiefs, I de­tect­ed in my soul an emo­tion of pride in find­ing my­self the ar­biter of two such des­tinies; the glo­ry, in ways so dif­fer­ent, of wom­en so dis­tin­guished; proud of in­spir­ing such great pas­sions that death must come to whichev­er I aban­doned. Ah! be­lieve me, that pass­ing con­ceit has been dou­bly pun­ished!

I know not what de­mon prompt­ed me to re­main with Ara­bel­la and await the mo­ment when the death of the count might give me Hen­ri­ette; for she would ev­er love me. Her harsh­ness, her tears, her re­morse, her Chris­tian res­ig­na­tion, were so many elo­quent signs of a sen­ti­ment that could no more be ef­faced from her heart than from mine. Walk­ing slow­ly down that pret­ty av­enue and mak­ing these re­flec­tions, I was no longer twen­ty-​five, I was fifty years old. A man pass­es in a mo­ment, even more quick­ly than a wom­an, from youth to mid­dle age. Though long ago I drove these evil thoughts away from me, I was then pos­sessed by them, I must avow it. Per­haps I owed their pres­ence in my mind to the Tu­ileries, to the king's cab­inet. Who could re­sist the pol­lut­ing spir­it of Louis XVI­II.?

When I reached the end of the av­enue I turned and rushed back in the twin­kling of an eye, see­ing that Hen­ri­ette was still there, and alone! I went to bid her a last farewell, bathed in re­pen­tant tears, the cause of which she nev­er knew. Tears sin­cere in­deed; giv­en, al­though I knew it not, to no­ble loves for­ev­er lost, to vir­gin emo­tions--those flow­ers of our life which can­not bloom again. Lat­er, a man gives noth­ing, he re­ceives; he loves him­self in his mis­tress; but in youth he loves his mis­tress in him­self. Lat­er, we in­oc­ulate with our tastes, per­haps our vices, the wom­an who loves us; but in the dawn of life she whom we love con­veys to us her virtues, her con­science. She in­vites us with a smile to the no­ble life; from her we learn the self-​de­vo­tion which she prac­tis­es. Woe to the man who has not had his Hen­ri­ette. Woe to that oth­er one who has nev­er known a La­dy Dud­ley. The lat­ter, if he mar­ries, will not be able to keep his wife; the oth­er will be aban­doned by his mis­tress. But joy to him who can find the two wom­en in one wom­an; hap­py the man, dear Na­tal­ie, whom you love.

Af­ter my re­turn to Paris Ara­bel­la and I be­came more in­ti­mate than ev­er. Soon we in­sen­si­bly aban­doned all the con­ven­tion­al re­stric­tions I had care­ful­ly im­posed, the strict ob­ser­vance of which of­ten makes the world for­give the false po­si­tion in which La­dy Dud­ley had placed her­self. So­ci­ety, which de­lights in look­ing be­hind ap­pear­ances, sanc­tions much as soon as it knows the se­crets they con­ceal. Lovers who live in the great world make a mis­take in fling­ing down these bar­ri­ers ex­act­ed by the law of sa­lons; they do wrong not to obey scrupu­lous­ly all con­ven­tions which the man­ners and cus­toms of a com­mu­ni­ty im­pose,--less for the sake of oth­ers than for their own. Out­ward re­spect to be main­tained, come­dies to play, con­ceal­ments to be man­aged; all such strat­egy of love oc­cu­pies the life, re­news de­sire, and pro­tects the heart against the pal­sy of habit. But all young pas­sions, be­ing, like youth it­self, es­sen­tial­ly spendthrift, raze their forests to the ground in­stead of mere­ly cut­ting the tim­ber. Ara­bel­la adopt­ed none of these bour­geois ideas, and yield­ed to them on­ly to please me; she wished to ex­hib­it me to the eyes of all Paris as her “sposo.” She em­ployed her pow­ers of se­duc­tion to keep me un­der her roof, for she was not con­tent with a ru­mored scan­dal which, for want of proof, was on­ly whis­pered be­hind the fans. See­ing her so hap­py in com­mit­ting an im­pru­dence which frankly ad­mit­ted her po­si­tion, how could I help be­liev­ing in her love?

But no soon­er was I plunged in­to the com­forts of il­le­gal mar­riage than de­spair seized up­on me; I saw my life bound to a course in di­rect de­fi­ance of the ideas and the ad­vice giv­en me by Hen­ri­ette. Thence­forth I lived in the sort of rage we find in con­sump­tive pa­tients who, know­ing their end is near, can­not en­dure that their lungs should be ex­am­ined. There was no cor­ner in my heart where I could fly to es­cape suf­fer­ing; an aveng­ing spir­it filled me in­ces­sant­ly with thoughts on which I dared not dwell. My let­ters to Hen­ri­ette de­pict­ed this moral mal­ady and did her in­fi­nite harm. “At the cost of so many trea­sures lost, I wished you to be at least hap­py,” she wrote in the on­ly an­swer I re­ceived. But I was not hap­py. Dear Na­tal­ie, hap­pi­ness is ab­so­lute; it al­lows of no com­par­isons. My first ar­dor over, I nec­es­sar­ily com­pared the two wom­en,--a con­trast I had nev­er yet stud­ied. In fact, all great pas­sions press so strong­ly on the char­ac­ter that at first they check its as­per­ities and cov­er the track of habits which con­sti­tute our de­fects and our bet­ter qual­ities. But lat­er, when two lovers are ac­cus­tomed to each oth­er, the fea­tures of their moral phys­iog­nomies reap­pear; they mu­tu­al­ly judge each oth­er, and it of­ten hap­pens dur­ing this re­ac­tion of the char­ac­ter af­ter pas­sion, that nat­ural an­tipathies lead­ing to dis­union (which su­per­fi­cial peo­ple seize up­on to ac­cuse the hu­man heart of in­sta­bil­ity) come to the sur­face. This pe­ri­od now be­gan with me. Less blind­ed by se­duc­tions, and dis­sect­ing, as it were, my plea­sure, I un­der­took, with­out per­haps in­tend­ing to do so, a crit­ical ex­am­ina­tion of La­dy Dud­ley which re­sult­ed to her in­jury.

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

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