Chapter II: First Love (3)

To explain society on the theory of individual happiness adroitly
won at the cost of the greater number is a monstrous doctrine,
which in its strict application leads men to believe that all they
can secretly lay hold of before the law or society or other
individuals condemn it as a wrong is honestly and fairly theirs.
Once admit that claim and the clever thief goes free; the woman
who violates her marriage vow without the knowledge of the world
is virtuous and happy; kill a man, leaving no proof for justice,
and if, like Macbeth, you win a crown you have done wisely; your
selfish interests become the higher law; the only question then is
how to evade, without witnesses or proof, the obstacles which law
and morality place between you and your self-indulgence. To those
who hold this view of society, the problem of making their
fortune, my dear friend, resolves itself into playing a game where
the stakes are millions or the galleys, political triumphs or
dishonor. Still, the green cloth is not long enough for all the
players, and a certain kind of genius is required to play the
game. I say nothing of religious beliefs, nor yet of feelings;
what concerns us now is the running-gear of the great machine of
gold and iron, and its practical results with which men’s lives
are occupied. Dear child of my heart, if you share my horror at
this criminal theory of the world, society will present to your
mind, as it does to all sane minds, the opposite theory of duty.
Yes, you will see that man owes himself to man in a thousand
differing ways. To my mind, the duke and peer owe far more to the
workman and the pauper than the pauper and the workman owe to the
duke. The obligations of duty enlarge in proportion to the
benefits which society bestows on men; in accordance with the
maxim, as true in social politics as in business, that the burden
of care and vigilance is everywhere in proportion to profits. Each
man pays his debt in his own way. When our poor toiler at the
Rhetoriere comes home weary with his day’s work has he not done
his duty? Assuredly he has done it better than many in the ranks
above him.

If you take this view of society, in which you are about to seek a
place in keeping with your intellect and your faculties, you must
set before you as a generating principle and mainspring, this
maxim: never permit yourself to act against either your own
conscience or the public conscience. Though my entreaty may seem
to you superfluous, yet I entreat, yes, your Henriette implores
you to ponder the meaning of that rule. It seems simple but, dear,
it means that integrity, loyalty, honor, and courtesy are the
safest and surest instruments for your success. In this selfish
world you will find many to tell you that a man cannot make his
way by sentiments, that too much respect for moral considerations
will hinder his advance. It is not so; you will see men
ill-trained, ill-taught, incapable of measuring the future, who are
rough to a child, rude to an old woman, unwilling to be irked by
some worthy old man on the ground that they can do nothing for
him; later, you will find the same men caught by the thorns which
they might have rendered pointless, and missing their triumph for
some trivial reason; whereas the man who is early trained to a
sense of duty does not meet the same obstacles; he may attain
success less rapidly, but when attained it is solid and does not
crumble like that of others.

When I show you that the application of this doctrine demands in
the first place a mastery of the science of manners, you may think
my jurisprudence has a flavor of the court and of the training I
received as a Lenoncourt. My dear friend, I do attach great
importance to that training, trifling as it seems. You will find
that the habits of the great world are as important to you as the
wide and varied knowledge that you possess. Often they take the
place of such knowledge; for some really ignorant men, born with
natural gifts and accustomed to give connection to their ideas,
have been known to attain a grandeur never reached by others far
more worthy of it. I have studied you thoroughly, Felix, wishing
to know if your education, derived wholly from schools, has
injured your nature. God knows the joy with which I find you fit
for that further education of which I speak.

The manners of many who are brought up in the traditions of the
great world are purely external; true politeness, perfect manners,
come from the heart, and from a deep sense of personal dignity.
This is why some men of noble birth are, in spite of their
training, ill-mannered, while others, among the middle classes,
have instinctive good taste and only need a few lessons to give
them excellent manners without any signs of awkward imitation.
Believe a poor woman who no longer leaves her valley when she
tells you that this dignity of tone, this courteous simplicity in
words, in gesture, in bearing, and even in the character of the
home, is a living and material poem, the charm of which is
irresistible; imagine therefore what it is when it takes its
inspiration from the heart. Politeness, dear, consists in seeming
to forget ourselves for others; with many it is social cant, laid
aside when personal self-interest shows its cloven-foot; a noble
then becomes ignoble. But--and this is what I want you to
practise, Felix--true politeness involves a Christian principle;
it is the flower of Love, it requires that we forget ourselves
really. In memory of your Henriette, for her sake, be not a
fountain without water, have the essence and the form of true
courtesy. Never fear to be the dupe and victim of this social
virtue; you will some day gather the fruit of seeds scattered
apparently to the winds.

My father used to say that one of the great offences of sham
politeness was the neglect of promises. When anything is demanded
of you that you cannot do, refuse positively and leave no
loopholes for false hopes; on the other hand, grant at once
whatever you are willing to bestow. Your prompt refusal will make
you friends as well as your prompt benefit, and your character
will stand the higher; for it is hard to say whether a promise
forgotten, a hope deceived does not make us more enemies than a
favor granted brings us friends.

Dear friend, there are certain little matters on which I may
dwell, for I know them, and it comes within my province to impart
them. Be not too confiding, nor frivolous, nor over enthusiastic,
--three rocks on which youth often strikes. Too confiding a nature
loses respect, frivolity brings contempt, and others take
advantage of excessive enthusiasm. In the first place, Felix, you
will never have more than two or three friends in the course of
your life. Your entire confidence is their right; to give it to
many is to betray your real friends. If you are more intimate with
some men than with others keep guard over yourself; be as cautious
as though you knew they would one day be your rivals, or your
enemies; the chances and changes of life require this. Maintain an
attitude which is neither cold nor hot; find the medium point at
which a man can safely hold intercourse with others without
compromising himself. Yes, believe me, the honest man is as far
from the base cowardice of Philinte as he is from the harsh virtue
of Alceste. The genius of the poet is displayed in the mind of
this true medium; certainly all minds do enjoy more the ridicule
of virtue than the sovereign contempt of easy-going selfishness
which underlies that picture of it; but all, nevertheless, are
prompted to keep themselves from either extreme.

As to frivolity, if it causes fools to proclaim you a charming
man, others who are accustomed to judge of men’s capacities and
fathom character, will winnow out your tare and bring you to
disrepute, for frivolity is the resource of weak natures, and
weakness is soon appraised in a society which regards its members
as nothing more than organs--and perhaps justly, for nature
herself puts to death imperfect beings. A woman’s protecting
instincts may be roused by the pleasure she feels in supporting
the weak against the strong, and in leading the intelligence of
the heart to victory over the brutality of matter; but society,
less a mother than a stepmother, adores only the children who
flatter her vanity.

As to ardent enthusiasm, that first sublime mistake of youth,
which finds true happiness in using its powers, and begins by
being its own dupe before it is the dupe of others, keep it within
the region of the heart’s communion, keep it for woman and for
God. Do not hawk its treasures in the bazaars of society or of
politics, where trumpery will be offered in exchange for them.
Believe the voice which commands you to be noble in all things
when it also prays you not to expend your forces uselessly.
Unhappily, men will rate you according to your usefulness, and not
according to your worth. To use an image which I think will strike
your poetic mind, let a cipher be what it may, immeasurable in
size, written in gold, or written in pencil, it is only a cipher
after all. A man of our times has said, “No zeal, above all, no
zeal!” The lesson may be sad, but it is true, and it saves the
soul from wasting its bloom. Hide your pure sentiments, or put
them in regions inaccessible, where their blossoms may be
passionately admired, where the artist may dream amorously of his
master-piece. But duties, my friend, are not sentiments. To do
what we ought is by no means to do what we like. A man who would
give his life enthusiastically for a woman must be ready to die
coldly for his country.

One of the most important rules in the science of manners is that
of almost absolute silence about ourselves. Play a little comedy
for your own instruction; talk of yourself to acquaintances, tell
them about your sufferings, your pleasures, your business, and you
will see how indifference succeeds pretended interest; then
annoyance follows, and if the mistress of the house does not find
some civil way of stopping you the company will disappear under
various pretexts adroitly seized. Would you, on the other hand,
gather sympathies about you and be spoken of as amiable and witty,
and a true friend? talk to others of themselves, find a way to
bring them forward, and brows will clear, lips will smile, and
after you leave the room all present will praise you. Your
conscience and the voice of your own heart will show you the line
where the cowardice of flattery begins and the courtesy of
intercourse ceases.

One word more about a young man’s demeanor in public. My dear
friend, youth is always inclined to a rapidity of judgment which
does it honor, but also injury. This was why the old system of
education obliged young people to keep silence and study life in a
probationary period beside their elders. Formerly, as you know,
nobility, like art, had its apprentices, its pages, devoted body
and soul to the masters who maintained them. To-day youth is
forced in a hot-house; it is trained to judge of thoughts,
actions, and writings with biting severity; it slashes with a
blade that has not been fleshed. Do not make this mistake. Such
judgments will seem like censures to many about you, who would
sooner pardon an open rebuke than a secret wound. Young people are
pitiless because they know nothing of life and its difficulties.
The old critic is kind and considerate, the young critic is
implacable; the one knows nothing, the other knows all. Moreover,
at the bottom of all human actions there is a labyrinth of
determining reasons on which God reserves for himself the final
judgment. Be severe therefore to none but yourself.

Your future is before you; but no one in the world can make his
way unaided. Therefore, make use of my father’s house; its doors
are open to you; the connections that you will create for yourself
under his roof will serve you in a hundred ways. But do not yield
an inch of ground to my mother; she will crush any one who gives
up to her, but she will admire the courage of whoever resists her.
She is like iron, which if beaten, can be fused with iron, but
when cold will break everything less hard than itself. Cultivate
my mother; for if she thinks well of you she will introduce you
into certain houses where you can acquire the fatal science of the
world, the art of listening, speaking, answering, presenting
yourself to the company and taking leave of it; the precise use of
language, the something--how shall I explain it?--which is no more
superiority than the coat is the man, but without which the
highest talent in the world will never be admitted within those
portals.

I know you well enough to be quite sure I indulge no illusion when
I imagine that I see you as I wish you to be; simple in manners,
gentle in tone, proud without conceit, respectful to the old,
courteous without servility, above all, discreet. Use your wit but
never display it for the amusement of others; for be sure that if
your brilliancy annoys an inferior man, he will retire from the
field and say of you in a tone of contempt, “He is very amusing.”
Let your superiority be leonine. Moreover, do not be always
seeking to please others. I advise a certain coldness in your
relations with men, which may even amount to indifference; this
will not anger others, for all persons esteem those who slight
them; and it will win you the favor of women, who will respect you
for the little consequence that you attach to men. Never remain in
company with those who have lost their reputation, even though
they may not have deserved to do so; for society holds us
responsible for our friendships as well as for our enmities. In
this matter let your judgments be slowly and maturely weighed, but
see that they are irrevocable. When the men whom you have repulsed
justify the repulsion, your esteem and regard will be all the more
sought after; you have inspired the tacit respect which raises a
man among his peers. I behold you now armed with a youth that
pleases, grace which attracts, and wisdom with which to preserve
your conquests. All that I have now told you can be summed up in
two words, two old-fashioned words, “Noblesse oblige.”

Now apply these precepts to the management of life. You will hear
many persons say that strategy is the chief element of success;
that the best way to press through the crowd is to set some men
against other men and so take their places. That was a good system
for the Middle Ages, when princes had to destroy their rivals by
pitting one against the other; but in these days, all things being
done in open day, I am afraid it would do you ill-service. No, you
must meet your competitors face to face, be they loyal and true
men, or traitorous enemies whose weapons are calumny,
evil-speaking, and fraud. But remember this, you have no more
powerful auxiliaries than these men themselves; they are their own
enemies; fight them with honest weapons, and sooner or later they
are condemned. As to the first of them, loyal men and true, your
straightforwardness will obtain their respect, and the differences
between you once settled (for all things can be settled), these
men will serve you. Do not be afraid of making enemies; woe to him
who has none in the world you are about to enter; but try to give
no handle for ridicule or disparagement. I say _try_, for in Paris a
man cannot always belong solely to himself; he is sometimes at the
mercy of circumstances; you will not always be able to avoid the
mud in the gutter nor the tile that falls from the roof. The moral
world has gutters where persons of no reputation endeavor to
splash the mud in which they live upon men of honor. But you can
always compel respect by showing that you are, under all
circumstances, immovable in your principles. In the conflict of
opinions, in the midst of quarrels and cross-purposes, go straight
to the point, keep resolutely to the question; never fight except
for the essential thing, and put your whole strength into that.
You know how Monsieur de Mortsauf hates Napoleon, how he curses
him and pursues him as justice does a criminal; demanding
punishment day and night for the death of the Duc d’Enghien, the
only death, the only misfortune, that ever brought the tears to
his eyes; well, he nevertheless admired him as the greatest of
captains, and has often explained to me his strategy. May not the
same tactics be applied to the war of human interests; they would
economize time as heretofore they economized men and space. Think
this over, for as a woman I am liable to be mistaken on such
points which my sex judges only by instinct and sentiment. One
point, however, I may insist on; all trickery, all deception, is
certain to be discovered and to result in doing harm; whereas
every situation presents less danger if a man plants himself
firmly on his own truthfulness. If I may cite my own case, I can
tell you that, obliged as I am by Monsieur de Mortsauf’s condition
to avoid litigation and to bring to an immediate settlement all
difficulties which arise in the management of Clochegourde, and
which would otherwise cause him an excitement under which his mind
would succumb, I have invariably settled matters promptly by
taking hold of the knot of the difficulty and saying to our
opponents: “We will either untie it or cut it!”

It will often happen that you do a service to others and find
yourself ill-rewarded; I beg you not to imitate those who complain
of men and declare them to be all ungrateful. That is putting
themselves on a pedestal indeed! and surely it is somewhat silly
to admit their lack of knowledge of the world. But you, I trust,
will not do good as a usurer lends his money; you will do it--will
you not?--for good’s sake. Noblesse oblige. Nevertheless, do not
bestow such services as to force others to ingratitude, for if you
do, they will become your most implacable enemies; obligations
sometimes lead to despair, like the despair of ruin itself, which
is capable of very desperate efforts. As for yourself, accept as
little as you can from others. Be no man’s vassal; and bring
yourself out of your own difficulties.

You see, dear friend, I am advising you only on the lesser points
of life. In the world of politics things wear a different aspect;
the rules which are to guide your individual steps give way before
the national interests. If you reach that sphere where great men
revolve you will be, like God himself, the sole arbiter of your
determinations. You will no longer be a man, but law, the living
law; no longer an individual, you are then the Nation incarnate.
But remember this, though you judge, you will yourself be judged;
hereafter you will be summoned before the ages, and you know
history well enough to be fully informed as to what deeds and what
sentiments have led to true grandeur.

I now come to a serious matter, your conduct towards women.
Wherever you visit make it a principle not to fritter yourself
away in a petty round of gallantry. A man of the last century who
had great social success never paid attention to more than one
woman of an evening, choosing the one who seemed the most
neglected. That man, my dear child, controlled his epoch. He
wisely reckoned that by a given time all women would speak well of
him. Many young men waste their most precious possession, namely,
the time necessary to create connections which contribute more
than all else to social success. Your springtime is short,
endeavor to make the most of it. Cultivate influential women.
Influential women are old women; they will teach you the
intermarriages and the secrets of all the families of the great
world; they will show you the cross-roads which will bring you
soonest to your goal. They will be fond of you. The bestowal of
protection is their last form of love--when they are not devout.
They will do you innumerable good services; sing your praises and
make you desirable to society. Avoid young women. Do not think I
say this from personal self-interest. The woman of fifty will do
all for you, the woman of twenty will do nothing; she wants your
whole life while the other asks only a few attentions. Laugh with
the young women, meet them for pastime merely; they are incapable
of serious thought. Young women, dear friend, are selfish, vain,
petty, ignorant of true friendship; they love no one but
themselves; they would sacrifice you to an evening’s success.
Besides, they all want absolute devotion, and your present
situation requires that devotion be shown to you; two
irreconcilable needs! None of these young women would enter into
your interests; they would think of themselves and not of you;
they would injure you more by their emptiness and frivolity than
they could serve you by their love; they will waste your time
unscrupulously, hinder your advance to fortune, and end by
destroying your future with the best grace possible. If you
complain, the silliest of them will make you think that her glove
is more precious than fortune, and that nothing is so glorious as
to be her slave. They will all tell you that they bestow
happiness, and thus lull you to forget your nobler destiny.
Believe me, the happiness they give is transitory; your great
career will endure. You know not with what perfidious cleverness
they contrive to satisfy their caprices, nor the art with which
they will convert your passing fancy into a love which ought to be
eternal. The day when they abandon you they will tell you that the
words, “I no longer love you,” are a full justification of their
conduct, just as the words, “I love,” justified their winning you;
they will declare that love is involuntary and not to be coerced.
Absurd! Believe me, dear, true love is eternal, infinite, always
like unto itself; it is equable, pure, without violent
demonstration; white hair often covers the head but the heart that
holds it is ever young. No such love is found among the women of
the world; all are playing comedy; this one will interest you by
her misfortunes; she seems the gentlest and least exacting of her
sex, but when once she is necessary to you, you will feel the
tyranny of weakness and will do her will; you may wish to be a
diplomat, to go and come, and study men and interests,--no, you
must stay in Paris, or at her country-place, sewn to her
petticoat, and the more devotion you show the more ungrateful and
exacting she will be. Another will attract you by her
submissiveness; she will be your attendant, follow you
romantically about, compromise herself to keep you, and be the
millstone about your neck. You will drown yourself some day, but
the woman will come to the surface.

The least manoeuvring of these women of the world have many nets.
The silliest triumph because too foolish to excite distrust. The
one to be feared least may be the woman of gallantry whom you love
without exactly knowing why; she will leave you for no motive and
go back to you out of vanity. All these women will injure you,
either in the present or the future. Every young woman who enters
society and lives a life of pleasure and of gratified vanity is
semi-corrupt and will corrupt you. Among them you will not find
the chaste and tranquil being in whom you may forever reign. Ah!
she who loves you will love solitude; the festivals of her heart
will be your glances; she will live upon your words. May she be
all the world to you, for you will be all in all to her. Love her
well; give her neither griefs nor rivals; do not rouse her
jealousy. To be loved, dear, to be comprehended, is the greatest
of all joys; I pray that you may taste it! But run no risk of
injuring the flower of your soul; be sure, be very sure of the
heart in which you place your affections. That woman will never be
her own self; she will never think of herself, but of you. She
will never oppose you, she will have no interests of her own; for
you she will see a danger where you can see none and where she
would be oblivious of her own. If she suffers it will be in
silence; she will have no personal vanity, but deep reverence for
whatever in her has won your love. Respond to such a love by
surpassing it. If you are fortunate enough to find that which I,
your poor friend, must ever be without, I mean a love mutually
inspired, mutually felt, remember that in a valley lives a mother
whose heart is so filled with the feelings you have put there that
you can never sound its depths. Yes, I bear you an affection which
you will never know to its full extent; before it could show
itself for what it is you would have to lose your mind and
intellect, and then you would be unable to comprehend the length
and breadth of my devotion.

Shall I be misunderstood in bidding you avoid young women (all
more or less artful, satirical, vain, frivolous, and extravagant)
and attach yourself to influential women, to those imposing
dowagers full of excellent good-sense, like my aunt, who will help
your career, defend you from attacks, and say for you the things
that you cannot say for yourself? Am I not, on the contrary,
generous in bidding you reserve your love for the coming angel
with the guileless heart? If the motto Noblesse oblige sums up the
advice I gave you just now, my further advice on your relations to
women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, “Serve all, love
one!”

Your educational knowledge is immense; your heart, saved by early
suffering, is without a stain; all is noble, all is well with you.
Now, Felix, WILL! Your future lies in that one word, that word of
great men. My child, you will obey your Henriette, will you not?
You will permit her to tell you from time to time the thoughts
that are in her mind of you and of your relations to the world? I
have an eye in my soul which sees the future for you as for my
children; suffer me to use that faculty for your benefit; it is a
faculty, a mysterious gift bestowed by my lonely life; far from
its growing weaker, I find it strengthened and exalted by solitude
and silence.

I ask you in return to bestow a happiness on me; I desire to see
you becoming more and more important among men, without one single
success that shall bring a line of shame upon my brow; I desire
that you may quickly bring your fortunes to the level of your
noble name, and be able to tell me I have contributed to your
advancement by something better than a wish. This secret
co-operation in your future is the only pleasure I can allow
myself. For it, I will wait and hope.

I do not say farewell. We are separated; you cannot put my hand to
your lips, but you must surely know the place you hold in the
heart of your

Henriette.

As I read this letter I felt the maternal heart beating beneath my fingers which held the paper while I was still cold from the harsh greeting of my own mother. I understood why the countess had forbidden me to open it in Touraine; no doubt she feared that I would fall at her feet and wet them with my tears.

I now made the acquaintance of my brother Charles, who up to this time had been a stranger to me. But in all our intercourse he showed a haughtiness which kept us apart and prevented brotherly affection. Kindly feelings depend on similarity of soul, and there was no point of touch between us. He preached to me dogmatically those social trifles which head or heart can see without instruction; he seemed to mistrust me. If I had not had the inward support of my great love he would have made me awkward and stupid by affecting to believe that I knew nothing of life. He presented me in society under the expectation that my dulness would be a foil to his qualities. Had I not remembered the sorrows of my childhood I might have taken his protecting vanity for brotherly affection; but inward solitude produces the same effects as outward solitude; silence within our souls enables us to hear the faintest sound; the habit of taking refuge within ourselves develops a perception which discerns every quality of the affections about us. Before I knew Madame de Mortsauf a hard look grieved me, a rough word wounded me to the heart; I bewailed these things without as yet knowing anything of a life of tenderness; whereas now, since my return from Clochegourde, I could make comparisons which perfected my instinctive perceptions. All deductions derived only from sufferings endured are incomplete. Happiness has a light to cast. I now allowed myself the more willingly to be kept under the heel of primogeniture because I was not my brother’s dupe.

I always went alone to the Duchesse de Lenoncourt’s, where Henriette’s name was never mentioned; no one, except the good old duke, who was simplicity itself, ever spoke of her to me; but by the way he welcomed me I guessed that his daughter had privately commended me to his care. At the moment when I was beginning to overcome the foolish wonder and shyness which besets a young man at his first entrance into the great world, and to realize the pleasures it could give through the resources it offers to ambition, just, too, as I was beginning to make use of Henriette’s maxims, admiring their wisdom, the events of the 20th of March took place.

My brother followed the court to Ghent; I, by Henriette’s advice (for I kept up a correspondence with her, active on my side only), went there also with the Duc de Lenoncourt. The natural kindness of the old duke turned to a hearty and sincere protection as soon as he saw me attached, body and soul, to the Bourbons. He himself presented me to his Majesty. Courtiers are not numerous when misfortunes are rife; but youth is gifted with ingenuous admiration and uncalculating fidelity. The king had the faculty of judging men; a devotion which might have passed unobserved in Paris counted for much at Ghent, and I had the happiness of pleasing Louis XVIII.

A letter from Madame de Mortsauf to her father, brought with despatches by an emissary of the Vendeens, enclosed a note to me by which I learned that Jacques was ill. Monsieur de Mortsauf, in despair at his son’s ill-health, and also at the news of a second emigration, added a few words which enabled me to guess the situation of my dear one. Worried by him, no doubt, when she passed all her time at Jacques’ bedside, allowed no rest either day or night, superior to annoyance, yet unable always to control herself when her whole soul was given to the care of her child, Henriette needed the support of a friendship which might lighten the burden of her life, were it only by diverting her husband’s mind. Though I was now most impatient to rival the career of my brother, who had lately been sent to the Congress of Vienna, and was anxious at any risk to justify Henriette’s appeal and become a man myself, freed from all vassalage, nevertheless my ambition, my desire for independence, the great interest I had in not leaving the king, all were of no account before the vision of Madame de Mortsauf’s sad face. I resolved to leave the court at Ghent and serve my true sovereign. God rewarded me. The emissary sent by the Vendeens was unable to return. The king wanted a messenger who would faithfully carry back his instructions. The Duc de Lenoncourt knew that the king would never forget the man who undertook so perilous an enterprise; he asked for the mission without consulting me, and I gladly accepted it, happy indeed to be able to return to Clochegourde employed in the good cause.

After an audience with the king I returned to France, where, both in Paris and in Vendee, I was fortunate enough to carry out his Majesty’s instructions. Towards the end of May, being tracked by the Bonapartist authorities to whom I was denounced, I was obliged to fly from place to place in the character of a man endeavoring to get back to his estate. I went on foot from park to park, from wood to wood, across the whole of upper Vendee, the Bocage and Poitou, changing my direction as danger threatened.

I reached Saumur, from Saumur I went to Chinon, and from Chinon I reached, in a single night, the woods of Nueil, where I met the count on horseback; he took me up behind him and we reached Clochegourde without passing any one who recognized me.

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

I explained to him my position of diplomatic postman, hunted like a wild beast, and the brave gentleman in his quality of royalist claimed the danger over Chessel of receiving me. As we came in sight of Clochegourde the past eight months rolled away like a dream. When we entered the salon the count said: “Guess whom I bring you?--Felix!”

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

I showed myself and we both remained motionless; she in her armchair, I on the threshold of the door; looking at each other with that hunger of the soul which endeavors to make up in a single glance for the lost months. Then, recovering from a surprise which left her heart unveiled, she rose and I went up to her.

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

She asked news of her father; then she guessed my weariness and went to prepare my room, while the count gave me something to eat, for I was dying of hunger. My room was the one above hers, her aunt’s room; she requested the count to take me there, after setting her foot on the first step of the staircase, deliberating no doubt whether to accompany me; I turned my head, she blushed, bade me sleep well, and went away. When I came down to dinner I heard for the first time of the disasters at Waterloo, the flight of Napoleon, the march of the Allies to Paris, and the probable return of the Bourbons. These events were all in all to the count; to us they were nothing. What think you was the great event I was to learn, after kissing the children?--for I will not dwell on the alarm I felt at seeing the countess pale and shrunken; I knew the injury I might do by showing it and was careful to express only joy at seeing her. But the great event for us was told in the words, “You shall have ice to-day!” She had often fretted the year before that the water was not cold enough for me, who, never drinking anything else, liked it iced. God knows how many entreaties it had cost her to get an ice-house built. You know better than any one that a word, a look, an inflection of the voice, a trifling attention, suffices for love; love’s noblest privilege is to prove itself by love. Well, her words, her look, her pleasure, showed me her feelings, as I had formerly shown her mine by that first game of backgammon. These ingenuous proofs of her affection were many; on the seventh day after my arrival she recovered her freshness, she sparkled with health and youth and happiness; my lily expanded in beauty just as the treasures of my heart increased. Only in petty minds or in common hearts can absence lessen love or efface the features or diminish the beauty of our dear one. To ardent imaginations, to all beings through whose veins enthusiasm passes like a crimson tide, and in whom passion takes the form of constancy, absence has the same effect as the sufferings of the early Christians, which strengthened their faith and made God visible to them. In hearts that abound in love are there not incessant longings for a desired object, to which the glowing fire of our dreams gives higher value and a deeper tint? Are we not conscious of instigations which give to the beloved features the beauty of the ideal by inspiring them with thought? The past, dwelt on in all its details becomes magnified; the future teems with hope. When two hearts filled with these electric clouds meet each other, their interview is like the welcome storm which revives the earth and stimulates it with the swift lightnings of the thunderbolt. How many tender pleasures came to me when I found these thoughts and these sensations reciprocal! With what glad eyes I followed the development of happiness in Henriette! A woman who renews her life from that of her beloved gives, perhaps, a greater proof of feeling than she who dies killed by a doubt, withered on her stock for want of sap; I know not which of the two is the more touching.

The revival of Madame de Mortsauf was wholly natural, like the effects of the month of May upon the meadows, or those of the sun and of the brook upon the drooping flowers. Henriette, like our dear valley of love, had had her winter; she revived like the valley in the springtime. Before dinner we went down to the beloved terrace. There, with one hand stroking the head of her son, who walked feebly beside her, silent, as though he were breeding an illness, she told me of her nights beside his pillow.

For three months, she said, she had lived wholly within herself, inhabiting, as it were, a dark palace; afraid to enter sumptuous rooms where the light shone, where festivals were given, to her denied, at the door of which she stood, one glance turned upon her child, another to a dim and distant figure; one ear listening for moans, another for a voice. She told me poems, born of solitude, such as no poet ever sang; but all ingenuously, without one vestige of love, one trace of voluptuous thought, one echo of a poesy orientally soothing as the rose of Frangistan. When the count joined us she continued in the same tone, like a woman secure within herself, able to look proudly at her husband and kiss the forehead of her son without a blush. She had prayed much; she had clasped her hands for nights together over her child, refusing to let him die.

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

She had had visions, and she told them to me; but when she said, in that angelic voice of hers, these exquisite words, “While I slept my heart watched,” the count harshly interrupted her.

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

She was silent, as deeply hurt as though it were a first wound; forgetting that for thirteen years this man had lost no chance to shoot his arrows into her heart. Like a soaring bird struck on the wing by vulgar shot, she sank into a dull depression; then she roused herself.

“How is it, monsieur,” she said, “that no word of mine ever finds favor in your sight? Have you no indulgence for my weakness,--no comprehension of me as a woman?”

She stopped short. Already she regretted the murmur, and measured the future by the past; how could she expect comprehension? Had she not drawn upon herself some virulent attack? The blue veins of her temples throbbed; she shed no tears, but the color of her eyes faded. Then she looked down, that she might not see her pain reflected on my face, her feelings guessed, her soul wooed by my soul; above all, not see the sympathy of young love, ready like a faithful dog to spring at the throat of whoever threatened his mistress, without regard to the assailant’s strength or quality. At such cruel moments the count’s air of superiority was supreme. He thought he had triumphed over his wife, and he pursued her with a hail of phrases which repeated the one idea, and were like the blows of an axe which fell with unvarying sound.

“Always the same?” I said, when the count left us to follow the huntsman who came to speak to him.

“Always,” answered Jacques.

“Always excellent, my son,” she said, endeavoring to withdraw Monsieur de Mortsauf from the judgment of his children. “You see only the present, you know nothing of the past; therefore you cannot criticise your father without doing him injustice. But even if you had the pain of seeing that your father was to blame, family honor requires you to bury such secrets in silence.”

“How have the changes at the Cassine and the Rhetoriere answered?” I asked, to divert her mind from bitter thoughts.

“Beyond my expectations,” she replied. “As soon as the buildings were finished we found two excellent farmers ready to hire them; one at four thousand five hundred francs, taxes paid; the other at five thousand; both leases for fifteen years. We have already planted three thousand young trees on the new farms. Manette’s cousin is delighted to get the Rabelaye; Martineau has taken the Baude. All _our_ efforts have been crowned with success. Clochegourde, without the reserved land which we call the home-farm, and without the timber and vineyards, brings in nineteen thousand francs a year, and the plantations are becoming valuable. I am battling to let the home-farm to Martineau, the keeper, whose eldest son can now take his place. He offers three thousand francs if Monsieur de Mortsauf will build him a farm-house at the Commanderie. We might then clear the approach to Clochegourde, finish the proposed avenue to the main road, and have only the woodland and the vineyards to take care of ourselves. If the king returns, _our_ pension will be restored; WE shall consent after clashing a little with _our_ wife’s common-sense. Jacques’ fortune will then be permanently secured. That result obtained, I shall leave monsieur to lay by as much as he likes for Madeleine, though the king will of course dower her, according to custom. My conscience is easy; I have all but accomplished my task. And you?” she said.

I explained to her the mission on which the king had sent me, and showed her how her wise counsel had borne fruit. Was she endowed with second sight thus to foretell events?

“Did I not write it to you?” she answered. “For you and for my children alone I possess a remarkable faculty, of which I have spoken only to my confessor, Monsieur de la Berge; he explains it by divine intervention. Often, after deep meditation induced by fears about the health of my children, my eyes close to the things of earth and see into another region; if Jacques and Madeleine there appear to me as two luminous figures they are sure to have good health for a certain period of time; if wrapped in mist they are equally sure to fall ill soon after. As for you, I not only see you brilliantly illuminated, but I hear a voice which explains to me without words, by some mental communication, what you ought to do. Does any law forbid me to use this wonderful gift for my children and for you?” she asked, falling into a reverie. Then, after a pause, she added, “Perhaps God wills to take the place of their father.”

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

She gave me one of her exquisitely gracious smiles, which so exalted my heart that I should not have felt a death-blow if given at that moment.

“As soon as the king returns to Paris, go there; leave Clochegourde,” she said. “It may be degrading to beg for places and favors, but it would be ridiculous to be out of the way of receiving them. Great changes will soon take place. The king needs capable and trustworthy men; don’t fail him. It is well for you to enter young into the affairs of the nation and learn your way; for statesmen, like actors, have a routine business to acquire, which genius does not reveal, it must be learnt. My father heard the Duc de Choiseul say this. Think of me,” she said, after a pause; “let me enjoy the pleasures of superiority in a soul that is all my own; for are you not my son?”

“Your son?” I said, sullenly.

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

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

“You have grown,” she said, as we went up the steps. When we reached the portico she shook my arm a little, as if my looks were importunate; for though her eyes were lowered she knew that I saw only her. Then she said, with a charming air of pretended impatience, full of grace and coquetry, “Come, why don’t you look at our dear valley?”

She turned, held her white silk sun-shade over our heads and drew Jacques closely to her side. The motion of her head as she looked towards the Indre, the punt, the meadows, showed me that in my absence she had come to many an understanding with those misty horizons and their vaporous outline. Nature was a mantle which sheltered her thoughts. She now knew what the nightingale was sighing the livelong night, what the songster of the sedges hymned with his plaintive note.

At eight o’clock that evening I was witness of a scene which touched me deeply, and which I had never yet witnessed, for in my former visits I had played backgammon with the count while his wife took the children into the dining-room before their bedtime. The bell rang twice, and all the servants of the household entered the room.

“You are now our guest and must submit to convent rule,” said the countess, leading me by the hand with that air of innocent gaiety which distinguishes women who are naturally pious.

The count followed. Masters, children, and servants knelt down, all taking their regular places. It was Madeleine’s turn to read the prayers. The dear child said them in her childish voice, the ingenuous tones of which rose clear in the harmonious silence of the country, and gave to the words the candor of holy innocence, the grace of angels. It was the most affecting prayer I ever heard. Nature replied to the child’s voice with the myriad murmurs of the coming night, like the low accompaniment of an organ lightly touched, Madeleine was on the right of the countess, Jacques on her left. The graceful curly heads, between which rose the smooth braids of the mother, and above all three the perfectly white hair and yellow cranium of the father, made a picture which repeated, in some sort, the ideas aroused by the melody of the prayer. As if to fulfil all conditions of the unity which marks the sublime, this calm and collected group were bathed in the fading light of the setting sun; its red tints coloring the room, impelling the soul--be it poetic or superstitious--to believe that the fires of heaven were visiting these faithful servants of God as they knelt there without distinction of rank, in the equality which heaven demands. Thinking back to the days of the patriarchs my mind still further magnified this scene, so grand in its simplicity.

The children said good-night, the servants bowed, the countess went away holding a child by each hand, and I returned to the salon with the count.

“We provide you with salvation there, and hell here,” he said, pointing to the backgammon-board.

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

“This is for you,” she said, unrolling the canvas; “but for the last three months it has languished. Between that rose and this heartsease my poor child was ill.”

“Come, come,” said Monsieur de Mortsauf, “don’t talk of that any more. Six--five, emissary of the king!”

When alone in my room I hushed my breathing that I might hear her passing to and fro in hers. She was calm and pure, but I was lashed with maddening ideas. “Why should she not be mine?” I thought; “perhaps she is, like me, in this whirlwind of agitation.” At one o’clock, I went down, walking noiselessly, and lay before her door. With my ear pressed to a chink I could hear her equable, gentle breathing, like that of a child. When chilled to the bone I went back to bed and slept tranquilly till morning. I know not what prenatal influence, what nature within me, causes the delight I take in going to the brink of precipices, sounding the gulf of evil, seeking to know its depths, feeling its icy chill, and retreating in deep emotion. That hour of night passed on the threshold of her door where I wept with rage,--though she never knew that on the morrow her foot had trod upon my tears and kisses, on her virtue first destroyed and then respected, cursed and adored,--that hour, foolish in the eyes of many, was nevertheless an inspiration of the same mysterious impulse which impels the soldier. Many have told me they have played their lives upon it, flinging themselves before a battery to know if they could escape the shot, happy in thus galloping into the abyss of probabilities, and smoking like Jean Bart upon the gunpowder.

The next day I went to gather flowers and made two bouquets. The count admired them, though generally nothing of the kind appealed to him. The clever saying of Champcenetz, “He builds dungeons in Spain,” seemed to have been made for him.

I spent several days at Clochegourde, going but seldom to Frapesle, where, however, I dined three times. The French army now occupied Tours. Though my presence was health and strength to Madame de Mortsauf, she implored me to make my way to Chateauroux, and so round by Issoudun and Orleans to Paris with what haste I could. I tried to resist; but she commanded me, saying that my guardian angel spoke. I obeyed. Our farewell was, this time, dim with tears; she feared the allurements of the life I was about to live. Is it not a serious thing to enter the maelstrom of interests, passions, and pleasures which make Paris a dangerous ocean for chaste love and purity of conscience? I promised to write to her every night, relating the events and thoughts of the day, even the most trivial. When I gave the promise she laid her head on my shoulder and said: “Leave nothing out; everything will interest me.”

She gave me letters for the duke and duchess, which I delivered the second day after my return.

“You are in luck,” said the duke; “dine here to-day, and go with me this evening to the Chateau; your fortune is made. The king spoke of you this morning, and said, ‘He is young, capable, and trustworthy.’ His Majesty added that he wished he knew whether you were living or dead, and in what part of France events had thrown you after you had executed your mission so ably.”