LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Mr. H. H. Kil iani 

 
 H. DE BALZAC 
 
 THE COMEDIE HUMAINE
 
 THE LADY CAVE A PIERCING CRY.
 
 H. DE BALZAC 
 
 THE 
 
 LILY OF THE VALLEY 
 
 (LE LYS DANS LA VALLEE) 
 
 AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 JAMES WARING 
 
 WITH A PREFACE BY 
 
 GEORGE SAINTSBURY 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THE GEBBIE PUBLISHING Co., Ltd. 
 1898
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PACK 
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY I 
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN 304 
 
 THE GREAT BRETECHE 347 
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS 371
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE LADY GAVE A PIERCING CRY .... Frontispiece 
 
 HE STARTED UP, THREW THE TABLE OVER ME AND THE LAMP 
 
 ON THE GROUND 67 
 
 I RAISED THE POOR WOMAN IN MY ARMS 122 
 
 MADELEINE, JACQUES, AND THE ABBE DE DOMINIS ALL KNEEL- 
 ING AT THE FOOT OF A WOODEN CROSS .... 263 
 
 "WHEN ARE YOU TO MARRY THE DUKE?" .... 317 
 
 Drawn 6y D. Murray-Smith.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 LILY OF THE VALLEY" ("Le Lys dans la Vallee") 
 has considerable importance in the history of Balzac's books, 
 and not a little in that of his life, independently of its intrinsic 
 merit. It brought on a lawsuit between him and the "Revue de 
 Paris," in which the greater part of it was published, and in 
 which he refused to complete it. As the actual suit was decided 
 in his favor, his legal justification is not matter of dispute, and 
 his adversaries put themselves hopelessly in the wrong by re- 
 viewing the termination of the book, when it appeared else- 
 where, in a strain of virulent but clumsy ridicule. As to 
 where the right or wrong lay, independent of questions of pure 
 law on one side and pure taste on the other, it is not so easy 
 to come to any conclusion. Balzac published an elaborate 
 justification of his own conduct, which does not now appear 
 with the book, but may be found, by any one who is curious, 
 among the rejected prefaces which fill a large part of the twenty- 
 second volume (the third of the " CEuvres Diverses") of his 
 Works. It is exceedingly long, not by any means temperate, 
 and so confused that it is difficult to make head or tail of it. 
 What is clear is that the parties went on the dangerous and 
 unsatisfactory plan of neither complete performance of the 
 work before payment nor complete payment beforehand, but 
 of a per contra account, the author drawing money as he 
 wanted it, and sending in copy as he could or chose. Balzac 
 seems to allow that he got into arrears, contending that if he 
 paid those arrears the rest of the work was his own property. 
 But there were complicating disagreements in reference to a 
 simultaneous publication at St. Petersburg; and, on the 
 whole, we may fairly conclude in the not very original terms 
 of "faults on both sides." The affair, however, evidently
 
 x PREFACE. 
 
 gave him much annoyance, and seems to have brought him 
 into some discredit. 
 
 The other point of personal interest is that Madame de 
 Mortsauf is very generally said to represent Madame de Berny, 
 his early friend and his first instructress in aristocratic ways. 
 Although there are strong expressions of affection in his letters 
 with regard to this lady, who died early in his career, they do 
 not definitely indicate what is commonly called love. But 
 the whole scenery and atmosphere of " The Lily of the 
 Valley" (" Le Lys dans la Vallee ") are those of his own early 
 haunts. Frapesle, which is so often mentioned, was the home 
 of another platonic friend, Madame Zulma Carraud, and there 
 is much in the early experiences of Felix de Vandenesse 
 which has nearly as personal a touch as that of " Louis Lam- 
 bert" itself. 
 
 Dismissing this, we may come to the book itself. Balzac 
 took so much interest in it indeed, the personal throb may 
 be felt throughout that he departed (according to his own 
 account, for the second time only) from his rule of not an- 
 swering criticism. This was in regard to a very remarkable 
 article of M. Hippolyte Castilles (to be found in M. de 
 Lovenjoul's invaluable bibliography, as is the answering letter 
 in the " CEuvres Diverses " *) reflecting upon the rather pagan 
 and materialist "resurrection of the flesh" in Madame de 
 Mortsauf on her death-bed. His plea that it was the disease, 
 not the person, though possessing a good deal of physiological 
 force, is psychologically rather weak, and might have been 
 made much stronger. Indeed, this scene, though shocking 
 and disconcerting to weak brethren, is not merely the 
 strongest in the novel, but one of the strongest in Balzac's 
 works. There is farther to be noted in the book a quaint de- 
 lineation, in the personage of M. de Mortsauf, of a kind of 
 conjugal torment which, as a rule, is rather borne by husbands 
 at the hands of wives than vice versa. The behavior of the 
 
 * Sundry Works.
 
 PREFACE. xi 
 
 "lily's" husband, sudden rages and all, is exactly that of a 
 shrewish and valetudinarian woman. 
 
 This, however, and some minor matters, may be left to the 
 reader to find out and appreciate. The most interesting 
 point, and the most debatable, is the character of the 
 heroine with, in a lesser degree, that of the hero. Of M. 
 Felix de Vandenesse it is not necessary to say very much, be- 
 cause that capital letter from Madame de Manerville (one of 
 the very best things that Balzac ever wrote, and exhibiting a 
 sharpness and precision of mere writing which he too fre- 
 quently lacked) does fair, though not complete, justice on the 
 young man. The lady, who was not a model of excellence 
 herself, perhaps did not perceive for it does not seem to 
 have been in her nature to conceal it through kindness that 
 he was not only as she tells him, wanting in tact, but also 
 wanting, and that execrably, in taste. M. de Vandenesse, I 
 think, ranks in Balzac's list of good heroes ; at any rate he 
 saves him later from a fate which he rather richly deserves, 
 and introduces him honorably in other places. But he was 
 not a nice young man. His "pawing" and timid advances 
 on Madame de Mortsauf, and his effusive "kissing and telling " 
 in reference to Lady Dudley, both smack of the worst sides 
 of Rousseau : they deserve not so much moral reprehension as 
 physical kicking. It is no wonder that Madeleine de Mortsauf 
 turned a cold shoulder on him ; and it is an addition to his 
 demerits that he seems to have thought her unjust in doing so. 
 
 As for the "lily" we come once more to one of those in- 
 eradicable differences between French and English taste one 
 of those moral fosses not to be filled which answer to the 
 physical Channel. I have said that I do not think the last 
 scene unnatural or even repulsive: it is pretty true and rather 
 terrible, and where truth and terror are there is seldom dis- 
 gust. But, elsewhere, for all her technical purity, her shud- 
 derings, and the rest of it, I cannot help thinking that, without 
 insular narrowness or prudery, one may find Madame de
 
 xii PREFACE. 
 
 Mortsauf a little rancid, a little like stale cold-cream of roses. 
 And if it is insular narrowness and prudery so to find her, let 
 us thank God for the narrowness which yet leaves room for 
 Cleopatra, for Beatrix Esmond, and for Becky Sharp. I should 
 myself have thought Madame de Mortsauf a person of bad 
 taste in caring at all for such a creature as Felix. But if she 
 did care, I should have thought better of her for pitching her 
 cap over the very highest mill in her care for him, than for 
 this fullsome hankering, this "I would, but dare not," pla- 
 tonism. Still, others may think differently, and that the 
 book is a very powerful book they cannot hold more distinctly 
 than I do. 
 
 Some bibliographical details about Le Lys (The Lily) have 
 been anticipated above. It need only be added that the ap- 
 pearances in the " Revue de Paris" were in the numbers for 
 November and December, 1835, and that the book was pub- 
 lished by Werdet in June of next year. The date of the 
 "Envoi" (afterward removed), August 8, 1827, may have 
 some biographical interest. Charpentier republished the book 
 in a slightly different form in 1839, and, five years later, it was 
 installed in the " Comedie." 
 
 The stories of the "Autre Etude "* (other study) are called 
 in the Repertoire of MM. Christophe and Cerfberr " D'Ex- 
 quises Causeries" ("Choice Chit-chats"). . It is not certain 
 that all readers will acquiesce in this epithet, which is used 
 several times in the piece by Balzac himself, though I do not 
 remember that the combination of it with causeric is textual. 
 In the first place, the discourses of Marsay and Blondet might 
 be called by unfriendly critics rather sermons than causeries 
 (chats). In the second, though Marsay is rather less of a 
 "tiger" than in some of his other performances, the cox- 
 combry of the exhibition exceeds its charm, while Blondet's 
 discussion of womankind has the unreality of all these dis- 
 cussions. Montriveau's story is considerably better than 
 
 *"A Study of Woman" is in vol. of " Wild Ass' Skin."
 
 PREFACE. xiii 
 
 either of these; and it leads up very well to "La Grande 
 Breteche." 
 
 This latter is one of the best known of Balzac's short stories, 
 and may rank among the half-dozen best of all. Contrary to 
 a habit which, though not invariable, is too common with 
 him, he is not long in "getting under way," and he does not 
 waste a single stroke in drawing the actual catastrophe. 
 Bianchon, who generally has a good part assigned him, is here 
 unusually lucky. Indeed, the piece is so short and so good 
 that critical dwelling on it is almost an impertinence. 
 
 "A Man of Business " (" Un Homme d' Affaires "), in the 
 eyes of some readers, does not stand very high. La Palferine 
 reappears, and that more exalted La Palferine Maxime de 
 Trailles, "Balzac's pet scoundrel," as some one has called 
 him, though not present, is the hero of the tale, which is 
 artificial and slight enough. 
 
 G. S. 
 
 Note. It may be barely necessary for me to protect myself and the 
 translator from a possible charge of mistaking Lilium candidum for Con- 
 -allaria majalis. The French for our ' lily-of-the-valley " is, of course, 
 tnuguet. But " Lily in the Valley " would inevitably sound in English 
 like a worse mistake or a tasteless variation on a consecrated phrase. And 
 " Lily of the Valley " meets the real sense well.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 To Monsieur J. B. Nacquart, 
 Member of the Royal Academy of Medicine. 
 
 Dear Doctor : Here is one of the most highly wrought 
 stones of the second story of a literary edifice that is 
 being slowly and laboriously constructed ; I wish to set 
 your name here, as much to thank the physician who 
 once saved my life as to do honor to the friend of 
 every day. DE BALZAC. 
 
 To Madame la Comtesse Natalie de Mancrville. 
 
 " I YIELD to your wish. It is the privilege of the woman 
 whom we love more than she loves us that she can at any 
 moment make us forget the laws of good sense. To spare 
 ourselves the sight of a wrinkle on your brow, to dissipate a 
 pout on your lips which so small a contradiction saddens 
 we work miracles to annihilate distance, we give our blood, we 
 mortgage the future. 
 
 " You, to-day, want my past : here it is. But understand 
 this, Natalie : to obey you I have had to trample under foot 
 a repugnance I never before have conquered. Why must 
 you be suspicious of the long and sudden reveries which come 
 over me when I am happiest ? Why show the pretty tempers 
 of a woman beloved because I fall silent ? Could you not 
 play with the contrasts of my nature without knowing their 
 causes ? Have you in your heart secrets which must have mine 
 to gain absolution ? 
 
 "Well, you have guessed rightly, Natalie, and it is better 
 
 (1)
 
 2 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 perhaps that you should know everything: yes, my life is 
 overshadowed by a phantom ; it asserts itself vaguely at the 
 least word that evokes it ; it often hovers over me unbidden. 
 I have, buried within my soul, astounding memories, like 
 those marine growths which may be seen in calm waters and 
 which the surges of the storm fling in fragments on the 
 shore. 
 
 "Though the travail needed for the utterance of ideas has 
 controlled the old emotions which hurt me so much when 
 they are suddenly aroused, if there should be in this confes- 
 sion any outbreaks that offend you, remember that you threat- 
 ened me in case of disobedience, and do not punish me for 
 having obliged you. 
 
 " I only wish my confidence might increase your tenderness 
 twofold. 
 
 "Till this evening. FELIX." 
 
 To what genius fed on tears may we some day owe the 
 most touching elegy the picture of the tortures suffered in 
 silence by souls whose roots, while still tender, find nothing 
 but hard pebbles in the soil of home, whose earliest blossoms 
 are rent by the hands of hate, whose flowers are frost-bitten 
 as soon as they open ? What poet will tell of the sorrows of 
 the child whose lips suck the milk of bitterness, whose smiles 
 are checked by the scorching fire of a stern eye? The fiction 
 that should depict these poor crushed hearts, down-trodden 
 by those who are placed about them to encourage the devel- 
 opment of their feelings, would be the true story of my 
 childhood. 
 
 What vanities could I, a new-born babe, have fretted? 
 What moral or physical deformity earned me my mother's 
 coldness ? Was I the offspring of duty, a child whose birth 
 is fortuitous, or one whose existence is a standing reproach ? 
 
 Sent to be nursed in the country and forgotten by my 
 parents for three years, when I returned to my father's house
 
 THE LJLY OF THE VALLEY. 3 
 
 I counted for so little that I had to endure the pity of the 
 servants. I know not to what feeling nor to what happy 
 chance I owed it that I was able to rally after this first disas- 
 ter ; as a child I did not understand, and as a man I do not 
 know. My brother and my two sisters, far from mitigating 
 my fate, amused themselves by tormenting me. The mutual 
 compact, in virtue of which children hide each other's pec- 
 cadilloes and learn an infant code of honor, was null and 
 void as regarded me ; nay more, I often found myself in dis- 
 grace for my brother's misdeeds, with no power of appeal 
 against the injustice ; was it that insidious self-interest, of 
 which a germ exists even in children, prompted them to add 
 to the persecution that weighed on me, so as to win the good 
 graces of the mother whom they feared no less ? Was it the 
 result of their imitative instinct ? Was it a desire to try 
 their power, or a lack of fellow-feeling? All these causes 
 combined perhaps to deprive me of the comfort of brotherly 
 kindness. Cut off already from all affection, I could love 
 nothing, and nature had made me loving ! Is there an angel 
 who collects the sighs of such ever-repressed feeling? If 
 misprized sentiments turn to hatred in some souls, in mine 
 they became concentrated, and wore a channel from whence 
 at a later date they gushed into my life. In some characters 
 the habit of shrinking relaxes every fibre and gives rise to 
 fear ; and fear reduces us to perpetual subjection. Hence 
 proceeds a weakness which debases a man and gives him an 
 indescribable taint of servility. 
 
 But this constant torment gave me the habit of exerting a 
 force which increased with exercise, and predisposed my soul 
 to moral fortitude. Always on the lookout for some new 
 misery, as martyrs expect a fresh blow, my whole being must 
 have expressed a gloomy dejection which stifled all the graces 
 and impulses of childhood, a condition which was regarded 
 as a symptom of idiocy, justifying my mother's ominous 
 prognostics. A sense of this injustice gave rise in my spirit
 
 4 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 to a premature feeling of pride, the outcome of reason, which, 
 no doubt, was a check on the evil disposition fostered by such 
 a manner of education. 
 
 Though completely neglected by my mother, I was occa- 
 sionally the cause of some scruples in her mind ; she some- 
 times talked of my learning something, and expressed a pur- 
 pose of teaching me; then I shuddered miserably at the 
 thought of the anguish of daily contact with her. I blessed 
 my deserted loneliness, and was happy in being left in the 
 garden to play with pebbles, watch the insects and gaze at 
 the blue sky. 
 
 Though isolation made me dreamy, my love of meditation 
 had its rise in an incident which will give you an idea of my 
 first woes. I was so entirely overlooked that the governess 
 often forgot to put me to bed. One evening, peacefully sit- 
 ting under a fig tree, I was looking at a star with the pas- 
 sionate curiosity known to children, to which, in me, preco- 
 cious melancholy gave a sort of sentimental intuition. My 
 sisters were playing and shouting ; I heard the remote clatter 
 like an accompaniment to my thoughts. The noise presently 
 ceased ; night fell. By chance my mother then noticed my 
 absence. To avert a scolding, our governess, a certain ter- 
 rible Mademoiselle Caroline, justified my mother's affected 
 fears by declaring that I had a horror of home; that if she 
 had not watched me narrowly, I should have run away before 
 then ; that I was not weak of intellect, but sly ; that of all 
 the children she had ever had care of, she had never known 
 one whose disposition was so vile as mine. 
 
 She then pretended to search for me, and called me ; I re- 
 plied ; she came to the fig tree where she knew that I was. 
 
 " What have you been doing here ? " she asked. 
 
 " I was looking at a star." 
 
 "You were not looking at a star," cried my mother, who 
 was listening from her balcony, "as if a child of your age 
 could know anything of astronomy ! "
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 5 
 
 "Oh, madame," cried Mademoiselle Caroline, "he turned 
 on the tap of the cistern, the garden is flooded ! " 
 
 There was a great commotion. My sisters had amused 
 themselves with turning the tap to see the water flow ; but 
 startled by a spurt sideways that had wetted them all over, 
 they lost their heads, and fled without turning the water off 
 again. Accused and convicted of having devised this piece 
 of mischief, and of lying when I asserted my innocence, I 
 was severely punished. But, worst of all, I was mocked at for 
 my love of star-gazing, and my mother forbade my staying in 
 the garden in the evening. 
 
 Tyrannical prohibitions give zest to a passion, even more in 
 children than in men ; children have the advantage of thinking 
 of nothing else but the forbidden thing, which then becomes 
 irresistibly fascinating. So I was often caned for my star. 
 Unable to confide my woes to any human being, I told my 
 griefs to the star in that exquisite internal warbling by which 
 a child lisps its first ideas as he has already lisped his first 
 words. At the age of twelve, a boy at school, I still contem- 
 plated it with a sense of unspeakable rapture, so deep are the 
 marks set on the heart by the impressions received in the dawn 
 of life. 
 
 My brother Charles, five years my senior, was not less hand- 
 some as a child than he is as a man ; he was my father's 
 favorite, my mother's darling, the hope of the family, and 
 consequently the king of the household. Well made and 
 strong, he had a tutor. I, frail and sickly, was sent, at the 
 age of five, to a day-school in the town, whither I was taken 
 in the morning by my father's valet, who fetched me home in 
 the afternoon. I took my midday meal in a basket but scantily 
 filled, while my comrades brought ample supplies. This con- 
 trast of my necessity with their abundance was the source of 
 much suffering. The famous rillettes and rillons of Tours (a 
 kind of sausage meat) formed the larger part of our midday 
 luncheon, between breakfast in the morning and late dinner
 
 6 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 at the hour of our return home. This preparation, highly 
 prized by some epicures, is rarely seen at Tours on any genteel 
 table ; though I may have heard of it before going to school, 
 I had never been so happy as to see the brown confection 
 spread on a slice of bread for my own eating ; but even if it 
 had not been a fashionable dainty at school, my longing for 
 it would have been no less eager, for it had become a fixed 
 idea in my brain, just as the stews concocted by her porter's 
 wife inspired a longing in one of the most elegant of Paris 
 duchesses, who, being a woman, gratified her fancy. 
 
 Children can read such a longing in each other's eyes just 
 as you can read love : thenceforth I was a standing laughing- 
 stock. My school-fellows, almost all of the storekeeper class, 
 would come to display their excellent rillettcs, and ask me if 
 I knew how they were made, where they were sold, and why 
 I had none. They would smack their lips as they praised their 
 rillons, fragments of pork fried in their own fat and looking 
 like boiled truffles ; they took stock of my basket, and, finding 
 only Olivet cheeses or dried fruit, struck me dumb by saying, 
 " Why, you have nothing at all ! " in a way that taught me to 
 estimate the difference made between my brother and myself. 
 
 This comparison of my own misery with the good fortune 
 of others dashed the roses of my childhood and blighted my 
 blossoming youth. The first time that I, taken in by a sem- 
 blance of generosity, put out my hand to take the longed-for 
 treat from a hypocrite who offered it, the boy snatched it 
 away, raising a shout of laughter among the others who were 
 aware of the practical joke. 
 
 If the loftiest minds are accessible to vanity, we may surely 
 pardon a child for crying when he finds himself despised and 
 made game of. Treated thus, most children would become 
 greedy, sneaking, and mean. To avoid persecution, I fought 
 my foes ; the courage of despair made me formidable, but I 
 was detested, and remained without defense against treachery. 
 One evening, as I left school, a handkerchief, tightly rolled
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 7 
 
 and full of stones, struck me on the back. When the valet, 
 who avenged me amply, told my mother about it, she only 
 said 
 
 " That dreadful child will never be anything but a trouble 
 to us!" 
 
 I then suffered the most miserable distrust of myself, dis- 
 cerning at school the same repulsion as was felt for me by my 
 family. I was thrown in on myself at school and at home. 
 A second fall of snow checked the blossoming of the germs 
 sown in my soul. Those who were loved were, I saw, sturdy 
 rascals ; with this I comforted my pride, and I dwelt alone. 
 Thus there was no end to the impossibility of pouring out the 
 feelings which swelled my poor little heart. Seeing me always 
 alone, hated and dejected, the master confirmed my parents' 
 unjust notions as to my evil nature. 
 
 As soon as I could read and write, my mother had me exiled 
 to Pont-le-Voy, a school managed by Oratorians, who received 
 children of my age into a class designated as that of the Pas 
 latins (Latin steps), which also included scholars whose de- 
 fective intelligence had precluded the rudiments. There I 
 remained for eight years, seeing no one, and leading the life 
 of a Pariah. And this was why: I had but three francs a 
 month for pocket-money, a sum which barely sufficed for the 
 pens, knives, rulers, ink and paper, with which we had to 
 provide ourselves. And so, being unable to buy stilts, or 
 ropes, or any of the things needed for school-boy amusements, 
 I was banished from every game ; to gain admittance I must 
 either have toadied the rich or have flattered the strong boys 
 in my division. Now the least idea of such meanness, which 
 children so often drift into, raised my gorge. 
 
 I used to sit under a tree reading the books given out to us 
 once a month by the librarian. How much anguish lay 
 hidden in the depths of this unnatural isolation, what misery 
 this desertion caused me ! Imagine what my tender soul must 
 have felt when, at the first distribution of prizes, I was awarded
 
 8 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 the two most anxiously looked for that for composition and 
 that for translation ! When I went up to the platform to 
 receive them, in the midst of applause and cheers, I had 
 neither father nor mother to rejoice with me, while the room 
 was full of my comrades' parents. Instead of kissing the vis- 
 itor who distributed the prizes, as was usual, I threw myself on 
 his breast and melted into tears. In the evening I burnt my 
 laurel crowns in the stove. The other boys' parents stayed in 
 the town during the week of examinations preceding the prize- 
 giving, so that my school-fellows went off next morning in 
 high glee ; while I, whose parents were only a few leagues 
 away, remained at school with the " Outre-mers " (over the 
 seas), a name given to boys whose families lived in the islands 
 or abroad. In the evening, while prayers were read, the bar- 
 barous little wretches would boast of the good dinners they 
 had had at home. 
 
 You will see that my misfortunes went on growing in pro- 
 portion to the circumference of the social spheres in which I 
 moved. How many efforts have I not made to invalidate the 
 sentence which condemned me to live in myself alone ! How 
 many hopes long cherished, with a thousand soul-felt aspira- 
 tions, have been destroyed in a single day ! To induce my 
 parents to come to the school, I wrote them letters full of feel- 
 ing, rather emphatically worded perhaps but should these 
 letters have drawn down on me my mother's reproaches and 
 ironical comments on my style? Still, not discouraged, I 
 promised to do all my parents insisted on as the conditions 
 of a visit; I implored my sisters' aid, writing to them on their 
 name-days and birthdays with the punctuality of a hapless, 
 deserted child but with vain persistency. 
 
 As the day for prize-giving approached, I made my en- 
 treaties more urgent, and wrote of my hopes of success. 
 Deceived by my parents' silence I expected them with 
 exultant hopes, telling my school-fellows that they were com- 
 ing; and when, as family parties began to arrive, the old
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 9 
 
 porter's step echoed along the passages I felt sick with antici- 
 pation. But the old man never uttered ray name. 
 
 One day when I confessed that I had cursed my existence, 
 the priest spoke to me of heaven, where the palm branch 
 grows that the Saviour promised to the Beati qui lugent. So 
 in preparing for my first communion, I threw myself into the 
 mystic gulf of prayer, bewitched by religious notions, whose 
 spiritual fairy dreams enchant the youthful mind. Fired with 
 eager faith I besought God to renew in my favor the fascina- 
 ting miracles of which I read in the history of martyrs. At 
 five I had gone forth to a star ; at twelve I was knocking at 
 the door of the sanctuary. My ecstasy gave rise to unutter- 
 able dreams which supplied my imagination, gave fervor to my 
 tenderness, and strengthened my thinking powers. I often 
 ascribed these sublime visions to angels charged with fashion- 
 ing my soul to divine ends, and they gave my eyes the power 
 of seeing the inmost soul of things ; they prepared my heart 
 for the magic which makes the poet wretched when he has the 
 fatal power of comparing what he feels with what exists, the 
 great things he craves after with what he obtains ; they wrote 
 in my brain a book in which I have read what I was required 
 to express ; they touched my lips with the fire of the impro- 
 visators. 
 
 My father having conceived some doubts as to the tendency 
 of the Oratorian teaching, came to fetch me from Pont-le- 
 Voy, and placed me in a boarding-house for boys in Paris, 
 situated in the Marais. I was now fifteen. On examination 
 as to my acquirements, the pupil from Pont-le-Voy was judged 
 capable of entering the third class. The miseries I had en- 
 dured at home, at day-school, and at Pont-le-Voy were re- 
 newed under a new aspect during my life at the pension 
 Lepitre. My father gave me no money. When my parents 
 had ascertained that I could be fed, clothed, crammed with 
 Latin and stuffed with Greek, that was enough. In, the 
 whole course of my career at school and college^ I have
 
 10 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 known perhaps a thousand fellow-students, and I never heard 
 of a case of such utter indifference. 
 
 Monsieur Lepitre, a fanatical adherent of the Bourbons, 
 had been thrown in my father's way at the time when some 
 devoted royalists tried to rescue Queen Marie Antoinette 
 from the Temple ; they had since renewed their acquaintance. 
 Hence Monsieur Lepitre conceived it his duty to remedy my 
 father's oversight ; but the sum he allowed me monthly was 
 small, for he did not know what my parents' intentions 
 might be. 
 
 M. Lepitre occupied a fine old house, the Hotel Joyeuse, 
 where, as in all the ancient residences of the nobility, there 
 was a lodge for a gate-porter. During the hour of recreation, 
 before the usher took us in a file to the Lyceum of Charle- 
 magne, the wealthy boys got breakfast at the lodge, provided 
 by the porter named Doisy. Monsieur Lepitre either knew 
 nothing of Doisy *s business or he winked at it. The man was 
 a perfect smuggler, made much of by the boys in their own 
 interest ; he was the screen for all our mischief, our confidant 
 when we stole in after hours, our go-between with the lending 
 library for prohibited books. Breakfast with a cup of coffee 
 was in the most aristocratic taste, in consequence of the 
 exorbitant price to which colonial products rose under Napo- 
 leon. If the use of coffee and of sugar was a luxury to our 
 parents, in us it was a sign of such arrogant superiority as was 
 enough to give us a passion for it, if the tendency to imita- 
 tion, greediness, and the infection of fashion had not been 
 enough. Doisy gave us credit ; he supposed that every school- 
 boy must have sisters or aunts who would uphold his honor 
 and pay his debts. 
 
 For a long time I resisted the blandishments of the coffee- 
 bar. If my judges could have known the force of tempta- 
 tion, the heroic efforts of my soul to attain to such stoicism, 
 and the suppressed rages of my long resistance, they would 
 have dried away my tears instead of provoking them to flow.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 11 
 
 But, boy as I was, could I have acquired the magnanimity 
 which leads us to scorn the scorn of others ? And I was also 
 feeling, perhaps, the temptations of various social vices whose 
 power was increased by my longing. 
 
 At the end of the second year my father and mother came 
 to Paris. The day of their arrival was announced to me by 
 my brother ; he was living in Paris, but had not paid me a 
 single visit. My sisters were to come, too, and we were all to 
 see Paris together. The first day we were to dine at the 
 Palais- Royal to be close to the Theatre Fran^ais. In spite of 
 the intoxicating delight of such a programme of unhoped-for 
 joys, my glee was mitigated by the sense of a coming storm, 
 which so easily blights those who are inured to troubles. I 
 had to confess a debt of a hundred francs to the Sieur Doisy, 
 who threatened to apply to my parents for the money. I 
 determined to make use of my brother as Doisy's dragoman, 
 to plead my repentance and mediate for forgiveness. My 
 father was in favor of mercy ; but my mother was relentless ; 
 her dark-blue eye petrified me, and she fulminated terrible 
 forecasts. 
 
 "If I allowed myself such licenses at seventeen, what 
 should I become later ? Could I be a son of hers ? Did I 
 want to ruin the family ? Was I the only child to be thought 
 of? The career on which my brother Charles had embarked 
 required an independent income, and he deserved it, for he 
 had already done the family credit, while I should disgrace it. 
 Did I know nothing of the value of the money I cost them? 
 What benefit to my education would come of coffee and 
 sugar? Was not such conduct an apprenticeship to every 
 vice?" Marat was an angel as compared with me, so it 
 seemed to me. 
 
 After enduring the shock of this torrent, which filled my 
 soul with terrors, my brother took me back to the boarding- 
 house, I lost my dinner at the caf6 of the " Three Provencal 
 Brothers," and was deprived of seeing Talma in " Britan-
 
 12 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 nicus." This was my interview with my mother after a part- 
 ing of twelve years. 
 
 When I had gone through the "humanities," my father 
 still left me in the care of Monsieur Lepitre. I was to study 
 higher mathematics, to work at law for a year, and begin the 
 advanced branches. 
 
 Now, as a private boarder, and free from attending classes, 
 I hoped for a truce between misery and me. But notwith- 
 standing that I was now nineteen or perhaps because I was 
 nineteen my father continued the system which had of old 
 sent me to school without sufficient food, to college without 
 pocket-money, and had run me into debt to Doisy. I had 
 very little money at command, and what can be done in Paris 
 without money? My liberty, too, was ingeniously fettered. 
 Monsieur Lepitre always sent me to the law-schools with an 
 usher at my heels, who handed me over to the professor, and 
 came again to escort me back. A girl would have been 
 watched with less care than my mother's fears devised for my 
 protection. Paris had justifiable terrors for my parents. 
 Students are secretly interested in the self-same thoughts as 
 fill the heads of school-girls ; do what you will, a girl always 
 talks of lovers, a youth of women. 
 
 But in Paris at that time the conversation of fellow-students 
 was tinged by the Oriental and Sultan-like world of the 
 Palais-Royal. The Palais-Royal was an Eldorado of love 
 where ingots ready coined were current every evening. Vir- 
 gin doubts were there enlightened, and there our curiosity 
 might find gratification. The Palais-Royal and I were asymp- 
 totes, ever tending to meet, but never meeting. 
 
 This is how fate thwarted my hopes. My father had intro- 
 duced me to one of my aunts, who lived in the He Saint- 
 Louis, and I was to dine there every Thursday and Sunday, 
 escorted thither by Madame or Monsieur Lepitre, who went 
 out themselves on those days, and called for me on their way 
 home in the evening. A singular form of recreation ! The
 
 THE LILY OF THE GALLEY. 13 
 
 Marquise de Listomere was a very ceremonious fine lady, to 
 whom it never occurred to make me a present of a crown- 
 piece. As old as a cathedral, as much painted as a miniature, 
 and magnificently dressed, she lived in her mansion just as 
 though Louis XV. were still alive, seeing none but old ladies 
 and gentlemen, a company of fossils among whom I felt as 
 if I were in a cemetery. No one ever spoke to me, and I 
 had not the courage to speak first. Cold looks of aversion 
 made me feel ashamed of my youth, which was so annoying 
 to all the others. 
 
 I hoped for the success of an escapade based on their 
 indifference, making up my mind to steal off one evening 
 directly after dinner and fly to the wooden galleries. My 
 aunt, when once she was absorbed in whist, paid no further 
 heed to me. Jean, her manservant, cared little enough for 
 Monsieur Lepitre; but those ill-starred dinners were, un- 
 fortunately, lengthy in consequence of the antiquity of 
 the jaws or the weakness of the teeth of that ancient com- 
 pany. 
 
 At last, one evening between eight and nine, I had reached 
 as far as the stairs, as tremulous as Bianca Capello when she 
 made her escape ; but just as the porter had let me out, I 
 saw Monsieur Lepitre's cab in the street, and the worthy man 
 asking for me in his wheezy tones. Three times did fate 
 come between the hell of the Palais-Royal and the paradise 
 of my youth. On the day when, ashamed of being so igno- 
 rant, and already twenty, I determined to defy every peril to 
 gain my end at the very moment when I was about to evade 
 Monsieur Lepitre as he got into a hackney coach (a difficult 
 matter, for he had a club-foot, and was as stout as Louis 
 XVIII.) who should appear but my mother, arriving in a 
 post-chaise. I was riveted by her eye, and stood like a bird 
 fascinated by a serpent. 
 
 What chance had led to this meeting ? Nothing could be 
 simpler. Napoleon was making a last effort. My father,
 
 14 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 foreseeing the return of the Bourbons, had come to explain 
 matters to my brother, who was already embarked in diplo- 
 macy under the imperial rule. He had come from Tours 
 with my mother. My mother had undertaken to convey me 
 home, to remove me from the dangers which, to those who 
 were keen enough to follow the advance of the enemy, seemed 
 to threaten the capital. 
 
 Thus, in a few minutes I was snatched from Paris, just as 
 my residence there would have proved fateful. 
 
 The torments of an imagination for ever agitated by 
 thwarted desires, and the weariness of a life saddened by 
 constant privations, had thrown me into study, just as in 
 former times men weary of life shut themselves up in cloisters. 
 Study had become a passion with me, which might have 
 blighted me utterly by imprisoning me at an age when young 
 men ought to be free to enjoy the activities of their natural 
 springtime. 
 
 This slight sketch of my early years, in which you can 
 imagine much sadness, was necessary to give you some idea 
 of the effect of that training on my later life. Bearing the 
 stamp of so many adverse influences, at the age of twenty I 
 was stunted, thin, and pale. My spirit, full of cravings, 
 struggled with a body which was frail indeed in appearance, 
 but which as an old doctor of Tours was wont to say 
 was going through the last annealing process of an iron 
 temperament. Young in body and old in mind, I had read 
 and thought so much, that I was metaphysically familiar 
 with life in its highest summits, just when I was about to 
 explore the tortuous difficulties of its narrow passes and 
 the sandy ways of its plains. Exceptional chances had kept 
 me late in that delightful phase when the soul is conscious 
 of its first agitation, when it is opening to its first raptures, 
 when everything is fresh and full of savor. I was standing 
 between boyhood prolonged by study and manhood late in
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 15 
 
 showing its green shoots. No young man was ever more 
 fully prepared than I to feel and to love. 
 
 To fully understand my narrative, think of me at the 
 charming age when the lips are pure from falsehood, when the 
 eyes are honest though veiled by lids weighed down by shy- 
 ness in conflict with desire, when the spirit is not yet abject 
 before Jesuitical worldliness, and when the heart is as timid 
 as its first impulses are vehemently generous. 
 
 I need say nothing of my journey from Paris to Tours with 
 my mother. Her cold demeanor crushed the effusiveness of 
 my affection. As we started afresh after each relay, I re- 
 solved to talk to her ; but a look or a word scared away the 
 phrases I had composed as a beginning. At Orleans, where 
 we were to sleep, my mother reproached me for my silence. 
 I fell at her knees and clasped them, shedding hot tears; I 
 poured out my heart to her, bursting with affection ; I tried 
 to soften her by the eloquence of my pleading ; starving for 
 love, my words might have stirred the soul of a stepmother. 
 My mother told me I was acting a farce. I complained of 
 her neglect ; she called me an unnatural son. There was 
 such a cold grip about my heart that at Blois I went out on 
 the bridge to throw myself into the Loire. I was put off 
 from suicide simply by the height of the parapet. 
 
 On my arrival, my two sisters, who scarcely knew me, 
 showed more surprise than warmth ; later, however, by com- 
 parison they seemed to me full of kindliness. I was given a 
 bedroom on the third floor. You will understand the extent 
 of my wretchedness when I tell you that my mother left me, 
 a grown man, with no linen but my shabby college outfit, 
 and no wardrobe but what I had brought from Paris. 
 
 When I flew from one end of the drawing-room to the 
 other to pick up her handkerchief, she gave me thanks as cold 
 as she might have granted to a servant. Watching her 
 anxiously as I did, to discover whether there were in her 
 heart a friable spot where I could insert some buds of affec-
 
 16 7 HE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 tion, I saw her a tall, parched, thin woman ; a gambler, selfish 
 and insolent like all the Listomeres, in whom impertinence 
 is part of their dower. She saw nothing in life but duties to 
 be performed ; every cold-hearted woman I have ever met has 
 made duty her religion, as she did ; she accepted our adora- 
 tion as a priest accepts incense at mass ; my elder brother 
 seemed to have absorbed the modicum of maternal feeling 
 her heart could contain. She was constantly inflicting small 
 stings of biting irony, the weapon of heartless people, which 
 she freely used on us who could not retort. 
 
 In spite of all these thorny barriers, instinctive feeling is 
 held by so many roots, the pious terror inspired by a mother 
 includes so many ties indeed, to give her up as hopeless is 
 too cruel a shock that the sublime blunder of loving her 
 lasted till a day when at a riper age we judged her truly. 
 Then began her children's reprisals. Their indifference, re- 
 sulting from the disenchantment of the past, enhanced by the 
 slimy wreckage they have rescued from it, overflows her tomb 
 even. 
 
 This frightful despotism drove out the voluptuous dreams I 
 had madly hoped to realize at Tours. I flung myself desper- 
 ately into my father's library, where I read all the books I 
 did not already know. My long hours of study spared me all 
 contact with my mother ; but they left me, morally, worse 
 off than ever. My eldest sister, who has since married our 
 cousin the Marquis de Listomere, sometimes tried to comfort 
 me without being able to soothe the irritation from which I 
 suffered. I longed for death. 
 
 Great events, of which I knew nothing, were then in the 
 air. The Due d'AngoulSme, having left Bordeaux to join 
 Louis XVIII. in Paris, was to be the recipient of the ovations 
 prepared by the enthusiasm that possessed France on the re- 
 turn of the Bourbons. Touraine in a ferment round its legiti- 
 mate princes, the town in a turmoil, the windows hung with 
 flags, the residents all in their best, the preparations for the
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 17 
 
 fete, the indefinable something in the air which mounted to 
 my head, all made me long to be present at the ball that was 
 to be given to the Prince. When, greatly daring, I expressed 
 this wish to my mother at that time too ill to go out she 
 was extremely wroth. Had I dropped from the Congo, that 
 I knew nothing of what was going on ? How could I imagine 
 that the family would not be fitly represented at the ball ? 
 In the absence of my father and brother, of course it would 
 be my part to go. Had I no mother? Did she never think 
 of her children's happiness? In a moment the almost dis- 
 owned son had become a person of importance. I was as 
 much amazed by finding myself of consequence as by the 
 deluge of ironical reasoning with which my mother received 
 my request. 
 
 I questioned my sisters, and heard that my mother, who 
 liked theatrical surprises, had necessarily considered the mat- 
 ter of my dress. The tailors of Tours, in the sudden rush of 
 customers, could none of them undertake to fit me out. So 
 my mother had sent for a needlewoman, who, as usual in pro- 
 vincial towns, was supposed to be able to do every kind of 
 sewing. A blue coat was secretly made for me, more or less 
 successfully. Silk stockings and new pumps were easly pro- 
 cured ; men wore their waistcoats short, and I could have one 
 of my father's ; for the first time in my life I donned a shirt 
 with a goffered frill that gave importance to my figure and 
 was lost in the folds of my cravat. When I was dressed, I 
 was so little like myself that my sisters' compliments gave me 
 courage to make my appearance before the whole of assem- 
 bled Touraine. 
 
 It was a formidable enterprise ! But too many were called 
 to this festivity to allow of there being many elect. Thanks 
 to my slender figure, I was able to creep into a tent in the 
 gardens of the Maison Papion, and got close to the armchair 
 in which the Prince was enthroned. In an instant I was 
 stifled by the heat, dazzled by the lights, by the crimson 
 2 
 
 I
 
 18 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 hangings, the gilt ornaments, the dresses and the diamonds 
 of the first public function I had ever attended. I was pushed 
 about by a throng of men and women, all hustling and crowd- 
 ing each other in a cloud of dust. The blatant brass and 
 Bourbon strains of the military band were drowned by shouts 
 of 
 
 " Hurrah for the Due d'Angouleme ! Long live the King ! 
 Hurrah for the Bourbons ! " 
 
 The fSte was an outbreak of enthusiasm in which every one 
 vied with the rest in his vehement eagerness to hail the rising 
 sun of the Bourbons, a display of party selfishness that left me 
 cold, made me feel small, and shrink into myself. 
 
 Carried away like a straw in a whirlpool, I was childishly 
 wishing that I were the Due d'Angouleme, and could mingle 
 with these princes thus made a show of to the staring crowd. 
 This silly provincial fancy gave rise to an ambition dignified 
 by my character and by circumstances. Who might not have 
 coveted this worship, repeated on a more splendid scale a few 
 months later when all Paris rushed to greet the Emperor on 
 his return from the island of Elba ? This supreme power over 
 the masses, whose feelings and vitality discharge themselves 
 into one soul, made me a sudden devotee to Glory, the god- 
 dess who puts the French to the sword nowadays, as the 
 Druidess of old sacrificed the Gauls. 
 
 And then, as suddenly, I saw the woman who was fated to 
 goad perpetually my ambitious hopes and to crown them by 
 throwing me into contact with royalty. 
 
 Too shy to ask any one to dance with me, and fearing, too, 
 that I might make confusion in the figures, I naturally felt 
 very awkward, not knowing what to do with myself. Just 
 when I was most conscious of the fatigue of constantly mov- 
 ing under the pressure of the crowd, an officer trod on my 
 feet, which were swollen by the pressure of my shoes and by 
 the heat. This crowning annoyance disgusted me with the 
 whole affair. It was impossible to get away and I took refuge
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 19 
 
 in a corner at the extreme end of a vacant bench, where I sat 
 down, my gaze fixed, motionless, and sulky. A woman, mis- 
 led by my delicate looks, took me for a boy half-asleep while 
 awaiting my mother's pleasure, and seated herself by me with 
 the light movement of a bird settling on its nest. I was at 
 once aware of a feminine fragrance which flashed upon my 
 soul as Oriental poetry has flashed upon it since. I looked 
 at my neighbor, and was more dazzled by her than I had been 
 by the ball. 
 
 If you have at all entered into my previous life, you can 
 guess the emotions that swelled my heart. My eyes were 
 suddenly fascinated by white rounded shoulders that made me 
 long to bury my face in them, shoulders faintly pink, as if 
 they were blushing to find themselves bare for the first time, 
 bashful shoulders with a soul of their own and a satin skin 
 shining in the light like a silken fabric. Between these 
 shoulders ran a furrow which my eyes, bolder than my hand, 
 glided into. My heart beat as I stood up to look over them, 
 and I was entirely captivated by a bosom modestly covered 
 with gauze, perfect in roundness, and bluely veined as it lay 
 softly bedded in lace frills. The least details of the charming 
 head were allurements stirring me to endless delight: the 
 sheen of the hair knotted above a neck as peach-like as a little 
 girl's, the white partings made by the comb along which my 
 imagination played as in a new-made path everything to- 
 gether turned my brain. 
 
 Looking around to make sure that no one saw me, I buried 
 my face in that back as a baby hides in its mother's breast, 
 and kissed those shoulders all over, rubbing my cheek against 
 them. The lady gave a piercing cry, inaudible above the 
 music ; she turned sharply round, saw me, and said, " Mon- 
 sieur ! ' ' 
 
 If she had said, "My good boy, what possesses you?" I 
 should perhaps have killed her; but this word Monsieur 
 brought hot tears to my eyes.
 
 20 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 I was petrified by a look fired with righteous anger, and an 
 exquisite face crowned with a plait of fair brown hair, in har- 
 mony with those adorable shoulders. The crimson of offended 
 modesty flamed in her face, which was already softening with 
 a woman's forgiveness for a mad act when she is the cause of 
 it, and when she sees a passion of worship in the tears of 
 repentance. She arose and walked away with the dignity of 
 a queen. 
 
 Then I understood how ridiculous was my position ; then, 
 and not till then, I felt that I was dressed like a Savoyard's 
 monkey. I was ashamed. I sat there quite stupefied, relish- 
 ing the apple I had stolen, feeling on my lips the warmth of 
 the blood I had scented ; quite unrepentant, and following 
 with my eyes this being come down from heaven. Then, 
 overpowered by this first physical indulgence of my heart's wild 
 fever, I wandered through the ball-room, now a desert, with- 
 out finding the unknown vision. I went home and to bed, 
 an altered creature. 
 
 A new soul, a soul with iridescent wings, had burst its 
 chrysalis within me. My favorite star, dropping from the 
 blue waste where I had admired it, had become woman, while 
 preserving its light, its sparkle, and its brilliancy. Sud- 
 denly, knowing nothing of love, I had fallen in love. Is not 
 this first irruption of the most intense feeling a man can know 
 a very strange thing? I had met some pretty women in my 
 aunt's drawing-room ; they had not made the slightest impres- 
 sion on me. Is there an hour, a conjunction of the stars, a 
 combination of fitting circumstances, a particular woman above 
 all other women, which seal a passion as exclusive at the age 
 when passion includes the whole female sex ? 
 
 As I thought that my chosen lady dwelt in Touraine, I in- 
 haled the air with rapture ; I saw a blue in the sky which I 
 have never since perceived elsewhere. 
 
 Though mentally I was in ecstacy, I seemed to be very ill ; 
 my mother was at once alarmed and remorseful. Like animals
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 2i 
 
 aware of approaching distemper, I would creep into a corner 
 of the garden to dream of the kisses I had stolen. A few days 
 after the memorable ball my mother began to ascribe my 
 neglect of study, my indifference to her searching looks, my 
 heedlessness of her irony, and my gloomy behavior to the 
 natural development of a growing man. Country air, the 
 universal remedy for every malady of which science can give 
 no account, was regarded as the best means of curing me of 
 my apathy. My mother decided that I should spend a few 
 days at Frapesle, a chateau on the Indre, between Montvazon 
 and Azay-le-Rideau, with a friend of hers, to whom, no doubt, 
 she gave her private instructions. 
 
 On the day when I was thus given the key of the fields, I 
 had plunged so deeply into the ocean of love that I had crossed 
 it. I knew not my fair one's name ; what could I call her or 
 where could I find her? To whom, indeed, could I speak of 
 her ? My natural shyness increased the unaccountable terrors 
 which possess a young heart at the first flutter of love, and 
 made me begin with the melancholy which is the end of a 
 hopeless passion. I was quite content to come and go and 
 wander about the country, with the childlike spirit that is 
 ready for anything and has a certain tinge of chivalry ; I was 
 prepared to hunt through all the country-houses of Touraine, 
 wandering on foot, and saying at each pretty turret, "It will 
 be there!" 
 
 So one Thursday morning I left Tours by the Saint-Eloy 
 gate, I crossed the bridges of Saint-Sauveur, I reached Poncher, 
 my nose in the air in front of every house I passed, and was 
 on the road to Chinon. For the first time in my life I could 
 rest under a tree, walk fast or slowly as I wished without being 
 called to account by any one. To a poor creature so utterly 
 crushed by the various despotisms which weigh more or less on 
 every young life, the first taste of freedom, though exerted in 
 trifles, brought unspeakable expansion to my soul.
 
 22 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 Several reasons combined to make that a high day full of 
 delights. In my childhood my walks had never taken me 
 more than a league out of the town. My excursions in the 
 neighborhood of Pont-le-Voy and the walks I had taken in 
 Paris had not surfeited me with rural beauty. Nevertheless, I 
 had retained from the earliest impressions of my life a strong 
 feeling of the beauty inherent in the scenery round Tours, 
 with which I was familiar. Thus, though I was new to what 
 constitutes the poetry of a site, I was unconsciously exacting, 
 as men are who have conceived of the ideal of an art without 
 ever having practiced it. 
 
 To go to the chateau of Frapesle, those who walk or ride 
 shorten the way by crossing the common known as the Landes 
 de Charlemagne, a waste lying at the top of the plateau which 
 divides the valley of the Cher from that of the Indre, and 
 which is reached by a cross-road from Champy. This flat and 
 sandy down, depressing enough for about a league, ends in a 
 coppice adjoining the road to Sache, the village nearest to 
 Frapesle. This country-lane, leading into the Chinon road at 
 some distance beyond Ballan, skirts an undulating plain devoid 
 of remarkable features as far as the hamlet of Artanne. Thence 
 a valley opens down to the Loire, from Montvazon at the 
 head ; the hills seem to rebound under the country-houses on 
 each range of slopes ; it is a glorious emerald basin, and at the 
 bottom the Indre winds in serpentine curves. I was startled 
 by the view into a rapturous astonishment for which the dull- 
 ness of the Landes or the fatigue of my walk had prepared me : 
 If this woman, the flower of her sex, inhabits a spot on earth, 
 it must be this ! 
 
 At the thought I leaned against a walnut tree ; and now, 
 whenever I revisit that beloved valley, I go to rest under its 
 boughs. Under that tree, the confidant of all my thoughts, 
 I examine myself as to the changes that may have taken 
 place during the time that has elapsed since last I left it. 
 
 My heart had not deceived me: it was there that she dwelt;
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 23 
 
 the first chateau I could see on a shelf of the down was her 
 home. When I sat down under my walnut tree, the noonday 
 sun struck sparks from the slates of her roof and the glass 
 panes of her windows. Her cambric dress was the white spot 
 I could see among some vines under a pleached alley. She 
 was, as you know already, though as yet you know nothing, 
 the Lily of this Valley, where she grew for heaven, rilling it 
 with the fragrance of her virtues. I saw an emblem of in- 
 finite love with nothing to keep it alive but an object only 
 once seen, in the long watery ribbon which glistens in the 
 sun between two green banks, in the rows of poplars which 
 deck that vale of love with moving tracery, in the oak woods 
 thrust forward between the vineyards on the hillsides rounded 
 by the river into constant variety, and in the soft outlines 
 crossing each other and fading to the horizon. 
 
 If you wish to see nature fair and virginal as a bride, go 
 thither some spring day ; if you want to solace the bleeding 
 wounds of your heart, return in the late days of autumn. In 
 spring love flutters his wings under the open sky ; in autumn 
 we dream of those who are no more. Weak lungs inhale a 
 healing freshness, the eye finds rest on golden-hued groves 
 from which the soul borrows sweet peace. 
 
 At the moment when I looked down on the valley of the 
 Indre, the mills on its falls gave voice to the murmuring vale ; 
 the poplars laughed as they swayed ; there was not a cloud in 
 the sky ; the birds sang, the grasshoppers chirped, everything 
 was melody. Never ask me again why I love Touraine. I do 
 not love it as we love our childhood's home, nor as we love 
 an oasis in the desert ; I love it as an artist loves art. I love 
 it less than I love you ; still, but for Touraine, perhaps I 
 should not now be alive. 
 
 Without knowing why, my eyes were riveted to the white 
 spot, to the woman who shone in that garden as the bell of a 
 convolvulus shines among shrubs and is blighted by a touch. 
 My soul deeply stirred, I went down into this bower and
 
 24 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 presently saw a village, which to ray highly strung poetic 
 mood seemed matchless. Picture to yourself three mills, 
 charmingly situated among pretty islets with imbayed banks, 
 and crowned with clumps of trees, in the midst of a meadow 
 of water ; for what other name can I give to the aquatic 
 vegetation, so brightly tinted, which carpets the stream, floats 
 on its surface, follows its eddies, yields to its caprices, and 
 bends to the turmoil of waters lashed by the mill-wheels. 
 Here and there rise shoals of pebbles on which the river 
 breaks in a fringe of surf reflecting the sun. Amaryllis, water- 
 lilies, white and yellow, reeds, and phlox dress the banks with 
 glorious hues. A crumbling bridge of rotting timbers, its 
 piles hung with flowers, its balustrade covered with herbage 
 and velvety mosses, and hanging over the stream, but not yet 
 fallen ; time-worn boats, fishing-nets, the monotonous song 
 of a shepherd, ducks paddling from isle to isle, or preening 
 themselves on the shoals If jard, as the coarse gravel de- 
 posited by the Loire is called ; miller's men, a cap over one 
 ear, loading their mules ; every detail made the scene strik- 
 ingly artless. Then, beyond the bridge, imagine two or 
 three farms, a dovecote, sundry turrets, thirty houses or more, 
 standing apart in gardens divided by hedges of honeysuckle, 
 jessamine, and clematis ; heaps of manure in front of every 
 door, and domestic fowls in the road and you see the village 
 of Pont-du-Ruan, a pretty hamlet crowned with an old church 
 of characteristic style, a church of the time of the Crusades, 
 such as painters love for their pictures. Set it all in the midst 
 of ancient walnut trees, of young poplars with their pale, gold 
 foliage, add some elegant dwellings rising from broad meadows 
 where the eye loses itself under the warm misty sky, and you 
 will have some idea of the thousand beauties of this lovely 
 country. 
 
 I followed the lane to Sach6 along the left bank of the 
 river, noting the details of the hills that broke the line of the 
 opposite shore. At last I reached a park of venerable trees
 
 THE LILY Of THE VALLEY. 25 
 
 which showed me that I was at Frapesle. I arrived exactly 
 as the bell was ringing for late breakfast. After this meal, 
 my host, never suspecting that I had come from Tours on 
 foot, took me all over his grounds, and from every part of 
 them I could see the valley under various aspects ; here 
 through a vista and there spread out before me. In many 
 places my gaze was attracted to the horizon by the broad 
 golden tide of the Loire, where between the rolling hills sails 
 showed their fantastic shapes flying before the wind. As I 
 climbed a ridge I could admire for the first time the chateau 
 of Azay, a diamond with a thousand facets with the Indre for 
 a setting, and perched on piles buried in flowers. There in a 
 dell I saw the romantic mass of the chateau of Sache, a melan- 
 choly spot, full of harmonies too sad for superficial minds, 
 but dear to poets whose spirit is stricken. I myself at a later 
 time loved its silence, its huge hoary trees and the mystery 
 that seemed to hang over that deserted hollow. And still, 
 each time I caught sight, on the shoulder of the next hill, of 
 the pretty little chateau I had seen and chosen at a first 
 glance, my eye lingered on it with delight. 
 
 " Oh, ho ! " said my host, reading in my eyes an eager de- 
 sire such as a youth of my age expresses without guile, "you 
 scent a pretty woman from afar as a dog scents game." 
 
 I did not like the tone of this remark, but I asked the name 
 of the place and of the owner. 
 
 "It is Clochegourde," said he, "a pretty house belonging 
 to the Comte de Mortsauf, the representative of a family 
 noted in the history of Touraine, whose fortune dates from 
 the time of Louis XL, and whose name reveals the adventure 
 to which he owes his arms and his fame. He is descended 
 from a man who survived hanging. The arms borne by the 
 Mortsaufs are : Or, on a cross potent and counter-potent, 
 sable, a fleur-de-lys rooted, of the field. Motto, Dim saulve 
 le Roi notre Sire (God save our Sire the King). 
 
 "The Count came to settle here on the return of the
 
 26 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 Emigres. The house of Lenoncourt-Givry becomes extinct 
 in his wife, who was a Demoiselle de Lenoncourt ; Madame 
 de Mortsauf is an only child. The small wealth of this 
 family is in such strong contrast to the splendor of their 
 names that from pride or perhaps from necessity they 
 always live at Clochegourde, and see no one. Hitherto their 
 devotion to the Bourbons may have justified their isolation ; 
 but I doubt whether the King's return will change their way 
 of living. When I settled here last year I paid them a call 
 of politeness ; they returned it and asked us to dinner. 
 Then the winter kept us apart for some months and political 
 events delayed our return, for I have only lately come home 
 to Frapesle. Madame de Mortsauf is a woman who might 
 take the first place anywhere." 
 
 " Does she often go to Tours ? " 
 
 "She never goes there. Yes," he added, correcting him- 
 self, " she went there quite lately, on the occasion when the 
 Due d'Angouleme passed through, and was very gracious to 
 Monsieur de Mortsauf." 
 
 "It is she! " I cried. 
 
 "She! Who?" 
 
 "A woman with beautiful shoulders." 
 
 "You will find many women with beautiful shoulders in 
 Touraine," said he, laughing ; " but if you are not tired, we 
 can cross the river and go up to Clochegourde, where you 
 may possibly recognize your fine shoulders." 
 
 I agreed, not without reddening from pleasure and shyness. 
 By about four o'clock we reached the house on which my eyes 
 had so fondly lingered. This little chateau, which looked 
 well in the landscape, is, in fact, a modest building. It has 
 five windows in front ; that at each end of the south front 
 projects by about two yards, giving the effect of wings and 
 adding to the importance of the house. The middle window 
 serves as the door, whence double steps lead to a garden ex- 
 tending in terraces down to a meadow bordering the Indre.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 27 
 
 Though this meadow is divided by a lane from the lowest ter- 
 race shaded by a row of ailanthus and acacia trees, it looks 
 like part of the grounds, for the lane is sunk between the ter- 
 race on one side and a thick hedge on the other. The slope 
 between the house and the river is taken advantage of to 
 avoid the inconvenience of being so near the water without 
 losing the pretty effect. Under the dwelling-house are the 
 stables, coach-houses, storerooms, and kitchens, with doors 
 under archways. 
 
 The roof is pleasingly curved at the angles, the dormer 
 windows have carved mullions, and finials of lead over the 
 gables. The slates, neglected no doubt during the revolution, 
 are covered with the rust-colored and orange, clinging lichens 
 that grow on houses facing the south. The glazed door at 
 the top of the steps has above it a little campanile on which 
 may be seen the achievement of the Blamont-Chauvrys : Quar- 
 terly gules, a pale vair between two hands proper, and or, two 
 lances sable in chevron. The motto, See, but touch not, struck 
 me strangely. The supporters, a griffin and a dragon chained 
 or, had a good effect in sculpture. The revolution had dam- 
 aged the ducal coronet and the crest, a palm branch vert 
 fruited or. Senart, secretary to the Committee of Public 
 Safety, was bailiff of Sache till 1781, which accounts for this 
 destruction. 
 
 The decorative character gives an elegant appearance to 
 this country-house, as delicately finished as a flower, and 
 hardly seeming to weigh on the ground. Seen from the val- 
 ley, the first floor looks as if it were the second floor ; but on 
 the side toward the courtyard it is on the same level as the 
 wide path ending in a lawn graced with raised flower-beds. 
 To right and left vineyards, orchards, and some arable land 
 dotted with walnut trees slope away steeply, surrounding the 
 house with verdure down to the brink of the river, which is 
 bordered on this side with clumps of trees whose various tints 
 of green have been grouped by the hand of nature.
 
 28 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 As I mounted the winding road to Clochegourde, I ad- 
 mired these well-assorted masses, and breathed an atmosphere 
 redolent of happiness. Has our moral nature, like physical 
 nature, electric discharges and swift changes of temperature ? 
 My heart throbbed in anticipation of the secret events which 
 were about to transform it once for all, as animals grow spor- 
 tive before fine weather. This, the most important day in 
 my life, was not devoid of any circumstance that could con- 
 tribute to sanctify it. Nature had dressed herself like a 
 maiden going forth to meet her beloved ; my soul had 
 heard her voice for the first time, my eyes had admired her, 
 as fruitful, as various as my imagination had painted her in 
 those day-dreams at school of which I have told you some- 
 thing, but too little to explain their influence over me, for 
 they were as an apocalypse, figuratively predicting my life ; 
 every incident of it, happy or sad, is connected with them by 
 some whimsical image, by ties visible only to the eye of the 
 soul. 
 
 We crossed an outer court, enclosed by the outbuildings of 
 a rural habitation a granary, a winepress, cow-houses, and 
 stables. A servant, warned by the barking of a watchdog, 
 came out to meet us, and told us that Monsieur le Comte, 
 who had gone to Azay in the morning, would presently re- 
 turn, no doubt, and that Madame la Comtesse was at home. 
 My host looked at me. I trembled to think that he might 
 not choose to call on Madame de Mortsauf in her husband's 
 absence, but he bade the servant to announce our names. 
 
 Driven by childish eagerness, I hurried into the long ante- 
 room which ran across the house. 
 
 " Come in, pray," said a golden voice. 
 
 Although Madame de Mortsauf had spoken but one word 
 at the ball, I recognized her voice, which sank into my soul 
 and filled it as a sunbeam fills and gilds a prisoner's cell. 
 Then, reflecting that she might recognize me, I longed to fly ; 
 it was too late ; she appeared at the drawing-room door, and
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 29 
 
 our eyes met. Which of us reddened most deeply I do not 
 know. She returned to her seat in front of an embroidery 
 frame, the servant having pushed forward two chairs ; she 
 finished drawing her needle through as an excuse for her 
 silence, counted two or three stitches, and then raised her 
 head, that was at once proud and gentle, to ask Monsieur de 
 Chessel to what happy chance she owed the pleasure of his 
 visit. 
 
 Though curious to know the truth as to my appearance 
 there, she did not look at either of us ; her eyes were fixed on 
 the river ; but from the way she listened, it might have been 
 supposed that she had the faculty of the blind, and knew all 
 the agitations of my soul by the least accent of speech. And 
 this was the fact. 
 
 Monsieur de Chessel mentioned my name and sketched my 
 biography. I had come to Tours some few months since 
 with my parents, who had brought me home when the war 
 threatened Paris. She saw in me a son of Touraine, to whom 
 the province was unknown, a young man exhausted by exces- 
 sive work, sent to Frapesle to rest and amuse myself, and to 
 whom he had shown his estate, as it was my first visit. I 
 had told him, only on reaching the bottom of the hill, that I 
 had walked from Tours that morning ; and fearing over- 
 fatigue, as my health was feeble, he had ventured to call at 
 Clochegourde, thinking she would allow me to rest there. 
 Monsieur de Chessel spoke the exact truth. But a genuinely 
 happy chance seems so elaborate an invention, that Madame 
 de Mortsauf was still distrustful ; she looked at me with eyes 
 so cold and stern that I lowered mine, as much from a vague 
 sense of humiliation as to hide the tears I withheld from fall- 
 ing. The haughty lady saw that my brow was moist with 
 sweat ; perhaps, too, she guessed the tears, for she offered me 
 any refreshment I might need with a comforting kindness 
 which restored my powers of speech. 
 
 I blushed like a girl caught in the wrong, and in a voice,
 
 30 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 quavering like an old man's, I replied with thanks, but declin- 
 ing anything. 
 
 "All I wish," I said, raising my eyes, which met hers for 
 the second time, but for an instant as short as a lightning- 
 flash, " is that you will allow me to remain here ; I am so 
 stiff with fatigue that I cannot walk." 
 
 ' ' How can you doubt the hospitality of our lovely prov- 
 ince?" said she. " You will perhaps give us the pleasure of 
 seeing you at dinner at Clochegourde ? ' ' she added to her 
 neighbor. 
 
 I flashed a look at my friend, a look so full of entreaty that 
 he beat about the bush a little to accept this invitation, which, 
 by its form, required a refusal. 
 
 Though knowledge of the world enabled Monsieur de 
 Chessel to distinguish so subtle a shade, an inexperienced 
 youth believes so firmly in the identity of word and thought 
 in a handsome woman that I was immensely surprised when, 
 as we went home in the evening, my host said, half-jokingly, 
 to me 
 
 "I stayed because you were dying to do so; but if you 
 cannot patch matters up, I may be in a scrape with my neigh- 
 bors." 
 
 This " if you cannot patch matters up " gave me matter for 
 thought. If Madame de Mortsauf liked me, she could not be 
 annoyed with the man who had introduced me to her. So 
 Monsieur de Chessel thought I might be able to interest her 
 was not this enough to give me the power? This solution 
 confirmed my hopes at a moment when I needed such support. 
 
 "That is hardly possible," replied Monsieur de Chessel, 
 " my wife expects us." 
 
 "She has you every day," replied the Countess, "and we 
 can send her a message. Is she alone ? " 
 
 " She has the Abb< de Qu6lus with her." 
 
 " Very well, then," said she, rising to ring the bell, " you 
 will dine with us."
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 31 
 
 This time Monsieur de Chessel thought her sincere, and 
 gave me a look of congratulation. 
 
 As soon as I was certain of spending a whole evening under 
 this roof, I felt as if eternity were mine. To many an un- 
 happy wretch to-morrow is a word devoid of meaning, and at 
 this moment I was one of those who have no belief in to- 
 morrow; when I had a few hours to call my own, I crowded 
 a lifetime of rapture into them. 
 
 Madame de Mortsauf then began to talk of the country, of 
 the crops, of the vines subjects to which I was a stranger. 
 In the mistress of a house this behavior argues want of breed- 
 ing, or else contempt for the person she thus shuts out of the 
 conversation, but in the Countess it was simply embarrass- 
 ment. Though at first I fancied she was affecting to regard 
 me as a boy, and envied the privilege of thirty years, which 
 allowed Monsieur de Chessel to entertain his fair neighbor 
 with such serious matters, of which I understood nothing, 
 and though I tormented myself by thinking that everything 
 was done for him ; within a few months I knew all that a 
 woman's silence can mean and how many thoughts are dis- 
 guised by desultory conversation. 
 
 I at once tried to sit at my ease in my chair ; then I per- 
 ceived the advantage of my position, and gave myself up to 
 the delight of hearing the Countess' voice. The breath of 
 her soul lurked behind the procession of syllables, as sound is 
 divided in the notes of a keyed flute ; it died undulating on 
 the ear, whence it seemed to drive the blood. Her way of 
 pronouncing words ending in * was like the song of birds; 
 her pronunciation of ch was like a caress ; and the way in 
 which spoke the letter / betrayed a despotic heart. She un- 
 consciously expanded the meaning of words, and led one's 
 spirit away into a supernatural world. How often have I per- 
 mitted a discussion to go on which I might have ended ; how 
 often have I allowed myself to be unjustly blamed, merely to 
 hear that music of the human voice, to breathe the air that
 
 32 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 came from her lips so full of her soul, to clasp that spoken 
 light with as much ardor as I could have thrown into pressing 
 the Countess to my heart ! What a song, as of some joyful 
 swallow, when she could laugh ; but what a ring, as of a swan 
 calling to its fellow-swans, when she spoke of her sorrows ! 
 
 The Countess' inattention to me allowed me to study her. 
 My eyes feasted as they gazed at the lovely speaker ; they 
 embraced her form, kissed her feet, played with the ringlets 
 of her hair. And all the time I was a prey to the terror 
 which only those can understand who have, in the course of 
 their lives, known the immeasurable joys of a genuine pas- 
 sion. I was afraid lest she should detect my gaze fixed on 
 the spot between her shoulders which I had kissed so ardently. 
 My fear whetted the temptation, and I yielded to it. I looked, 
 my eye rent the stuff of her dress, and I saw a mole that 
 marked the top of the pretty line between her shoulders, a 
 speck lying on milk; this, ever since the ball, had blazed out 
 of the darkness in which the sleep of youths seems to float 
 when their imagination is ardent and their life chaste. 
 
 I can sketch for you the principal features which would 
 everywhere have attracted attention to the Countess ; but the 
 most exact drawing, the warmest glow of color, would express 
 nothing of it. Her face is one of those of which no one 
 could give a true portrait but the impossible artist whose hand 
 can paint the glow of inward fires, and render the luminous 
 essence which science denies, which language has no word 
 for, but which a lover sees. Her mass of fine, fair hair often 
 gave her headaches, caused no doubt by a sudden rush of 
 blood to the head. Her rounded forehead, prominent like 
 that of La Gioconda, seemed to be full of unspoken ideas, 
 of suppressed feelings flowers drowned in bitter waters. 
 Her eyes were greenish, with spots of hazel, and always pale 
 in color; but when her children were concerned, of if she 
 was betrayed into any vehement emotion of joy or grief, 
 rare in the life of a resigned wife, her eye could flash with a
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 33 
 
 subtle flame, which seemed to have derived its fire from the 
 deepest springs of life, and which would, no doubt, dry them 
 up ; a lightning gleam that has wrung tears from me when 
 she shed on me her terrible disdain, and that she found ade- 
 quate to abash the boldest gaze. 
 
 A Greek nose that Phidias might have chiseled, joined by 
 a double curve to lips of exquisite shape, gave strength to 
 her oval face ; and her complexion, like a camellia-petal, was 
 charmingly tinted with tender rose in the cheeks. She was not 
 thin, but this did not detract from the grace of her figure, 
 nor from the roundness that made every outline beautiful, 
 though fully developed. You will at once understand the 
 character of this perfection when I tell you that at the junc- 
 tion with the upper arm of the dazzling bosom that had 
 bewitched me, there could be no roll nor wrinkle. Her 
 throat, where her head was set on, showed none of those 
 hollows that make some women's necks look like tree-trunks ; 
 the muscles showed no cords, and every line was curved with a 
 grace as distracting to the eyes as to the painter's brush. A 
 delicate down died away on her cheeks and on the back of 
 her neck, catching the light with a silky sheen. Her ears 
 were small and shapely the ears of a slave and of a mother, 
 she used to say. Later, when I dwelt in her heart, she would 
 say, " Here comes Monsieur de Mortsauf," and be quite right, 
 when I could as yet hear nothing I, whose hearing is re- 
 markably keen. Her arms were beautiful ; her hands, with 
 their turned-up finger-tips, were long, and the nails set into 
 the flesh as in antique statues. 
 
 I should offend you by attributing greater beauty to a flat 
 figure than to a full one, but that you are an exception. A 
 round figure is a sign of strength ; but women who are built 
 so are imperious, willful, and voluptuous rather than tender. 
 Women who are flatly formed are, on the contrary, self-sacri- 
 ficing, full of refinement, and inclined to melancholy; they 
 are more thoroughly women. A flat figure is soft and supple ; 
 3
 
 34 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 a full one is rigid and jealous. Now you know the kind 
 of shape she had. She had the foot of a lady, a foot that 
 walks little, is easily tired, and is engaging to look upon when 
 it peeps from under the petticoat. 
 
 Though she was the mother of two children, I have never 
 met with any woman more genuinely maidenly. Her expres- 
 sion was so girlish, and at the same time amazed and dreamy, 
 that it brought the eye back to gaze, as a painter invites it 
 back to a face in which his genius has embodied a world of 
 feelings. Her visible qualities, indeed, can only be expressed 
 by comparisons. Do you remember the wild, austere fragrance 
 of a heath we plucked on our way home from the Villa Dio- 
 dati, a flower you admired so much for its coloring of pink 
 and black then you will understand how this woman could 
 be elegant though so far from the world, natural in her expres- 
 sions, refining all that came to belong to her pink and black. 
 Her frame had the green tenderness we admire in leaves but 
 just opened ; her mind had the intense concentration of a 
 savage's ; she was a child in feeling sobered by grief, the mis- 
 tress of the house, and an unwedded soul. 
 
 She was charming without artifice in her way of sitting 
 down, of rising, of being silent, or of throwing out a remark. 
 Habitually reserved, and vigilant as the sentinel on whom the 
 safety of all depends, ever on the watch for disaster, she some- 
 times smiled in a way that betrayed a laughing spirit buried 
 under the demeanor required by her mode of life. Her 
 womanly vanity had become a mystery ; she inspired romance 
 instead of the gallant attentions which most women love ; she 
 revealed her genuine self, her living fire, her blue dreams, as 
 the sky shows between the parting clouds. This involuntary 
 self-betrayal made a man thoughtful, unless, indeed, he were 
 conscious of an unshed tear, dried by the fire of his passion. 
 
 The rareness of her movements, and yet more of her looks 
 for she never looked at anybody but her children gave in- 
 credible solemnity to all she did and said, when she did or
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 35 
 
 said a thing with that manner which a woman can assume if 
 she is compromising her dignity by an avowal. 
 
 Madame de Mortsauf was, on that day, wearing a cambric 
 gown with fine pink stripes, a collar with a broad hem, a black 
 sash and black shoes. Her hair was simply twisted into a 
 knot and held by a tortoise-shell comb. 
 
 There is the promised sketch. But the constant emanation 
 of her spirit on all who were about her, that nourishing element 
 diffused in waves as the sun diffuses its light, her essential 
 nature, her attitude in serene hours, her resignation in a storm, 
 all the' chances -of life which develop character, depend, like 
 atmospheric changes, on unexpected and transient circum- 
 stances which have no resemblance to each other excepting in 
 the background against which they are seen. This will inev- 
 itably be depicted as part of the incidents of this narrative a 
 true domestic epic, as great in the sight of the wise as tragedies 
 are in the eyes of the crowd ; a tale which will interest you, 
 both by the part I played in it and by its resemblance to that 
 of many a woman's destiny. 
 
 Everything at Clochegourde was characterized by English 
 neatness. The drawing-room in which the Countess was 
 sitting was paneled throughout and painted in two shades of 
 stone color. On the chimney-shelf stood a clock in a mahogany 
 case surmounted by a tazza, and flanked by two large white- 
 and-gold china jars in which stood two Cape heaths. On the 
 console was a lamp ; in front of the fireplace a backgammon 
 board. Thick cotton ropes looped back the plain white calico 
 curtains without any trimmings. Holland covers, bound with 
 green galoon, were over all the chairs, and the worsted work 
 stretched on the Countess' frame sufficiently revealed the 
 reason for so carefully hiding the furniture. This simplicity 
 was really dignified. No room, of all I have seen since, has 
 ever filled me with such a rush of pregnant impressions as I 
 then felt crowding on me in that drawing-room at Cloche-
 
 36 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 gourde a room as still and remote as its mistress' life, and 
 telling of the monastic regularity of her occupations. Most 
 of my ideas, even my most daring flights in science or in poli- 
 tics, have had their birth there, as perfumes emanate from 
 flowers; and here grew the unknown plant which shed its 
 fertilizing power over me ; here glowed the solar heat which 
 developed all that was good and dried up all that was bad 
 in me. 
 
 From the window the view extended over the valley from 
 the hill where Pont-de-Ruan lies scattered, to the chateau of 
 Azay, and the eye could follow the curves of the opposite 
 downs varied by the turrets of Frapesle, the church, village, 
 and manor-house of Sache towering above the meadow-land. 
 The scene, in harmony with a peaceful existence, unvaried 
 by any emotions but those of family life, breathed peace into 
 the soul. If I had seen her for the first time here, between 
 the Comte de Mortsauf and her children, instead of discover- 
 ing her in the splendor of her ball dress, I could not have 
 stolen that delirious kiss, for which at this moment I felt 
 some remorse, believing that it might wreck the future pros- 
 pects of my passion ! No, in the gloomy temper begotten of 
 my sad life, I should have knelt before her, have kissed her 
 little shoes, have dropped some tears on them, and, without 
 trepidation, fear or regret, have thrown myself into the 
 Indre. 
 
 But, having breathed the jessamine freshness of her skin 
 and tasted the milk in that cup of love, my soul was filled 
 with longing and hope for human joys : I would live, I would 
 wait for the hour of fulfillment as a savage looks out for the 
 moment of revenge. I longed to swing from the branches, 
 to rush among the vines, to wallow in the Indre ; my com- 
 panions should be the silence of the night, the languor of 
 living, the heat of the sun, that I might eat at my leisure the 
 delicious apple I had bitten into. If she had asked me for 
 the singing-flower, or the riches buried by Morgan the de-
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 37 
 
 stroyer, I would have found them for her only to obtain the 
 real riches, the speechless blossom that I longed for. 
 
 When I roused myself from the dream into which I had 
 been thrown by contemplating my idol, during which a ser- 
 vant had come in to speak to her, I heard her talking of the 
 Count. Then only did it strike me that a woman belonged 
 to her husband. The thought made my brain reel. I felt a 
 fierce but dreary curiosity to see the possessor of this treasure. 
 Two feelings were uppermost hatred and fear; hatred, which 
 recognized no obstacle and measured every difficulty without 
 dread ; fear, vague indeed but genuine, of the coming strug- 
 gle, of its result, and, above all, of Her. A prey to inde- 
 scribable presentiments, I dreaded the handshaking which is 
 so undignified ; I had visions of those elastic difficulties 
 against which the firmest will is battered and blunted ; I 
 feared the power of inertia, which in our day deprives social 
 life of the moments of climax that passionate souls crave for. 
 
 " Here comes Monsieur de Mortsauf," said she. 
 
 I started to my feet like a frightened horse. Though this 
 impulse did not escape the notice of either Monsieur de Ches- 
 sel or the Countess, I was spared any speechless comment, for 
 a diversion was effected by a little girl, of about six years 
 old as I supposed, who came in saying 
 
 "Here is my father." 
 
 "Well, Madeleine?" said her mother. 
 
 The child gave her hand to Monsieur de Chessel when he 
 held out his, and looked at me fixedly after making an aston- 
 ished little curtsey. 
 
 "Are you satisfied with her health?" said Monsieur de 
 Chessel to the Countess. 
 
 "She is better," replied the mother, stroking the little 
 girl's hair as she sat huddled in her lap. 
 
 A question from Monsieur de Chessel taught me the fact that 
 Madeleine was nine years old ; I showed some surprise at my 
 mistake, and my astonishment brought a cloud to the mother's
 
 38 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 brow. My friend shot me one of those looks by which men 
 of the world give us a second education. This was, no doubt, 
 a mother's wound which might not be opened or touched. A 
 frail creature, with colorless eyes and a skin as white as porce- 
 lain lighted from within, Madeleine would probably not have 
 lived in the air of a town. Country air, and the care with 
 which her mother brooded over her, had kept the flame 
 alive in a body as delicate as a plant grown in a hot-house in 
 defiance of the severity of a northern climate. Though she 
 was not at all like her mother, she seemed to have her mother's 
 spirit, and that sustained her. Her thin, black hair, sunken 
 eyes, hollow cheeks, lean arms, and narrow chest told of a 
 struggle between life and death, an unceasing duel in which 
 the Countess had hitherto been victorious. The child made 
 an effort to be gay, no doubt to spare her mother suffering ; 
 for now and again, when she was unobserved, she languished 
 like a weeping-willow. You might have taken her for a gypsy 
 child suffering from hunger, who had begged her way across 
 country, exhausted but brave, and dressed for her public. 
 
 " Where did you leave Jacques?" asked her mother, kiss- 
 ing her on the white line that parted her hair into two bands 
 like a raven's wings. 
 
 " He is coming with my father." 
 
 The Count at this moment came in, leading his little boy 
 by the hand. Jacques, the very image of his sister, showed 
 the same signs of weakliness. Seeing these two fragile chil- 
 dren by the side of such a magnificently handsome mother, it 
 was impossible not to understand the causes of the grief which 
 gave pathos to the Countess' brow and made her silent as to 
 the thoughts which are confided to God alone, but which 
 stamp terrible meaning on the forehead. Monsieur de Mort- 
 sauf, as he bowed to me, gave me a glance not so much of 
 inquiry as of the awkward uneasiness of a man whose distrust 
 arises from his want of practical observation and analysis. 
 
 After mentioning my name, and what had brought me
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 39 
 
 thither, his wife gave him her seat and left the room. The 
 children, whose eyes centred in their mother's as if they 
 derived their light from her, wanted to go with her; she said, 
 " Stay here, my darlings," and laid her finger on her lips. 
 
 They obeyed, but they looked sad. 
 
 Oh ! To hear that word "darling," what task might one 
 not have undertaken ? Like the children, I felt chilled when 
 she was no longer there. 
 
 My name changed the Count's impulses with regard to me. 
 From being cold and supercilious, he became, if not affection- 
 ate, at least politely pressing, showed me every mark of con- 
 sideration, and seemed happy to see me. Long ago my father 
 had devoted himself to play a noble but inconspicuous part 
 for our sovereigns, full of danger, but possibly useful. When 
 all was lost, and Napoleon had climbed to the highest pin- 
 nacle, like many secret conspirators, he had taken refuge in 
 the peace of a provincial life and quiet home, bowing before 
 accusations as cruel as they were unmerited the inevitable 
 reward of gamblers who stake all for all or nothing, and col- 
 lapse after having been the pivot of the political machine. I, 
 knowing nothing of the fortunes, the antecedents, or the pros- 
 pects of my own family, was equally ignorant of the details 
 of this forgotten history which Monsieur de Mortsauf remem- 
 bered. However, if the antiquity of my name, in his eyes 
 the most precious hallmark a man could possess, might justify 
 a reception which made me blush, I did not know the real 
 reason until later. For the moment the sudden change put me 
 at my ease. When the two children saw that the conversa- 
 tion was fairly started among us three, Madeleine slipped her 
 head from under her father's hand, looked at the open door, 
 and glided out like an eel, followed by Jacques. They joined 
 their mother, for I heard them talking and trotting about in 
 the distance, like the hum of bees around the hive that is their 
 home. 
 
 I studied the Comte de Mortsauf, trying to guess at his
 
 40 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 character, but I was so far interested by some leading features 
 to go no further than a superficial examination of his counte- 
 nance. Though he was no more than five-and-forty, he 
 looked nearly sixty, so rapidly had he aged in the general 
 wreck which closed the seventeenth century. The fringe of 
 hair, like a monk's, which framed his bald head, ended over 
 his ears in grizzled locks on his temples. His face had a re- 
 mote resemblance to that of a white wolf with a blood-stained 
 muzzle, for his nose was hot and red, like that of a man 
 whose constitution is undermined, whose digestion is weak, 
 and his blood vitiated by early disease. His flat forehead, 
 too wide for a face that ended in a point, was furrowed across 
 at unequal distances, the result of an open-air life, and not of 
 intellectual labors, of constant ill-fortune, and not of the 
 effort to defy it. His cheek-bones, high and sunburnt, while 
 the rest of his face was sallow, showed that his frame was so 
 strongly built as to promise a long life. 
 
 His bright, tawny, hard eye fell on you like winter sun- 
 shine, luminous without heat, restless without thought, dis- 
 trustful without purpose. His mouth was coarse and domi- 
 neering, his chin long and flat. 
 
 He was tall and thin, with the air of a gentleman who 
 relies on a conventional standard of worth, who feels himself 
 superior to his neighbor by right, inferior in fact. The 
 easy-going habits of a country life made him neglectful of his 
 person ; his clothes were those of a country proprietor, 
 regarded alike by the peasants and by his neighbors as merely 
 representing a landed estate. His brown, sinewy hands 
 showed that he never wore gloves, unless for riding or on 
 Sunday to go to church. His shoes were clumsy. 
 
 Although ten years of exile, and ten of agricultural life, 
 had thus affected his appearance, he still bore traces of noble 
 birth. The most rancorous Liberal a word not then coined 
 would at once have discerned in him the chivalrous loyalty, 
 the unfading convictions of a constant reader of the "Quo-
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 41 
 
 tidienne," and having admired him as a religious man, de- 
 voted to his party, frank as to his political antipathies, inca- 
 pable of being personally serviceable to his side, very capable 
 of ruining it, and ignorant of the state of affairs in France. 
 The Count was, in fact, one of those upright men who yield 
 not a jot, and obstinately bar all progress, valuable to die 
 weapon in hand at the post assigned to them, but stingy 
 enough to give their life rather than their money. 
 
 During dinner I detected in the hollows of his faded 
 cheeks, and in the glances he stole at his children, the traces 
 of certain importunate thoughts which came to die on the 
 surface. Who that saw him could fail to understand him ? 
 Who would not have accused him of having transmitted to 
 his children their lack of vitality ! But even if he blamed 
 himself, he allowed no one else the right of condemning 
 him. He was as bitter as an authority consciously at fault, 
 but without sufficient magnanimity or charm to make up for 
 the quota of suffering he had thrown into the scale ; and 
 that his private life must be full of harshness could be seen 
 in his hard features and ever-watchful eyes. 
 
 Thus, when his wife came back, with the two children 
 clinging to her, I apprehended disaster, as when walking 
 over the vaults of a cellar the foot has a sort of sense of 
 the depths below. Looking at these four persons together, 
 looking at them, as I did, each in turn, studying their 
 faces and their attitude toward each other, thoughts of 
 melancholy fell upon my heart as fine gray rain throws a 
 mist over a fair landscape after a bright sunrise. 
 
 When the immediate subject of conversation was exhausted, 
 the Count again spoke of me, overlooking Monsieur de Ches- 
 sel, and telling his wife various facts relating to my family, 
 which were perfectly unknown to me. He asked me how old 
 I was. When I told him, the Countess repeated my start of 
 surprise at hearing the age of her little girl. She thought me 
 perhaps about fourteen. This, as I afterward learned, was a
 
 42 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 second tie that bound her to me so closely. I read it in her 
 soul. Her motherly instinct was aroused, enlightened by a 
 late sunbeam which gave her a hope. On seeing me at past 
 twenty so fragile and yet so wiry, a voice whispered to her per- 
 haps, " They will live ! " She looked at me inquisitively, and 
 I felt at the moment that much ice was melted between us. 
 She seemed to have a thousand questions to ask, but reserved 
 them all. 
 
 " If you are ill from overwork," said she, " the air of our 
 valley will restore you." 
 
 "Modern education is fatal to children," the Count said. 
 "We cram them with mathematics, we beat them with ham- 
 mers of science, and wear them out before their time. You 
 must rest here," he went on. " You are crushed under the 
 avalanche of ideas that has been hurled down on you. What 
 an age must we look forward to after all this teaching brought 
 down to the meanest capacity, unless we can forefend the evil 
 by placing education once more in the hands of religious 
 bodies." 
 
 This speech was indeed the forerunner of what he said one 
 day at an election when refusing to vote for a man whose 
 talents might have done good service to the royalist cause : 
 "I never trust a clever man," said he to the registrar of 
 votes. 
 
 He now proposed to take us round the gardens, and 
 arose. 
 
 " Monsieur " said the Countess. 
 
 " Well, my dear," he replied, turning round with a rough 
 haughtiness that showed how much he wished to be master 
 in his own house, and how little he was so at this time. 
 
 " Monsieur walked from Tours this morning ; Monsieur de 
 Chessel did not know it, and took him for a walk in Fra- 
 pesle." 
 
 "You were very rash," said he to me, " though at your 
 age ," and he wagged his head in token of regret.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 43 
 
 The conversation was then resumed. I very soon found 
 out how perverse his royalism was, and what caution was 
 necessary to swim in his waters without collisions. The 
 servant, now arrayed in livery, announced dinner. Monsieur 
 de Chessel gave his arm to Madame de Mortsauf, and the 
 Count gaily put his hand in mine to go to the dining- 
 room, which was at the opposite end to the drawing-room, 
 on the same floor. 
 
 This room, floored with white tiles made in the country, 
 and wainscoted waist high, was hung with a satin paper 
 divided into large panels framed with borders of fruit and 
 flowers ; the window curtains were of cotton stuff, bound 
 with red ; the sideboards were old Boule inlay, and the wood- 
 work of the chairs, upholstered with needle-work, was of 
 carved oak. The table, though abundantly spread, was not 
 luxurious ; there was old family plate of various dates and 
 patterns, Dresden china not yet in fashion again octagonal 
 water bottles, agate-handled knives, and bottle ands of 
 Chinese lacquer. But there were flowers in varnished tubs, 
 with notched and gilt rims. I was delighted with these old- 
 fashioned things, and I thought the reveillon paper, with its 
 flowered border, superb. 
 
 The glee that filled all my sails hindered me from discerning 
 the insuperable obstacles placed between her and me by this 
 imperturbable life of solitude in the country. I sat by her, 
 at her right, I poured out her wine and water. Yes! Un- 
 hoped-for joy ! I could touch her gown, I ate her bread. 
 Only three hours had gone by, and my life was mingling with 
 hers ! And we were bound together, too, by that terrible kiss, 
 a sort of secret which filled us alike with shame. 
 
 I was defiantly base ; I devoted myself to pleasing the Count, 
 who met all my civilities half-way ; I would have fondled the 
 dog, have been subservient to the children's least whim ; I 
 would have brought them hoops or marbles, have been their 
 horse to drive; I was only vexed that they had not already
 
 44 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 taken possession of me as a thing of their own. Love has its 
 intuition as genius has, and I dimly perceived that his violence 
 and surliness and hostility would be the ruin of my hopes. 
 This dinner was to me a time of exquisite raptures. Finding 
 myself under her roof, I forgot her real coldness and the in- 
 difference that lay beneath the Count's politeness. In love, as 
 in life, there is a period of full .growth where it is self-sufficient. 
 I made some blundering answers, in keeping with the secret 
 tumult of my passions ; but no one could guess this, much less 
 she who knew nothing of love. The rest of the evening was 
 as a dream. 
 
 This beautiful dream came to an end when, by the light of 
 the moon, in the hot fragrant night, I again crossed the Indre 
 amid the white visions that hung over the fields and shore and 
 hills, hearing the thin, monotonous call on one note, melan- 
 choly and incessant, at equal intervals, uttered by some tree- 
 frog, of which I know not the scientific name, but which, since 
 that fateful day, I never hear but with most exquisite and ex- 
 treme delight. 
 
 Here, again, though rather late, I discerned, as elsewhere, 
 the stony insensibility against which all my feelings had hitherto 
 been blunted ; I wondered whether it would be always thus ; 
 I believed myself to be under some fatal influence ; the gloomy 
 incidents of my past life struggled with the purely personal 
 joys I had just experienced. 
 
 Before re-entering Frapesle, I looked back at Clochegourde 
 and saw below a boat, a punt such as in Touraine is called a 
 toue, moored to an ash tree and rocking in the stream. This 
 boat belonged to Monsieur de Mortsauf, who used it for fish- 
 ing. 
 
 "Well," said Monsieur de Chessel, when there was no 
 danger of our being overheard, " I need not ask you if you 
 have found the lady of the beautiful shoulders. You may be 
 congratulated on the welcome you received from Monsieur
 
 TUE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 45 
 
 de Mortsauf. The deuce ! Why, you have taken the citadel 
 at a blow." 
 
 This speech, followed up by the remarks I before mentioned, 
 revived my downcast spirit. I had not spoken a word since 
 leaving Clochegourde, and my host ascribed my silence to 
 happiness. 
 
 "How so?" said I, with a touch of irony, which might 
 have seemed to be the outcome of restrained passion. 
 
 " He never in his life received any one so civilly." 
 
 " I may confess that I was myself astounded at his polite- 
 ness," said I, feeling what bitterness lay behind his words. 
 
 Though I was too much inexperienced in the ways of the 
 world to understand the cause of Monsieur de Chessel's animus, 
 I was struck by the tone which betrayed it. My host was so 
 unlucky as to be named Durand, and he made himself ridicu- 
 lous by renouncing his father's name that of a noted manu- 
 facturer who had made an immense fortune during the revo- 
 lution, and whose wife was the sole heiress of the Chessel 
 family, an old connection of lawyers risen from the citizen 
 class under Henry IV., like most of the Paris magistracy. 
 
 Monsieur de Chessel, ambitious of the highest flight, wished 
 to kill the primitive Durand to attain to the realms he dreamed 
 of. He first called himself Durand de Chessel, then D. de 
 Chessel, then he was Monsieur de Chessel. After the restor- 
 ation he endowed an entail with the title of Count under 
 letters-patent granted by Louis XVIII. His children culled 
 the fruits of his audacity without knowing its magnitude. A 
 speech made by a certain satirical prince long clung to his 
 heels : " Monsieur de Chessel generally has something of the 
 Durand about him," said his highness. And this witticism 
 was long a joy in Touraine. 
 
 Parvenues are like monkeys, and not less dexterous. Seen 
 from above we admire their agility in climbing ; but when 
 they have reached the top, nothing is to be seen but their 
 more shameful side. The wrong side of my entertainer was
 
 46 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 made of meanness puffed up with envy. He and a peer- 
 age are to this day points that cannot meet. To be pre- 
 tentious and justify it is the insolence of strength ; but a 
 man who is beneath the pretentions he owns to is in a con- 
 stantly ridiculous position, which affords a feast to petty 
 minds. Now, Monsieur de Chessel has never walked in the 
 straight path of a strong man ; he has twice been elected 
 deputy, twice rejected of the electors ; one day director-gen- 
 eral, the next nothing at all, not even prefet ; and his suc- 
 cesses and defeats have spoiled his temper and given him the 
 acrid greed of an ambitious failure. Though a fine fellow, 
 intelligent, and capable of high achievement, the spirit of 
 envy perhaps which gives zest to existence in Touraine, 
 where the natives waste their brains in jealous spite was fatal 
 to him in the higher social spheres, where faces that frown at 
 others' fortune are rarely popular, or sulky lips unready to 
 pay compliments but apt at sarcasm. If he had wished for 
 less, he might perhaps have gained more; but he, unfortu- 
 nately, was always proud enough to insist on walking upright. 
 
 At the time of my visit, Monsieur de Chessel was in the 
 dawn of his ambition, royalism smiled on him. He affected 
 grand airs, perhaps, but to me he was the perfection of kind- 
 ness. I liked him, too, for a very simple reason : under his 
 roof I found peace for the first time in my life. The interest 
 he took in me little enough I dare say seemed to me, the 
 hapless outcast of my family, a model of paternal affection. 
 The attentions of hospitality formed such a contrast with the 
 indifference that had hitherto crushed me, that I showed 
 childlike gratitude for being allowed to live unfettered and 
 almost petted. The owners of Frapesle are indeed so inti- 
 mately part of the dawn of my happiness that they dwell in my 
 mind with the memories I love to live in. At a later time, 
 in the very matter of the King's letters-patent, I had the 
 satisfaction of doing my host some little service. 
 
 Monsieur de Chessel spent his fortune with an amount of
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 47 
 
 display that aggrieved some of his neighbors ; he could buy 
 fine horses and smart carriages ; his wife dressed handsomely ; 
 he entertained splendidly ; his servants were more numerous 
 than the manners of the country demand ; he affected the 
 princely. The estate of Frapesle is vast. 
 
 So, as compared with his neighbor, and in the face of all this 
 magnificence, the Comte de Mortsauf, reduced to the family 
 coach, which in Touraine is a cross between a mail-cart and a 
 post-chaise, compelled, too, by his lack of fortune, to make 
 Clochegourde pay, was a tourangeau, a mere gentleman farmer, 
 until the day when royal favor restored his family to unhoped- 
 for dignity. The welcome he had extended to me, the younger 
 son of an impoverished family, whose coat-of-arms dates from 
 the Crusades, had been calculated to throw contempt on the 
 wealth, the woods, the farms and meadows of his neighbor, a 
 man of no birth. 
 
 Monsieur de Chessel had quite understood the Count. In- 
 deed, their intercourse had always been polite, but without 
 the daily exchange, the friendly intimacy which might have 
 existed between Clochegourde and Frapesle, two domains 
 divided only by the river, and whose mistresses could signal 
 to each other from their windows. 
 
 Jealousy, however, was not the only reason for the Comte 
 de Mortsaufs solitary life. His early education had been 
 that given to most boys of good family an insufficient and 
 superficial smattering, on which were grafted the lessons of 
 the world, court manners, and the exercise of high court 
 functions, or some position of dignity. Monsieur de Mortsauf 
 had emigrated just when this second education should have 
 begun, and so missed it. He was one of those who believed 
 in the early restoration of the monarchy in France ; in this con- 
 viction he had spent the years of exile in lamentable idleness. 
 Then, when Conde's army was broken up, after the Count's 
 courage had marked him as one of its most devoted soldiers, 
 he still counted on returning ere long with the white standard,
 
 48 THE LILY Of THE VALLEY. 
 
 and never attempted, like many of the emigres, to lead an 
 industrious life. Perhaps he could not bear to renounce his 
 name in order to earn his bread in the sweat of the toil he 
 despised. 
 
 His hopes, always held over till the morrow, and a sense of 
 honor, too, kept him from engaging in the service of a foreign 
 power. 
 
 Suffering undermined his strength. Long expeditions on 
 foot without sufficient food, and hopes for ever deceived, in- 
 jured his health and discouraged his spirit. By degrees his 
 poverty became extreme. Though to some men misfortune is 
 a tonic, there are others to whom it is destruction, and the 
 Count was one of these. When I think of this unhappy 
 gentleman of Touraine, wandering and sleeping on the high- 
 roads in Hungary, sharing a quarter of a sheep with Prince 
 Esterhazy's shepherds from whom the traveler could beg a 
 loaf which the gentleman would not have accepted from their 
 master, and which he many a time refused at the hands of the 
 foes of France I could never harbor a bitter feeling against 
 the emigre, not even when I saw him ridiculous in his day of 
 triumph. 
 
 Monsieur de MortsauPs white hair had spoken to me of 
 terrible sufferings, and I sympathize with all exiles too strongly 
 to condemn them. The Count's cheerfulness Frenchman 
 and tourangeau as he was quite broke down ; he became 
 gloomy, fell ill, and was nursed out of charity in some Ger- 
 man asylum. His malady was inflammation of the mesentery, 
 which often proves fatal, and which, if cured, brings in its 
 train a capricious temper and almost always hypochondria. 
 His amours, buried in the most secret depths of his soul, where 
 I alone ever unearthed them, were of a debasing character, 
 and not only marred his life at the time, but ruined it for the 
 future. 
 
 After twelve years' misery, he came back to France, whither 
 Napoleon's decree enabled him to return. When, as he
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 49 
 
 crossed the Rhine on foot, he saw the steeple of Strasbourg 
 one fine summer evening, he fainted away. " ' France ! 
 France ! ' I cried. ' This is France ! ' as a child cries out 
 ' Mother ! ' when it is hurt," he told me. 
 
 Born to riches, he was now poor ; born to lead a regiment 
 or govern the state, he had no authority, no prospects ; born 
 healthy and robust, he came home sick and worn out. Bereft 
 of education in a country where men and things had been 
 growing, without interest of any kind, he found himself desti- 
 tute even of physical and moral strength. His want of for- 
 tune made his name a burden to him. His unshaken convic- 
 tions, his former attachment to Conde, his woes, his memories, 
 his ruined health, had given him a touchy susceptibility, 
 which was likely to find small mercy in France, the land of 
 banter. Half-dead, he got as far as le Maine, where, by some 
 accident, due perhaps to the civil war, the revolutionary 
 government had forgotten to sell a farm of considerable 
 extent, which the farmer in possession had clung to, declaring 
 that it was his own. 
 
 When the Lenoncourt family, living at Givry, a chateau 
 not far from this farm, heard that the Comte de Mortsauf had 
 come back, the Due de Lenoncourt went to offer him shelter 
 at Givry till he should have time to arrange his residence. 
 The Lenoncourts were splendidly generous to the Count, who 
 recovered his strength through several months' stay with 
 them, making every effort to disguise his sufferings during this 
 first interval of peace. The Lenoncourts had lost their enor- 
 mous possessions. So far as name was concerned, the Comte 
 de Mortsauf was a suitable match for their daughter; and 
 Mademoiselle de Lenoncourt, far from being averse to marry- 
 ing a man of five-and-thirty, old and ailing for his age, seemed 
 quite content. Her marriage would allow her to live with 
 her aunt, the Duchesse de Verneuil (sister to the Prince de 
 Blamont-Chauvry), who was a second mother to the girl. 
 
 As the intimate friend of the Duchesse de Bourbon, Madame 
 4
 
 50 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 de Verneuil was one of a saintly circle, whose soul was Mon- 
 sieur de Saint-Martin, born in Touraine, and known as le Phi- 
 losophe inconnu (the unrecognized philosopher). The disciples 
 of this philosopher practiced the virtues inculcated by the 
 lofty speculations of mystical Illuminism. This doctrine gives 
 a key to the supernal worlds, accounts for life by a series of 
 transmigrations through which man makes his way to sublime 
 destinies, releases duty from its degradation by the law, views 
 the woes of life with the placid fortitude of the Quaker, and 
 enjoins contempt of pain, by infusing a mysterious maternal 
 regard for the angel within us which we must bear up to 
 heaven. It is stoicism looking for future life. Earnest prayer 
 and pure love are the elements of this creed, which, born in 
 the Catholicism of the Roman Church, reverts to the bosom 
 of primitive Christianity. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Lenoncourt remained attached, however, 
 to the apostolic church, to which her aunt was equally faithful. 
 Cruelly tried by the storms of the revolution, the Duchesse de 
 Verneuil had, toward the close of her life, assumed a hue of 
 impassioned piety which overflowed into the soul of her be- 
 loved niece with " the light of heavenly love and the oil of 
 spiritual joy," to use the words of Saint-Martin. This man 
 of peace and virtuous learning was several times the Countess' 
 guest at Clochegourde after her aunt's death ; to her he had 
 been a constant visitor. When staying at Clochegourde, 
 Saint-Martin could superintend the printing of his latest works 
 by Letourney of Tours. 
 
 Madame de Verneuil, with the inspiration of wisdom that 
 comes to old women who have experienced the storms of life, 
 gave Clochegourde to the young wife that she might have a 
 home of her own. With the good grace of old people 
 which, when they are gracious, is perfection she surrendered 
 the whole house to her niece, reserving only one room, over 
 that she had formerly used, which was taken by the Countess. 
 Her almost sudden death cast a shroud over the joys of the
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 51 
 
 united household, and left a permanent tinge of sadness on 
 Clochegourde as well as on the young wife's superstitious soul. 
 The early days of her married life in Touraine were to the 
 Countess the only period, not indeed of happiness, but of 
 light-heartedness in all her life. 
 
 After the miseries of his life in exile, Monsieur de Mortsauf, 
 thankful to foresee a sheltered existence in the future, went 
 through a sort of healing of the spirit ; he inhaled in this 
 valley the intoxicating fragrance of blossoming hope. Being 
 obliged to consider ways and means, he threw himself into 
 agricultural enterprise, and at first found some delight in it ; 
 but Jacques' birth came like a lightning stroke, blighting the 
 present and the future; the physician pronounced that the 
 child could not live. The Count carefully concealed this 
 sentence of doom from his wife; then he himself consulted a 
 doctor, and had none but crushing answers, confirmed as to 
 their purport by Madeleine's birth. 
 
 These two events, and a sort of inward conviction as to the 
 inevitable end, added to the Count's ill-health. His name 
 extinct ; his young wife, pure and blameless but unhappy in 
 her marriage, doomed to the anxieties of motherhood without 
 knowing its joys all this humus of his past life, filled with 
 the germs of fresh sufferings, fell on his heart and crowned 
 his misery. 
 
 The Countess read the past in the present, and foresaw the 
 future. Though there is nothing so difficult as to make a man 
 happy who feels where he has failed, the Countess attempted 
 the task worthy of an angel. In one day she became a stoic. 
 After descending into the abyss whence she could still see the 
 heavens, she devoted herself, for one man, to the mission 
 which a sister of charity undertakes for the sake of all; and 
 to reconcile him with himself, she forgave him what he could 
 not forgive himself. The Count grew avaricious, she accepted 
 the consequent privations ; he dreaded being imposed upon, 
 as men do whose knowledge of the world has filled them with
 
 52 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 repulsions, and she resigned herself to solitude and to his dis- 
 trust of men without a murmur ; she used all a woman's wiles 
 to make him wish for what was right, and he thus credited 
 himself with ideas and enjoyed in his home the pleasures of 
 superiority which he could not have known elsewhere. 
 
 Finally, having inured herself to the path of married life, 
 she determined never to leave her home at Clochegourde; for 
 she perceived in her husband a hysterical nature whose eccen- 
 tricities, in a neighborhood so full of envy and gossip, might 
 be interpreted to the injury of their children. Thus nobody 
 had a suspicion of Monsieur de Mortsauf's incapacity and 
 aberrations ; she had clothed the ruin with a thick hanging 
 of ivy. The Count's uncertain temper, not so much discon- 
 tented as malcontent, found in his wife a soft and soothing 
 bed on which it might repose, its secret sufferings alleviated 
 by cooling dews. 
 
 This sketch is a mere outline of the facts repeated by Mon- 
 sieur de Chessel under the promptings of private spite. His 
 experience of the world had enabled him to unravel some of 
 the mysteries lurking at Clochegourde. But though Madame 
 de Mortsauf's sublime attitude might deceive the world, it 
 could not cheat the alert wits of love. 
 
 When I found myself alone in my little bedroom, an intui- 
 tion of the truth made me start up in bed. I could not 
 endure to be at Frapesle when I might be gazing at the 
 windows of her room. I dressed myself, stole downstairs, 
 and got out of the house by a side-door in a tower where 
 there was a spiral stair. The fresh night air composed my 
 spirit. I crossed the Indre by the Moulin-Rouge bridge, and 
 presently got into the heaven-sent little boat opposite Cloche- 
 gourde, where a light shone in the end window toward Azay. 
 
 Here I fell back on my old dreams, but peaceful now, and 
 soothed by the warbling of the songster of lovers' nights and 
 the single note of the reed-warbler. Ideas stole through my 
 brain like ghosts, sweeping away the clouds which till now
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 53 
 
 had darkened the future. My mind and senses alike were 
 under the spell. With what passion did my longing go forth 
 to her ! How many times did I repeat, like a madman, 
 "Will she be mine?" 
 
 If, during the last few days, the universe had expanded 
 before me, now, in one night, it gained a centre. All my 
 will, all my ambitions were bound up in her; I longed to be 
 all I might for her sake and to fill and heal her aching heart. 
 How lovely was that night spent below her window, in the 
 midst of murmurous waters, plashing over the mill-wheels, 
 and broken by the sound of the clock at Sache as it told the 
 hours. In that night, so full of radiance, when that starry 
 flower illumined my life, I plighted my soul to her with the 
 faith of the hapless Castilian knight whom we laugh at in 
 Cervantes the faith of the beginnings of love. 
 
 At the first streak of dawn in the sky, the first piping bird, 
 I fled to the park of Frapesle ; no early country yokel saw 
 me, no one suspected my escapade, and I slept till the bell 
 rang for breakfast. 
 
 Notwithstanding the heat, when breakfast was over I went 
 down to the meadow to see the Indre and its islets once more, 
 the valley and its downs of which I professed myself an ardent 
 admirer ; but, with a swiftness of foot which might defy that 
 of a runaway horse, I went back to my boat, my willows, and 
 my Clochegourde. All was still and quivering, as the country 
 is at noon. The motionless foliage was darkly defined against 
 the blue sky ; such insects as live in sunshine green dragon- 
 flies and iridescent flies hovered round the ash trees and 
 over the reeds ; the herds chewed the cud in the shade, the 
 red earth glowed in the vineyards, and snakes wriggled over 
 the banks. What a change in the landscape that I had left so 
 cool and coy before going to sleep ! 
 
 On a sudden I leaped out of the punt, and went up the 
 road to come down behind Clochegourde, for I fancied I had
 
 54 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 seen the Count come out. I was not mistaken ; he was 
 skirting a hedge, going no doubt toward a gate opening on 
 to the Azay road by the side of the river. 
 
 " How are you this morning, Monsieur le Comte?" 
 
 He looked at me with a pleased expression. He did not 
 often hear himself thus addressed. 
 
 " Quite well," said he. " You must be very fond of the 
 country to walk out in this heat? " 
 
 " Was I not sent here to live in the open air? " 
 
 " Well, then, will you come and see them reaping my 
 rye?" 
 
 "With pleasure," said I. "But I am, I must confess to 
 you, deplorably ignorant. I do not know rye from wheat, nor 
 a poplar from an aspen ; I know nothing of field-work, nor of 
 the ways of tilling the land." 
 
 "Well, then, come along," said he gleefully, turning back 
 by the hedge. " Come by the little upper gate." 
 
 He walked along inside the hedge, and I outside. 
 
 " You will never learn anything from Monsieur de Chessel," 
 said he ; " he is much too fine a gentleman to trouble him- 
 self beyond looking through his steward's accounts." 
 
 So he showed me his yards and outbuildings, his flower- 
 garden, orchards, and kitchen-gardens. Finally, he led me 
 along the avenue of acacias and ailanthus on the river-bank, 
 where, at the further end, I saw Madame de Mortsauf and 
 the two children. 
 
 A woman looks charming under the play of the frittered, 
 quivering tracery of leaves. Somewhat surprised, no doubt, 
 by my early visit, she did not move, knowing that we should 
 go to her. The Count bid me admire the view of the 
 valley, which, from thence, wore quite a different aspect 
 from any I had seen from the heights. You might have 
 thought yourself in a corner of Switzerland. The meadow- 
 land, channeled by the brooks that tumble into the Indre, 
 stretches far into the distance, and is lost in mist. On the
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 55 
 
 side toward Montvazon spreads a wide extent of verdure ; 
 everywhere else the eye is checked by hills, clumps of trees, 
 and rocks. 
 
 We hastened our steps to greet Madame de Mortsauf, who 
 suddenly dropped the book in which Madeleine was reading, 
 and took Jacques on her knee, in a fit of spasmodic coughing. 
 
 " Why, what is the matter ? " asked the Count, turning pale. 
 
 " He has a relaxed throat," said the mother, who did not 
 seem to see me ; " it will be nothing." 
 
 She was supporting his head and his back, and from her 
 eyes shot two rays that infused life into the poor feeble boy. 
 
 "You are extraordinarily rash," said the Count sharply; 
 " you expose him to a chill from the river and let him sit on 
 a stone bench ! " 
 
 "But, father, the bench is burning," cried Madeleine. 
 
 " They were stifling up above," said the Countess. 
 
 "Women will always be in the right!" said he, turning 
 to me. 
 
 To avoid encouraging or offending him by a look I gazed 
 at Jacques, who complained of a pain in his throat, and his 
 mother carried him away. As she went, she could hear her 
 husband say 
 
 "When a mother has such sickly children, she ought to 
 know how to take care of them." 
 
 Hideously unjust, but his self-conceit prompted him to 
 justify himself at his wife's expense. 
 
 The Countess flew on, up slopes and steps ; she disappeared 
 through the glazed door. 
 
 Monsieur de Mortsauf had seated himself on the bench, 
 his head bent, lost in thought ; my position was intolerable ; 
 he neither looked at me nor spoke. Good-by to the walk 
 during which I meant to make such way in his good graces. 
 I cannot remember ever in my life to have spent a more horri- 
 ble quarter of an hour. I was bathed in perspiration as I 
 considered
 
 56 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 " Shall I leave him ? Shall I stay ? " 
 
 How many gloomy thoughts must have filled his brain to 
 make him forget to go and inquire how Jacques was ! Sud- 
 denly he arose and came up to me. We turned together to 
 look at the smiling scene. 
 
 " We will put off our walk until another day, Monsieur le 
 Comte," I said gently. 
 
 "Nay, let us go," said he. "I am, unfortunately, used 
 to see such attacks and I would give my life without a regret 
 to save the child's." 
 
 "Jacques is better now, my dear; he is asleep," said the 
 golden voice. Madame de Mortsauf appeared at the end of 
 the walk ; she had come back without rancor or bitterness, 
 and she returned my bow. " I am pleased to see that you 
 like Clochegourde," she said to me. 
 
 " Would you like me to go on horseback to fetch Monsieur 
 Deslandes, my dear?" said he, with an evident desire to win 
 forgiveness for his injustice. 
 
 "Do not be anxious," replied she. "Jacques did not 
 sleep last night, that is all. The child is very nervous ; he 
 had a bad dream, and I spent the time telling him stories to 
 send him to sleep again. His cough is entirely nervous. I 
 have soothed it with a gum lozenge, and he has fallen asleep." 
 
 "Poor dear!" said he, taking her hand in both his, and 
 looking at her with moistened eyes. " I knew nothing of it." 
 
 " Why worry you about trifles ? Go and look at your rye. 
 You know that if you are not on the spot the farmers will let 
 gleaners who do not belong to the place clear the fields before 
 the sheaves are carried." 
 
 " I am going to take my first lesson in farming, madame," 
 said I. 
 
 "You have come to a good master," replied she, looking 
 at the Count, whose lips were pursed into the prim smile of 
 satisfaction commonly known as la bouche en coeur (kiss-lips). 
 
 Not until two months later did I know that she had spent
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 57 
 
 that night in dreadful anxiety, fearing that her son had the 
 croup. And I was in the punt, softly lulled by dreams of 
 love, fancying that from her window she might see me adoring 
 the light of the taper which shone on her brow furrowed by 
 mortal fears. 
 
 As we reached the gate, the Count said in a voice full of 
 emotion, " Madame de Mortsauf is an angel ! " 
 
 The words staggered me. I knew the family but slightly 
 as yet, and the natural remorse that comes over a youthful 
 soul in such circumstances cried out to me 
 
 " What right have you to disturb this perfect peace? " 
 
 The Count, enchanted to have for his audience a youth 
 over whom he could so cheaply triumph, began talking of 
 the future prospects of France under the return of the Bour- 
 bons. We chatted discursively, and I was greatly surprised 
 at the strangely childish things he said. He was ignorant of 
 facts as well proven as geometry ; he was suspicious of well- 
 informed persons ; he had no belief in superiority ; he laughed 
 at progress, not perhaps without reason ; and I found in him 
 a vast number of sensitive chords compelling me to take so 
 much care not to wound him that a long conversation was a 
 labor to the mind. When I had thus laid a finger on his 
 failings, I felt my way with as much pliancy as the Countess 
 showed in coaxing them. At a later stage of my life I should 
 undoubtedly have fretted him ; but I was as timid as a child, 
 and thinking that I myself knew nothing, or that men of 
 experience knew everything, I was amazed at the wonders 
 worked at Clochegourde by this patient husbandman. I 
 heard his plans with admiration. Finally a piece of invol- 
 untary flattery which won me the good gentleman's affections 
 I envied him this pretty estate so beautifully situated, as an 
 earthly paradise far superior to Frapesle, the demesne of de 
 Chessel. 
 
 " Frapesle," said I, " is a massive piece of plate, but Cloche- 
 gourde is a casket of precious gems."
 
 58 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 A speech that he constantly repeated, quoting me as the 
 author. 
 
 "Well," said he, "before we came here it was a wilder- 
 ness." 
 
 I was all ears when he talked of his crops and nursery 
 plantations. New to a country life, I overwhelmed him 
 with questions as to the price of things and the processes of 
 agriculture, and he seemed delighted to have to tell me so 
 much. 
 
 "What on earth do they teach you?" he asked in sur- 
 prise. 
 
 And on that very first day, on going in, he whispered to his 
 wife 
 
 " Monsieur Felix is a charming young fellow." 
 
 In the afternoon I wrote to my mother to tell her I should 
 remain at Frapesle, and begged her to send me clothes and 
 linen. 
 
 Knowing nothing of the great revolution that was going 
 on, and of the influence it was to exert over my destinies, I 
 supposed that I should return to Paris to finish my studies, 
 and the law schools would not reopen till early in November; 
 so I had two months and a half before me. 
 
 During the first days of my stay I tried in vain to attach 
 myself to the Count, and it was a time of painful shocks. J 
 detected in this man a causeless irritability and a swiftness to 
 act in cases that were hopeless which frightened me. Now 
 and then there were sudden resuscitations of the brave gen- 
 tleman who had fought so well under Conde, parabolic flashes 
 of a will which, in a day of critical moment, might tear 
 through policy like a bursting shell, and which in some oppor- 
 tunity for resolution and courage may make an Elb6e, a 
 Bonchamp, a Charette of a man condemned to live on his 
 acres. The mere mention of certain possibilities would make 
 his nose quiver and his brow clear, while his eyes flashed 
 lightnings that at once died out. I feared lest Monsieur
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 59 
 
 de Mortsauf, if he should read the language of my eyes, 
 might kill me on the spot. 
 
 At this period of my life I was only tender; will, which 
 affects a man so strangely, was but just dawning in me. My 
 vehement longing had given me a swiftly responsive sensi- 
 tiveness that was like a thrill of fear. I did not tremble at 
 the prospect of a struggle, but I did not want to die till I had 
 known the happiness of reciprocated love. My difficulties 
 and my desires grew in parallel lines. 
 
 How can I describe my feelings ? I was a prey to heart- 
 rending perplexities. I hoped for a chance, I watched for it ; 
 I made friends with the children, and won them to love me ; 
 I tried to identify myself with the interests of the house- 
 hold. 
 
 By degrees the Count was less on his guard in my presence ; 
 then I learned to know his sudden changes of temper, his fits 
 of utter, causeless dejection, his gusts of rebelliousness, his 
 bitter and harsh complaining, his impulses of controlled mad- 
 ness, his childish whining, his groans as of a man in despair, 
 his unexpected rages. Moral nature differs from physical 
 nature, inasmuch as nothing in it is final. The intensity of 
 effect is in proportion to the character acted on, or to the 
 ideas that may be associated with an action. My continuing 
 at Clochegourde, my whole future life depended on this fan- 
 tastic will. 
 
 I could never express to you the anguish that weighed on 
 my soul as ready at that time to expand as to shrink when 
 on going in I said to myself, "How will he receive me?" 
 What anxious fears crushed my heart when I descried a storm 
 lowering on that snow-crowned brow ! I was perpetually on 
 the alert. Thus I was a slave to this man's tyranny, and my 
 own torments enabled me to understand those of Madame de 
 Mortsauf. 
 
 We began to exchange glances of intelligence, and my 
 tears would sometimes rise when she repressed hers. Thus
 
 60 THE LILY OF THE I'ALLEY. 
 
 the Countess and I tested each other through sorrow. I made 
 many discoveries in the course of the first six weeks forty days 
 of real annoyance, of silent joys, of hopes now engulfed and 
 now rising to the top. 
 
 One evening I found her piously meditative as she looked 
 at a sunset, which crimsoned the heights with so voluptuous a 
 blush, the valley spread below it like a bed, that it was impos- 
 sible not to understand the voice of this eternal Song of Songs 
 by which nature bids her creatures love. Was the girl dream- 
 ing of illusions now flown ? Was the woman feeling the pangs 
 of some secret comparison ? I fancied I saw in her languid 
 attitude a favorable opening for a first avowal. I said to 
 her 
 
 " Some days are so hard to live through." 
 " You have read my mind," replied she. " But how?" 
 "We have so many points of contact," said I. "Are we 
 not both of the privileged few, keen to suffer and to enjoy 
 in whom every sensitive fibre thrills in unison to produce an 
 echoing chord of feeling, and whose nervous system dwells in 
 constant harmony with the first principle of things? Such 
 beings, placed in a discordant medium, suffer torture, just as 
 their enjoyment rises to an ecstacy when they meet with ideas, 
 sensations, or persons that they find sympathetic. 
 
 "And for us there is a third condition, of which the woes 
 are known only to souls suffering from the same malady, and 
 endowed with brotherly intelligence. We are capable of 
 having impressions that are neither pleasure nor pain. Then 
 an expressive instrument, gifted with life, is stirred in a void 
 within us, is impassioned without an object, gives forth sounds 
 without melody, utters words that die in the silence a 
 dreadful contradiction in souls that rebel against the useless- 
 ness of a vacuum ; a terrible sport in which all our power is 
 spent without nutrition, like blood from some internal wound. 
 Our emotion flows in torrents, leaving us unutterably weak, in 
 a speechless dejection for which the confessional has no ear.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 61 
 
 Have I not expressed the sufferings we both are familiar 
 with?" 
 
 She shivered, and, still gazing at the sunset, she replied 
 
 "How do you, who are so young, know these things? Were 
 you once a woman ? ' ' 
 
 "Ah!" said I, with some agitation, "my childhood was 
 like one long illness? " 
 
 " I hear Madeleine coughing," said she, hastily leaving me. 
 
 The Countess had seen me constant in my attentions to her, 
 without taking offense, for two reasons. In the first place, 
 she was as pure as a child and her thoughts never wandered 
 to evil. And then I amused the Count ; I was food for this 
 lion without claws or mane. For I had hit on a pretext for 
 my visits which was plausible to all. I could not play back- 
 gammon ; Monsieur de Mortsauf offered to teach me, and I 
 accepted. 
 
 At the moment when this bargain was made, the Countess 
 could not help giving me a pitying look, as much as to say, 
 " Well, you are rushing into the wolf's jaws ! " 
 
 If I had failed to understand this at first, by the third day 
 I knew to what I had committed myself. My patience, which 
 as a result of my child-life is inexhaustible, was matured dur- 
 ing this time of discipline. To the Count it was a real joy 
 to be cruelly sarcastic when I failed to practice some rule or 
 principle he had explained to me ; if I paused to reflect he 
 complained of my slow play; if I played quickly, he hated to 
 be hurried ; if I left blots, while taking advantage of it, he 
 said I was too hasty. It was the despotism of a schoolmaster, 
 the bullying of the cane, of which I can only give you a 
 notion by comparing myself to Epictetus made a slave to a 
 malicious child. 
 
 When we played for money, his constant winnings gave 
 him mean and degrading joy; then a word from his wife 
 made up to me for everything, and brought him back to a 
 sense of decency and politeness. But ere long I fell into the
 
 62 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 torments of a fiery furnace I had not foreseen : at this rate my 
 pocket-money was melting. 
 
 Though the Count always remained between his wife and 
 me till I took my leave, sometimes at a late hour, I always 
 hoped to find a moment when I might steal into her heart ; 
 but in order to attain that hour, watched for with the painful 
 patience of a sportsman, I saw that I must persevere in these 
 weariful games, through which I endured mental misery and 
 which were winning away all my money ! 
 
 Many a time had we sat in silence, watching an effect of 
 the sun on the meadows, of the clouds in a gray sky, the blue 
 misty hills, or the quivering moonbeams on the gem-like play 
 of the river, without uttering a word beyond 
 
 " What a beautiful night ! " 
 
 " Madame, the night is a woman." 
 
 "And what peace ! " 
 
 "Yes ; it is impossible to be altogether unhappy here.' 
 
 At this reply she returned to her worsted-work. I had in 
 fact understood the yearnings of her inmost self stirred by an 
 affection that insisted on its rights. 
 
 Without money my evenings were at an end. I wrote to 
 my mother to sejjd me some ; my mother scolded me, and 
 would give me none for a week. To whom could I apply ! 
 And it was a matter of life or death to me ! 
 
 Thus at the very beginning of my first great happiness I 
 again felt the sufferings which had always pursued me ; in 
 Paris, at school, I had evaded them by melancholy abstinence, 
 my woes were only negative ; at Frapesle they were active ; I 
 now knew that longing to steal, those dreamed-of crimes and 
 horrible frenzies which blast the soul, and which we are bound 
 to stifle or lose all self-respect. My remembrance of the miser- 
 able reflections, the anguish inflicted on me by my mother's 
 parsimony, have given me that holy indulgence for young 
 men which those must feel who, without having fallen, have 
 stood on the edge of the gulf and sounded the abyss. Though
 
 THE LILY OF 1 HE VALLEY. 63 
 
 my honesty, watered with cold sweats, stood firm at those 
 moments when the waters of life part and show the stony 
 depths of its bed, whenever human justice draws her terrible 
 sword on a man's neck, I say to myself, " Penal laws were 
 made by those who never knew want." 
 
 In this dire extremity I found in Monsieur de Chessel's 
 library a treatise on backgammon, and this I studied ; then 
 my host was good enough to give me a few lessons. Under 
 milder tuition I made some progress and could apply the 
 rules and calculations which I learned by heart. In a few days 
 I was able to beat my master. But when I won he waxed 
 furious; his eyes glared like a tiger's, his face twitched, his 
 brows worked as I never saw any other's work. His fractious- 
 ness was like that of a spoilt child. Sometimes he would 
 fling the dice across the room, rage and stamp, bite the dice- 
 box, and abuse me. But this violence had to be stopped. 
 As soon as I could play a good game, I disposed of the battle 
 as I pleased. I arranged it so that we should come out 
 nearly even at the end, allowing him to win at the beginning 
 of the evening, and restoring the balance in the latter games. 
 
 The end of the world would have amazed the Count less 
 than his pupil's sudden proficiency; but, in fact, he never 
 perceived it. The regular result of our play was a novelty 
 that bewildered his mind. 
 
 " My poor brain is tired, no doubt," he would say. "You 
 always win at the finish, because by that time I have exhausted 
 my powers." 
 
 The Countess, who knew the game, detected my purpose 
 from the first, and saw in it an evidence of immense affection. 
 These details can only be appreciated by those to whom the 
 extreme difficulty of backgammon is known. How much 
 this trifle betrayed ! But love, like God as depicted by Bos- 
 suet, regards the poor man's cup of water, the struggle of the 
 soldier who dies inglorious, as far above the most profitable 
 victories.
 
 64 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 The Countess gave me one of those looks of silent grati- 
 tude that overpower a youthful heart : she bestowed on me 
 such a glance as she reserved for her children. From that 
 thrice-blessed evening she always looked at me when she spoke 
 to me. 
 
 I could never find words for my state of mind when I left. 
 My soul had absorbed my body. I weighed nothing, I did 
 not walk I floated. I felt within me still that look that had 
 bathed me in glory, just as her " Good-night, monsieur," had 
 echoed in my soul like the harmonies of the "O filii, O 
 filise ! " of the Easter benediction. I was born to new life. 
 I was something to her, then ! 
 
 I slept in wrappings of purple. Flames danced before my 
 closed eyes, chasing each other in the dark like the pretty 
 bright sparks that run over charred paper. And in my 
 dreams her voice seemed something tangible an atmosphere 
 that lapped me in light and fragrance, a melody that lulled 
 my spirit. 
 
 Next day her welcome conveyed the full expression of the 
 feelings she bestowed on me, and thenceforth I knew every 
 secret of her tones. 
 
 That day was to be one of the most noteworthy of my life. 
 After dinner we went for a walk on the downs and up to a 
 common where nothing would grow ; the soil was strong and 
 dry, with no vegetable mold. There were, however, a few 
 oaks, and some bushes covered with sloes ; but instead of 
 grass, the ground was carpeted with curled brown lichen, 
 bright in the rays of the setting sun, and slippery under foot. 
 I held Madeleine by the hand to keep her from falling, and 
 Madame de Mortsauf gave Jacques her arm. The Count, 
 who led the way, suddenly struck the earth with his stick, 
 and, turning round, exclaimed in a terrible tone 
 
 "Such has my life been ! Oh, before I knew you," he 
 added, with an apologetic glance at his wife. But it was too
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 65 
 
 late, the Countess had turned pale. What woman would not 
 have staggered under such a blow ? 
 
 " What delightful perfumes reach us here and what wonder- 
 ful effects of light!" cried I. "I should like to own this 
 common ; I might perhaps find riches if I dug into it ; but 
 the most certain advantage would be living near you. But 
 who would not pay highly for a view, so soothing to the eye, 
 of that winding river in which the soul may bathe among ash 
 trees and birch. That shows how tastes differ ! To you this 
 spot of land is a common ; to me it is a paradise." 
 
 She thanked me with a look. 
 
 " Rhodomontade ! " said he in a bitter tone. Then, inter- 
 rupting himself, he said, " Do you hear the bells of Azay? I 
 can positively hear the bells." 
 
 Madame de Mortsauf glanced at me with an expression of 
 alarm, Madeleine clutched my hand. 
 
 " Shall we go home and play a hit ? " said I. " The rattle 
 of the dice will hinder you from hearing the bells." 
 
 We returned to Clochegourde, talking at intervals. When 
 we went into the drawing-room we sat in indefinable inde- 
 cision. The Count had sunk into an arm-chair, lost in thought, 
 and undisturbed by his wife, who knew the symptoms of his 
 malady and could foresee an attack. I was not less silent. 
 She did not bid me leave, perhaps because she thought that a 
 game of backgammon would amuse the Count and scare 
 away this dreadful nervous irritation, for its outbreaks half- 
 killed her. 
 
 Nothing was more difficult than to persuade the Count to 
 play his game of backgammon, though he always longed for 
 it. Like a mincing coquette, he had to be entreated and 
 urged, so as not to seem under any obligation, perhaps because 
 he felt that he was. If, at the end of some interesting con- 
 versation, I forgot to go through my salamelek, he was sulky, 
 sharp, and offensive, and showed his annoyance by contra- 
 dicting everything that was said. Then, warned by his 
 5
 
 66 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 fractiousness, I would propose a game, and he would play the 
 coquette. 
 
 " It was too late," he would say, "and, beside, I did not 
 really care for it." In short, no end of airs and graces, like a 
 woman whose real wishes you cannot at last be sure of. I was 
 humble, and besought him to give me practice in a science so 
 easily forgotten for lack of exercise. 
 
 On this occasion I had to affect the highest spirits to per- 
 suade him to play. He complained of giddiness that hindered 
 his calculations, his brain was crushed in a vice, he had a 
 singing in his ears, he was suffocating, and sighed and groaned. 
 At last he consented to come to the table. Madame de 
 Mortsauf then left us to put the children to bed and to read 
 prayers for the household. All went well during her absence ; 
 I contrived that Monsieur de Mortsauf should win, and his 
 success restored his good humor. The sudden transition from 
 a state of depression, in which he had given utterance to the 
 most gloomy anticipations for himself, to this joviality like 
 that of a drunken man, and to crazy, irrational mirth, dis- 
 tressed and terrified me. I had never seen him so frankly and 
 unmistakably beside himself. Our intimacy had borne fruit ; 
 he was no longer on his guard with me. Day by day he tried 
 to involve me in his tyranny, and find in me fresh food for 
 his humors for it really would seem that mental disorders are 
 living things, with appetites and instincts, and a craving to 
 extend the limits of their dominion as a landowner seeks to 
 enlarge his borders. 
 
 The Countess came down again and drew near the back- 
 gammon table for a better light on her work, but she sat down 
 to her frame with ill-disguised apprehension. An unlucky 
 move, which I could not avoid, changed the Count's face ; 
 from cheerful it became gloomy, from purple it turned yellow, 
 and his eyes wandered. Then came another blow which I 
 could neither foresee nor make good. Monsieur de Mortsauf 
 threw a fatally bad number which ruined him. He started
 
 HE STARTED UP, THREW THE TABLE OVER ME AND THE 
 LAMP ON THE GROUND.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 67 
 
 up, threw the table over me and the lamp on the ground, 
 struck his fist on the console, and leaped for I cannot say 
 he walked up and down the room. The rush of abuse, 
 oaths, and ejaculations that he poured out was enough to make 
 one think that he was possessed, according to mediaeval be- 
 lief. Imagine my position. 
 
 " Go out into the garden," said she, pressing my hand. 
 
 I went without the Count's noticing that I was gone. 
 
 From the terrace, whither I slowly made my way, I could 
 hear his loud tones, and groans coming from his bedroom, 
 adjoining the dining-room. Above the tempest I could also 
 hear the voice of an angel, audible now and then like the 
 song of the nightingale when the storm is passing over. I 
 wandered up and down under the acacias on that exquisite 
 night late in August, waiting for the Countess. She would 
 come ; her manner had promised it. For some days an ex- 
 planation had been in the air between us, and must inevitably 
 come at the first word that should unseal the overfull well in 
 our hearts. What bashfulness retarded the hour of our perfect 
 understanding? Perhaps she loved, as I did, the thrill, 
 almost like the stress of fear, which quenches emotion at those 
 moments when we hold down the gushing overflow of life, 
 when we are as shy of revealing our inmost soul as a maiden 
 bride of unveiling to the husband she loves. The accumula- 
 tion of our thoughts had magnified this first and necessary 
 confession on both sides. 
 
 An hour stole away. I was sitting on the brick parapet 
 when the sound of her footstep, mingling with the rustle of 
 her light dress, fluttered the evening air. It was one of the 
 sensations at which the heart stands still. 
 
 " Monsieur de Mortsauf is asleep," said she. " When he 
 has one of these attacks I give him a cup of tea made of 
 poppy-heads, and the crisis is rare enough for the simple 
 remedy always to take effect. Monsieur," she went on, with 
 a change of tone to the most persuasive key, " an unfortunate
 
 68 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 accident has put you in possession of secrets which have 
 hitherto been carefully kept ; promise me to bury in your heart 
 every memory of this scene. Do this for my sake, I beg of 
 you. I do not ask you to swear it; the simple Yes of a man 
 of honor will amply satisfy me." 
 
 "Need I even say Yes?" I asked. "Have we failed to 
 understand each other? " 
 
 " Do not form an unjust opinion of Monsieur de Mortsauf 
 from seeing the result of much suffering endured in exile," 
 she went on. " He will have entirely forgotten by to-morrow 
 all he said to you, and you will find him quite kind and 
 affectionate." 
 
 " Nay, madame," said I, " you need not justify the Count. 
 I will do exactly what you will. I would this instant throw 
 myself into the Indre if I could thus make a new man of 
 Monsieur de Mortsauf, and give you a life of happiness. The 
 only thing I cannot do is to alter my opinion, nothing is more 
 essentially a part of me. I would give my life for you ; I can- 
 not sacrifice my conscience ; I may refuse to listen to it, but 
 can I hinder its speaking? Now, in my opinion, Monsieur 
 de Mortsauf is " 
 
 "I quite understand you," she said, interrupting me to 
 mitigate the idea of insanity by softening the expression. 
 " The Count is as nervous as a lady with the megrims ; but 
 it occurs only at long intervals, at most once a year, when 
 the heat is greatest. How much evil the emigration brought 
 in its train ! How many noble lives were wrecked ! He, I 
 am sure, would have been a distinguished officer and an honor 
 to his country " 
 
 "I know it," I replied, interrupting in my turn, to show 
 her that it was vain to try to deceive me. 
 
 She paused and laid a hand on my brow, saying with great 
 earnestness : 
 
 " Who has thus thrown you into our midst? Has God in- 
 tended me to find a help in you, a living friendship to lean
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 69 
 
 upon?" she went on, firmly grasping my hand. "For you 
 are kind and generous " 
 
 She looked up to heaven as if to invoke some visible evi- 
 dence that should confirm her secret hopes; then she bent 
 her eyes on me. Magnetized by that gaze which shed her 
 soul into mine, I failed in tact by every rule of worldly guid- 
 ance ; but to some souls is not such precipitancy a magnani- 
 mous haste to meet danger, an eagerness to prevent disaster 
 and dread of a misfortune that may never come; is it not 
 more often the abrupt question of heart to heart, a blow 
 struck to find out whether they ring in unison ? 
 
 Many thoughts flashed through me like light, and counseled 
 me to wash out the stain that soiled my innocency even at 
 the moment when I hoped for full initiation. 
 
 "Before going any further," said I, in a voice quavering 
 from my heart-beats, audible in the deep silence, "allow me 
 to purify one memory of the past " 
 
 " Be silent," said she hastily, and laying a finger on my lips 
 for an instant. She looked at me loftily, like a woman who 
 stands too high for slander to reach her, and said in a broken 
 voice, " I know to what you allude the first and last and only 
 insult ever offered me ! Never speak of that ball. Though 
 as a Christian I have forgiven you, the woman still smarts 
 under it." 
 
 "Do not be less merciful than God," said I, my eyelashes 
 retaining the tears that rose to my eyes. 
 
 "I have a right to be more severe; I am weaker," replied 
 she. 
 
 "But hear me," I cried, with a sort of childish indigna- 
 tion, " even if it be for the first and last and only time in your 
 life." 
 
 " Well," said she, " speak then ! Otherwise you will fancy 
 that I am afraid to hear you." 
 
 I felt that this hour was unique in our lives, and I told her, 
 in a way to command belief, " that every woman at that ball
 
 70 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 had been as indifferent to me as every other I had hitherto 
 seen ; but that when I saw her I who had spent my life in 
 study, whose spirit was so far from bold I had been swept 
 away by a sort of frenzy which could only be condemned by 
 those who had never known it ; that the heart of man had 
 never been so overflowing with such desire as no living being 
 can resist, and which conquers all things, even death " 
 
 "And scorn?" said she, interrupting me. 
 
 "What, you scorned me ! " said I. 
 
 "Talk no more of these things," said she. 
 
 " Nay, let us talk of them," replied I, in the excitement of 
 superhuman anguish. " It concerns my whole being, my un- 
 known life ; it is a secret you must hear, or else I must die of 
 despair ! And does it not concern you, too you who, with- 
 out knowing it, are the lady in whose hand shines the crown 
 held out to the^conqueror in the lists? " 
 
 I told her the story of my childhood and youth, not as I 
 have related it to you, calmly judged from a distance, but in 
 the words of a young man whose wounds are still bleeding. 
 My voice rang like the axe of the woodman in a forest. The 
 dead years fell crashing down before it, and the long misery 
 that had crowned them with leafless boughs. In fevered words 
 I described to her a thousand odious details that I have spared 
 you. I displayed the treasury of my splendid hopes, the 
 virgin gold of my desires, a burning heart kept hot under the 
 Alps of ice piled up through a perpetual winter. And then, 
 when, crushed by the burden of my griefs uttered with the 
 fire of an Isaiah, I waited for a word from the woman who had 
 heard me with a downcast head, she lightened the darkness 
 with a look, and vivified the worlds earthly and divine by one 
 single sentence. 
 
 "Our childhood was the same," said she, showing me a 
 face bright with the halo of martyrdom. 
 
 After a pause, during which our souls were wedded by the 
 same consoling thought, " Then I was not the only one to
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 71 
 
 suffer ! " The Countess told me, in the tones she kept for her 
 children, how luckless she had been as a girl when the boys 
 were dead. She explained the difference, made by her con- 
 dition as a girl always at her mother's skirt, between her mis- 
 eries and those of a boy flung into the world of school. My 
 isolation had been a paradise in comparison with the grinding 
 millstone under which her spirit was perennially bruised, until 
 the day when her true mother, her devoted aunt, had saved 
 her by rescuing her from the torture of which she described 
 the ever-new terrors. It was a course of those indescribable 
 goading pricks that are intolerable to a nervous nature which 
 can face a direct thrust, but dies daily under the sword of 
 Damocles a generous impulse quashed by a stern command ; 
 a kiss coldly accepted ; silence first enjoined and then found 
 fault with ; tears repressed that lay heavy on her heart ; in 
 short, all the petty tyranny of convent discipline hidden from 
 the eyes of the world behind a semblance of proud and senti- 
 mental motherhood. Her mother was vain of her and boasted 
 of her ; but she paid dearly afterward for the praise bestowed 
 only for the glory of her teacher. When, by dint of docility 
 and sweetness, she fancied she had softened her mother's 
 heart and opened her own, the tyrant armed herself with her 
 confessions. A spy would have been less cowardly and treach- 
 erous. 
 
 All her girlish pleasures and festivals had cost her dear, for 
 she was scolded for having enjoyed them as much as for a 
 fault. The lessons of her admirable education had never 
 been given with love, but always with cruel irony. She 
 owed her mother no grudge, she only blamed herself for 
 loving her less than she feared her. Perhaps, the angel 
 thought, this severity had really been necessary. Had it not 
 prepared her for her present life ? 
 
 She paused. 
 
 As I listened to her, I felt as though the harp of Job, from 
 which I had struck some wild chords, was now touched by
 
 72 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 Christian fingers, and responded with the chanted liturgy of 
 the Virgin at the foot of the cross. 
 
 " We dwelt in the same sphere," I exclaimed emphatically, 
 " before meeting here, you coming from the East and I from 
 the West." 
 
 She shook her head with desperate agitation : " The East 
 is for you and the West is for me," said she. " You will live 
 happy, I shall die of grief! Men make the conditions of 
 their life themselves ; my lot is cast once for all. No power 
 can break the ponderous chain to which a wife is bound by a 
 ring of gold, the emblem of her purity." 
 
 Feeling now that we were twins of the same nurture, she 
 could not conceive of semi-confidences between sister souls 
 that had drunk of the same spring. After the natural sigh of 
 a guileless heart opening for the first time, she told me the 
 story of the early days of her married life, her first disillusion- 
 ment, all the renewal of her sorrows. She, like me, had 
 gone through those trivial experiences which are so great to 
 spirits whose limpid nature is shaken through and through by 
 the slightest shock, as a stone flung into a lake stirs the depths 
 as well as the surface. 
 
 When she married she -had some savings, the little treasure 
 which represents the happy hours, the thousand trifles a young 
 wife may wish for ; one day of dire need she had generously 
 given the whole sum to her husband, not telling him that 
 these were not gold-pieces, but remembrances ; he had never 
 taken any account of it ; he did not feel himself her debtor. 
 Nor had she seen in return for her treasure, sunk in the sleep- 
 ing waters of oblivion, the moistened eye which pays every 
 debt, and is to a generous soul like a perpetual gem whose 
 rays sparkle in the darkest day. 
 
 And she had gone on from sorrow to sorrow. Monsieur de 
 Mortsauf would forget to give her money for housekeeping ; 
 he woke up as from a dream when she asked for it, after over- 
 coming a woman's natural shyness ; never once had he spared
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 73 
 
 her this bitter experience ! Then what terrors had beset her 
 at the moment when this worn-out man had first shown 
 symptoms of his malady ! The first outbreak of his frenzied 
 rage had completely crushed her. What miserable medita- 
 tions must she have known before she understood that her 
 husband the impressive figure that presides over a woman's 
 whole life was a nonentity ! What anguish had come on 
 her after the birth of her two children ! What a shock on 
 seeing the scarcely living infants ! What courage she must 
 have had to say to herself, "I will breathe life into them; 
 they shall be born anew day by day ! ' ' And then the despair 
 of finding an obstacle in the heart and hand whence a wife 
 looks for help ! 
 
 She had seen this expanse of woes stretching before her, a 
 thorny wilderness, after every surmounted difficulty. From 
 the top of each rock she had discovered new deserts to cross, 
 till the day when she really knew her husband, knew her 
 children's constitution, and the land she was to dwell in; till 
 the day when, like the boy taken by Napoleon from the 
 tender care of home, she had inured her feet to tramp 
 through mire and snow, inured her forehead to flying bullets, 
 and broken herself entirely to the passive obedience of a 
 soldier. All these things, which I abridge for you, she re- 
 lated in their gloomy details, with all their adjuncts of cruel 
 incidents, of conjugal defeats, and fruitless efforts. 
 
 "In short," she said in conclusion, "only a residence 
 here of months would give you a notion of all the troubles the 
 improvements at Clochegourde cost me, all the weary coaxing 
 to persuade him to do the thing that is most useful for his 
 interests. What childish malice possesses him whenever any- 
 thing I may have advised is not an immediate success ! How 
 delighted he is to proclaim himself in the right! What 
 patience I need when I hear continual complaints while I am 
 killing myself to clear each hour of weeds, to perfume the air 
 he breathes, to strew sand and flowers on the paths he has
 
 74 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 beset with stones ! My reward is this dreadful burden ' I am 
 dying ; life is a curse to me ! ' 
 
 " If he is so fortunate as to find visitors at home, all is 
 forgotten ; he is gracious and polite. Why can he not be the 
 same to his family? I cannot account for this want of loyalty 
 in a man who is sometimes chivalrous. He is capable of going 
 off without a word, all the way to Paris, to get me a dress, as 
 he did the other day for that ball. Miserly as he is in his 
 housekeeping, he would be lavish for me if I would allow it. 
 It ought to be just the other way ; I want nothing, and the 
 house expenses are heavy. In my anxiety to make him happy, 
 and forgetting that I might be a mother, I perhaps gave him 
 the habit of regarding me as his victim, whereas with a little 
 flattery I might still manage him like a child if I would stoop 
 to play so mean a part ! But the interests of the household 
 make it necessary that I should be as calm and austere as a 
 statue of justice ; and yet I, too, have a tender and effusive 
 soul." 
 
 "But why," said I, "do you not avail yourself of your 
 influence to be the mistress and guide him?" 
 
 " If I alone were concerned, I could never defy the stolid 
 silence with which for hours he will oppose sound arguments, 
 nor could I answer his illogical remarks the reasoning of a 
 child. I have no courage against weakness or childishness ; 
 they may hit me, and I shall make no resistance. I might 
 meet force with force, but I have no power against those I 
 pity. If I were required to compel Madeleine to do some- 
 thing that would save her life, we should die together. Pity 
 relaxes all my fibres and weakens my sinews. And the violent 
 shocks of the past ten years have undermined me ; my nervous 
 force, so often attacked, is sometimes deliquescent, nothing 
 can restore it ; the strength that weathered those storms is 
 sometimes wanting. Yes, sometimes I am conquered. 
 
 " For want of rest and of sea-bathing, which would give 
 tone to my whole system, I shall be worn out. Monsieur
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 75 
 
 de Mortsauf will kill me if he keeps on, and he will die of 
 my death." 
 
 " Why do you not leave Clochegourde for a few months ? 
 Why should you and the children not go to the sea? " 
 
 " In the first place, Monsieur de Mortsauf would feel him- 
 self lost if I left him. Though he will not recognize the situa- 
 tion, he is aware of his state. The man and the invalid are 
 at war in him, two different natures, whose antagonism ac- 
 counts for many eccentricities. And, indeed, he has every 
 reason to dread it ; if I were absent, everything here would 
 go wrong. You have seen, no doubt, that I am a mother 
 perpetually on the watch to guard her brood against the hawk 
 that hovers over them ; a desperate task, increased by the 
 cares required by Monsieur de Mortsauf, whose perpetual cry 
 is, ' Where is madame ? ' But this is nothing. I am at the 
 same time Jacques' tutor and Madeleine's governess. This 
 again is nothing. I am steward and bookkeeper. You will 
 some day know the full meaning of my words when I say that 
 the management of an estate is here the most exhausting toil. 
 We have but a small income in money, and our farms are 
 worked on a system of half-profits which requires incessant 
 superintendence. We ourselves must sell our corn, our beasts, 
 and every kind of crop. Our competitors are our own farmers, 
 who agree with the purchasers over their wine at the tavern, 
 and fix a price after being before us in the market. 
 
 " I should tire you out if I were to tell you all the thousand 
 difficulties of our husbandry. With all my vigilance, I cannot 
 keep our farmers from manuring their lands from our mid- 
 dens ; I can neither go to make sure that our bailiffs do not 
 agree with them to cheat us when the crops are divided, nor 
 can I know the best time to sell. And if you think how little 
 memory Monsieur de Mortsauf can boast of, and what trouble 
 it costs me to induce him to attend to business, you will un- 
 derstand what a load I have to carry, and the impossibility 
 of setting it down even for a moment. If I went away, we
 
 76 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 should be ruined. No one would listen to his orders ; in- 
 deed, they are generally contradictory; then nobody is at- 
 tached to him ; he finds too much fault and is too despotic ; 
 and, like all weak natures, he is overready to listen to his 
 inferiors, and so fails to inspire the affection that binds fami- 
 lies together. If I left the house, not a servant would stay a 
 week. 
 
 " So you see I am as much rooted to Clochegourde as one 
 of the leaden finials is to the roof. I have kept nothing from 
 you, monsieur. The neighbors know nothing of the secrets 
 of Clochegourde ; you now know them all. Say nothing of 
 the place but what is kind and pleasant, and you will earn 
 my esteem my gratitude," she added in a softened tone. 
 "On these conditions you can always come to Clochegourde 
 you will find friends here." 
 
 " But I have never known what it is to suffer," exclaimed I. 
 "You alone " 
 
 "Nay," said she, with that resigned woman's smile that 
 might melt granite, " do not be dismayed by my confidences. 
 They show you life as it is, and not as your fancy had led you 
 to hope. We all have our faults and our good points. If I 
 had married a spendthrift, he would have ruined me. If I 
 had been the wife of some ardent and dissipated youth, he 
 would have been a favorite with women ; perhaps he would 
 have been unfaithful, and I should have died of jealousy. I 
 am jealous ! " she exclaimed in an excited tone that rang like 
 the thunderclap of a passing storm. 
 
 " Well, Monsieur de Mortsauf loves me as much as it is in 
 him to love ; all the affection of which his heart is capable is 
 poured out at my feet, as the Magdalen poured out her pre- 
 cious balm at the feet of the Saviour. Believe me when I tell 
 you that a life of love is an exception to every earthly law ; 
 every flower fades, every great joy has a bitter morrow when 
 it has a morrow. Real life is a life of sorrow ; this nettle is 
 its fit image ; it has sprouted in the shade of the terrace, and
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 77 
 
 grows green on its stem without any sunshine. Here, as in 
 northern latitudes, there are smiles in the sky, rare, to be 
 sure, but making amends for many griefs. After all, if a 
 woman is exclusively a mother, is she not tied by sacrifices 
 rather than by joys ? I can draw down on myself the storms 
 I see ready to break on the servants or on my children, and 
 as I thus conduct them I feel some mysterious and secret 
 strength. The resignation of one day prepares me for the 
 next. 
 
 "And God does not leave me hopeless. Though I was at 
 one time in despair over my children's health, I now see that 
 as they grow up they grow stronger. And, after all, our 
 house is improved, our fortune is amended. Who knows 
 whether Monsieur de Mortsauf's old age may not bring me 
 happiness. 
 
 " Believe me, the human being who can appear in the 
 presence of the Great Judge, leading any comforted soul that 
 had been ready to curse life, will have transformed his sor- 
 rows into delight. If my suffering has secured the happiness 
 of my family, is it really suffering ? " 
 
 "Yes," replied I. "Still, it was necessary suffering, as 
 mine has been, to make me appreciate the fruit that has 
 ripened here among stones. And now perhaps we may eat of 
 it together, perhaps we may admire its wonders ! the flood 
 of affection it can shed on the soul, the sap which can revive 
 the fading leaves. Then life is no longer a burden ; we have 
 cast it from us. Great God! can you not understand?" I 
 went on, in the mystical strain to which religious training had 
 accustomed us both. " See what roads we have trodden to 
 meet at last ! What loadstone guided us across the ocean of 
 bitter waters to the fresh springs flowing at the foot of the 
 mountains, over sparkling sands, between green and flowery 
 banks? Have we not, like the Kings of the East, followed 
 the same star ? And we stand by the manger where lies an 
 awakening Babe a divine Child who will shoot his arrows at
 
 78 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 the head of the leafless trees, who will wake the world to new 
 life for us by his glad cries, who will lend savor to life by 
 continual delights, and give slumbers by night and content- 
 ment by day. Are we not more than brother and sister? 
 What heaven has joined, put not asunder. 
 
 " The sorrow of which you speak is the grain scattered 
 freely abroad by the hand of the sower, to bring forth a 
 harvest already golden under the most glorious sun. Behold 
 and see ! Shall we not go forth together and gather it ear by 
 ear ? What fervor is in me that I dare to speak to you thus. 
 Answer me, or I will never cross the Indre again." 
 
 "You have spared me the name of love," said she, inter- 
 rupting me in a severe tone; " but you have described a feel- 
 ing of which I know nothing which to me is prohibited. 
 You are but a boy, and again I forgive you ; but it is for the 
 last time. Understand, monsieur, my whole heart is drunk, 
 so to speak, with motherhood. I love Monsieur de Mortsauf, 
 not as a social duty, nor as an investment to earn eternal 
 bliss, but from an irresistible feeling, clinging to him by every 
 fibre of my heart. Was I forced into this marriage? I chose 
 it out of sympathy with misfortune. Was it not the part of 
 woman to heal the bruises of time, to comfort those who had 
 stood in the breach and come back wounded ? 
 
 "How can I tell you? I felt a sort of selfish pleasure in 
 seeing that you could amuse him. Is not that purely 
 motherly ? Has not my long story shown you plainly that I 
 have three children who must never find me wanting, on 
 whom I must shed a healing dew and all the sunshine of my 
 soul without allowing the smallest particle to be adulterated ? 
 Do not turn a mother's milk. 
 
 " So, though the wife in me is invulnerable, never speak to 
 me thus again. If you fail to respect this simple prohibition, 
 I warn you, the door of this house will be closed against you 
 for ever. I believed in pure friendship, in a voluntary brother- 
 hood more stable than any natural relationship. I was mis-
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 79 
 
 taken ! I looked for a friend who would not judge me, a 
 friend who would listen to me in those hours of weakness when 
 a voice of reproof is murderous, a saintly friend with whom I 
 should have nothing to fear. Youth is magnanimous, inca- 
 pable of falsehood, self-sacrificing, and disinterested; as I 
 saw your constancy, I believed, I confess, in some help from 
 heaven ; I believed I had met a spirit that would be to me 
 alone what the priest is to all, a heart into which I might pour 
 out my sorrows when they are too many, and utter my cries 
 when they insist on being heard and would choke me if I 
 suppressed them. In that way my life, which is so precious 
 to these children, might be prolonged till Jacques is a man. 
 But this, perhaps, is too selfish. Can the tale of Petrarch's 
 Laura be repeated ? I deceived myself, this is not the will of 
 God. I must die at my post like a soldier, without a friend. 
 My confessor is stern, austere and my aunt is dead." 
 
 Two large tears, sparking in the moonlight, dropped from 
 her eyes and rolled down her cheeks to her chin ; but I held 
 out my hand in time to catch them and drank them with 
 pious avidity, excited by her words, that rang with those ten 
 years of secret weeping, of expanded feeling, of incessant care, 
 of perpetual alarms the loftiest heroism of your sex. She 
 gazed at me with a look of mild amazement mingled with 
 wonder. 
 
 "This," said I, "is the first, holy communion of love. 
 Yes, I have entered into your sorrows, I am one with your 
 soul, as we become one with Christ by drinking His sacred 
 blood. To love even without hope is happiness. What 
 woman on earth could give me any joy so great as that of 
 having imbibed your tears ! I accept the bargain which 
 must, no doubt, bring me suffering. I am yours without re- 
 serve, and will be just whatever you wish me to be." 
 
 She checked me by a gesture, and said 
 
 " I consent to the compact if you will never strain the ties 
 that bind us."
 
 80 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 "Yes," said I. " But the less you grant me, the more 
 sure must I be that I really possess it." 
 
 "So you begin by distrusting me," she replied, with mel- 
 ancholy doubtfulness. 
 
 " No, by one pure delight. For listen, I want a name for 
 you which no one ever calls you by ; all my own, like the 
 affection that we give each other." 
 
 "It is much to ask," said she. " However, I am less un- 
 generous than you think me. Monsieur de Mortsauf calls me 
 Blanche. One person only, the one I loved best, my adorable 
 aunt, used to call me Henriette. I will be Henriette again 
 for you." 
 
 I took her hand and kissed it, and she yielded it with the 
 full confidence which makes woman our superior a confidence 
 that masters us. She leaned against the brick parapet and 
 looked out over the river. 
 
 "Are you not rash, dear friend," said she, "to rush with 
 one leap to the goal of your course ? You have drained at 
 the first draught a cup offered you in all sincerity. But a true 
 feeling knows no half-measures ; it is all or nothing. Monsieur 
 de Mortsauf," she went on after a moment's silence, " is above 
 everything loyal and proud. You might perhaps be tempted 
 for my sake to overlook what he said; if he has forgotten it, 
 I will remind him of it to-morrow. Stay away from Cloche- 
 gourde for a few days ; he will respect you all the more. On 
 Sunday next, as we come out of church, he will make the first 
 advances. I know him. He will make up for past offenses, 
 and will like you the better for having treated him as a man 
 responsible for his words and deeds." 
 
 " Five days without seeing you, hearing your voice ! " 
 
 "Never put such fervor into your speech to me," said she. 
 
 We twice paced the terrace in silence. Then, in a tone of 
 command, which showed that she had entered into possession 
 of my soul, she said 
 
 " It is late ; good-night."
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 81 
 
 I wished to kiss her hand ; she hesitated ; then she gave it 
 me, saying in a voice of entreaty 
 
 " Never take it unless I give it you ; leave me completely 
 free, or else I shall be at your bidding, and that must not be. ' ' 
 
 "Good-by," said I. 
 
 I went out of the little gate at the bottom of the garden, 
 which she opened for me. Just as she was shutting it she 
 opened it again, and held out her hand, saying 
 
 "You have been indeed kind this evening. You have 
 brought comfort into all my future life. Take it, my friend, 
 take it." 
 
 I kissed it again and again, and when I looked up I saw 
 that there were tears in her eyes. 
 
 She went up to the terrace and looked after me across the 
 meadow. As I went along the road to Frapesle, I could still 
 see her white dress in the moonlight ; then, a few minutes 
 later, a light was shining in her window. 
 
 "Oh, my Henriette ! " thought I, "the purest love that 
 ever burnt on earth shall be yours." 
 
 I got home to Frapesle, looking back at every step. My 
 spirit was full of indescribable, ineffable gladness. A glorious 
 path at last lay open to the self-devotion that swells every 
 youthful heart, and that in me had so long lain inert. I was 
 consecrated, ordained, like a priest who at one step starts on 
 a totally new life. A simple " Yes, madame" had pledged 
 me to preserve in my heart and for myself alone an irre- 
 sistible passion, and never to trespass beyond friendship to 
 tempt this woman little by little to love. Every noble feel- 
 ing awoke within me with a tumult of voices. 
 
 Before finding myself cabined in a bedroom, I felt that I 
 must pause in rapture under the blue vault spangled with stars, 
 to hear again in my mind's ear those tones as of a wounded 
 dove, the simple accents of her ingenuous confidence, and 
 inhale with the air the emanations of her soul which she must 
 be sending out to me. How noble she appeared to me the 
 6
 
 82 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 woman who so utterly forgot herself in her religious care 
 for weak or suffering or wounded creatures, her devotedness 
 apart from legal chains. She stood serene at the stake of 
 saintly martyrdom ! I was gazing at her face as it appeared 
 to me in the darkness, when suddenly I fancied that I dis- 
 cerned in her words a mystical significance which made her 
 seem quite sublime. Perhaps she meant that I was to be to 
 her what she was to her little world ; perhaps she intended to 
 derive strength and consolation from me by thus raising me 
 to her sphere, to her level or higher ? The stars, so some 
 bold theorists tell us, thus interchange motion and light. 
 This thought at once lifted me to ethereal realms. I was 
 once more in the heaven of my early dreams, and I accounted 
 for the anguish of my childhood by the infinite beatitude in 
 which I now floated. 
 
 Ye souls of genius extinguished by tears, misprized hearts, 
 Clarissa Harlowes, saintly and unsung, outcast children, guilt- 
 less exiles all ye who entered life through its desert places, 
 who have everywhere found cold faces, closed hearts, deaf 
 ears do not bewail yourselves ! You alone can know the 
 immensity of joy in the moment when a heart opens to you, 
 an ear listens, a look answers you. One day wipes out all the 
 evil days. Past sorrows, broodings, despair, and melancholy 
 past, but not forgotten are so many bonds by which the 
 soul clings to its sister soul. The woman, beautified by our 
 suppressed desires, inherits our wasted sighs and loves ; she 
 refunds our deluded affections with interest ; she supplies a 
 reason for antecedent griefs, for they are the equivalent in- 
 sisted on by fate for the eternal joy she bestows on the day 
 when souls are wed. The angels only know the new name by 
 which this sacred love may be called ; just as you, sweet 
 martyrs, alone can know what Madame de Mortsauf had sud- 
 denly become to me hapless and alone. 
 
 This scene had taken place one Tuesday; I waited till
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 83 
 
 the following Sunday before recrossing the Indre in my 
 walks. 
 
 During these five days great events occurred at Cloche- 
 gourde. The Count was promoted to the grade of major- 
 general, and the Cross of Saint-Louis was conferred on him 
 with a pension of four thousand francs. The Due de Lenon- 
 court-Givry was made a peer of France, two of his forest 
 domains were restored to him, he had an appointment at 
 court, and his wife was reinstated in her property, which had 
 not been sold, having formed part of the imperial crown 
 lands. Thus the Comtesse de Mortsauf had become one of 
 the richest heiresses in the province. Her mother had come 
 to Clochegourde to pay her a hundred thousand francs she 
 had saved out of the revenues from Givry; this money, settled 
 on her at her marriage, she had never received ; but the 
 Count, in spite of his necessity, had never alluded to this. 
 In all that concerned the outer circumstances of life, this 
 man's conduct was marked by disinterested pride. 
 
 By adding this sum to what he had saved, the Count could 
 now purchase two adjoining estates, that would bring in about 
 nine thousand francs a year. His son was to inherit his 
 maternal grandfather's peerage ; and it occurred to the Count 
 to entail on Jacques the landed property of both families 
 without prejudice to Madeleine, who, with the Due de Lenon- 
 court's interest, would, no doubt, marry well. 
 
 All these schemes and this good fortune shed some balm 
 on the exile's wounds. 
 
 The Duchesse de Lenoncourt at Clochegourde was an event 
 in the district. I sorrowfully reflected what a great lady she 
 was, and I then discerned in her daughter that spirit of caste 
 which her noble soul had hitherto hidden from my eyes. 
 What was I poor, and with no hope for the future but in my 
 courage and my brains ? I never thought of the consequences 
 of the restoration either to myself or to others. 
 
 On Sunday, from the side chapel, where I attended mass
 
 84 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 with Monsieur and Madame de Chessel and the Abbe Quelus, 
 I sent hungry looks to the chapel on the opposite side, where 
 the Duchess and her daughter were, the Count, and the chil- 
 dren. The straw bonnet that hid my idol's face never 
 moved, and this ignoring of my presence seemed to be a 
 stronger tie than all that had passed. The noble Henriette 
 de Lenoncourt, who was now my beloved Henriette, was 
 absorbed in prayer ; faith gave an indescribable sentiment of 
 prostrate dependence to her attitude, the feeling of a sacred 
 statue, which penetrated my soul. 
 
 As is customary in village churches, vespers were chanted 
 some little time after high mass. As we left the church, 
 Madame de Chessel very naturally suggested to her neighbors 
 that they should spend the two hours' interval at Frapesle 
 instead of crossing the Indre and the valley twice in the heat. 
 The invitation was accepted. Monsieur de Chessel gave the 
 Duchess his arm, Madame de Chessel took the Count's, and I 
 offered mine to the Countess. For the first time I felt that 
 light wrist resting by my side. As we made our way back 
 from the church to Frapesle through the woods of Sache, 
 where the dappled lights, falling through the leaves, made 
 pretty patterns like China silk, I went through surges of pride 
 and thrills of feeling that gave me violent palpitations. 
 
 " What ails you ? " said she, after we had gone a few steps 
 in silence, which I dared not break ; " your heart beats too 
 fast." 
 
 " I have heard of good fortune for you," said I, " and, like 
 all who love much, I feel some vague fears. Will not your 
 greatness mar your friendship ? " 
 
 "Mine?" cried she. "For shame! If you ever have 
 such an idea I shall not despise you, but simply forget you 
 for ever." 
 
 I looked at her in a state of intoxication, which must surely 
 have been infectious. 
 
 " We get the benefit of an edict which we neither prompted
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 85 
 
 nor asked for, and we shall neither be beggars nor grasping," 
 she went on. " Beside, as you know, neither I nor Monsieur 
 de Mortsauf can ever leave Clochegourde. By my advice he 
 has declined the active command he had a right to at the 
 Maison Rouge. It is enough that my father should have an 
 appointment. And our compulsory modesty," she went on, 
 with a bitter smile, " has been to our boy's advantage already. 
 The King, on whom my father is in attendance, has very 
 graciously promised to reserve for Jacques the favors we have 
 declined. 
 
 " Jacques' education, which must now be thought of, is the 
 subject of very grave discussion. He will be the representa- 
 tive of the two houses of Mortsauf and Lenoncourt. I have 
 no ambition but for him, so this is an added anxiety. Not 
 only must Jacques be kept alive, but he must also be made 
 worthy of his name, and the two necessities are antagonistic. 
 Hitherto I have been able to teach him, graduating his tasks 
 to his strength ; but where am I to find a tutor who would 
 suit me in this respect ? And then, by-and-by, to what friend 
 can I look to preserve him in that dreadful Paris, where every- 
 thing is a snare to the soul and a peril to the body ? 
 
 "My friend," she went on, in an agitated voice, "who 
 that looks at your brow and eye can fail to see in you one of 
 the birds that dwell on the heights. Take your flight, soar 
 up, and one day become the guardian of our beloved child. 
 Go to Paris ; and if your brother and your father will not 
 help you, our family, especially my mother, who has a genius 
 for business, will have great influence. Take the benefit of 
 it, and then you will never lack support or encouragement 
 in any career you may choose. Throw your superabundant 
 energy into ambition " 
 
 " I understand," said I, interrupting her. " My ambition 
 is to be my mistress ! I do not need that to make me wholly 
 yours. No ; I do not choose to be rewarded for my good 
 behavior here by favors there. I will go ; I will grow up
 
 86 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 alone, unaided. I will accept what you can give me ; from 
 any one else I will take nothing." 
 
 "That is childish," she murmured, but she could not dis- 
 guise a smile of satisfaction. 
 
 "Beside," I went on, "I have pledged myself. In con- 
 sidering our position, I have resolved to bind myself to you 
 by ties which can never be loosened." 
 
 She shivered, and stood still to look in my face. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " she asked, letting the other couples 
 who were in front of us go forward, and keeping the children 
 by her side. 
 
 "Well," replied I, "tell me plainly how you would wish 
 me to love you." 
 
 " Love me as my aunt loved me ; I have given you her 
 rights by permitting you to call me by the name she had 
 chosen from my names." 
 
 " Love you without hope, with entire devotion ? Yes, I 
 will do for you what men do for God. Have you not asked 
 it of me ? I will go into a seminary ; I will come out a priest, 
 and I will educate Jacques. Your Jacques shall be my sec- 
 ond self: my political notions, my thoughts, my energy, and 
 patience I will give them all to him. Thus I may remain 
 near you, and no suspicion can fall on my love, set in relig- 
 ion like a silver image in a crystal. You need not fear any 
 of those perfervid outbreaks which come over a man, which 
 once already proved too much for me. I will be burned in 
 the fire, and love you with purified ardor." 
 
 She turned pale, and answered eagerly, without any hesi- 
 tancy 
 
 " Felix, do not fetter yourself with cords, which some day 
 may be an obstacle in the way of our happiness. I should 
 die of grief if I were the cause of such suicide. Child, is the 
 despair of love a religious vocation ? Wait to test life before 
 you judge of life. I desire it I insist. Marry neither the 
 church nor a woman ; do not marry at all ; I forbid it. Re-
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 87 
 
 main free. You are now one-and-twenty ; you scarcely know 
 what the future may have in store. 
 
 "Good heavens!" she added, "am I mistaken in you? 
 But I believed that in two months one might really know some 
 natures." 
 
 " What, then, is it that you hope for ? " I asked with light- 
 ning in my eyes. 
 
 " My friend, accept my assistance, educate yourself, make 
 a fortune, and you shall know. Well, then," she added, as 
 if she were betraying her secret, "always hold fast to Made- 
 leine's hand, which is at this moment in yours." 
 
 She had bent toward me to whisper these words, which 
 showed how seriously she had thought of my future prospects. 
 
 " Madeleine ? ' ' cried I. " Never ! ' ' 
 
 These two words left us silent again and greatly agitated. 
 Our minds were tossed by such upheavals as leave indelible 
 traces. 
 
 Just before us was a wooden gate into the park of Frapesle 
 I think I can see it now, with its tumble-down side-posts 
 overgrown with climbing plants, moss, weeds, and brambles. 
 Suddenly an idea that of the Count's death flashed like an 
 arrow through my brain, and I said 
 
 "I understand." 
 
 " That is fortunate," she replied, in a tone which made me 
 see that I had suspected her of a thought that could never 
 have occurred to her. 
 
 Her pure-mindedness wrung from me a tear of admiration, 
 made bitter indeed by the selfishness of my passion. Then, 
 with a revulsion of feeling, I thought that she did not love 
 me enough to wish for freedom. So long as love shrinks from 
 crime, it seems to have a limit, and love ought to be infinite. 
 I felt a terrible spasm at my heart. 
 
 " She does not love me," thought I. 
 
 That she might not read my soul, I bent down and kissed 
 Madeleine's hair.
 
 88 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 "I am afraid of your mother," I said to the Countess, to 
 reopen the conversation. 
 
 " So am I," she replied, with a childish gesture. " Do not 
 forget to address her as Madame la Duchesse, and speak to her 
 in the third person. Young people of the present day have 
 forgotten those polite formalities ; revive them ; do that much 
 for me. Beside, it is always in good taste to be respectful to 
 a woman, whatever her age may be, and to accept social dis- 
 tinctions without hesitancy. Is not the homage you pay to 
 recognized superiority a guarantee for what is due to your- 
 self? In society everything holds together. The Cardinal de 
 Rovere and Raphael d'Urbino were in their time two equally 
 respected powers. 
 
 " You have drunk the milk of the revolution in your schools, 
 and your political ideas may show the taint ; but as you get 
 on in life, you will discover that ill-defined notions of liberty 
 are inadequate to create the happiness of nations. I, before 
 considering, as a Lenoncourt, what an aristocracy is or ought 
 to be, listen to my peasant commonsense, which shows me 
 that society exists only by the hierarchy. You are at a stage 
 in your life when you must make a wise choice. Stick to your 
 party, especially," she added, with a laugh, ''when it is on 
 the winning side." 
 
 I was deeply touched by these words, in which wise policy 
 lurked below the warmth of her affection, a union which 
 gives women such powers of fascination. They all know how 
 to lend the aspect of sentiment to the shrewdest reasoning. 
 
 Henriette, in her anxiety to justify the Count's actions, 
 had, as it seemed, anticipated the reflections which must arise 
 in my mind when, for the first time, I saw the results of being 
 a courtier. Monsieur de Mortsauf, a king in his domain, 
 surrounded with his historic halo, had assumed magnificent 
 proportions in my eyes, and I own that I was greatly aston- 
 ished at the distance he himself set between the Duchess and 
 himself by his subservient manner. A slave even has his
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 89 
 
 pride ; he will only obey the supreme despot ; I felt myself 
 humbled at seeing the abject attitude of the man who made 
 me tremble by overshadowing my love. This impulse of 
 feeling revealed to me all the torment of a woman whose 
 generous soul is joined to that of a man whose meanness she 
 has to cover decently every day. Respect is a barrier which 
 protects great and small alike ; each on his own part can look 
 the other steadily in the face. 
 
 I was deferent to the Duchess by reason of my youth ; but 
 where others saw only the Duchess, I saw my Henriette's 
 mother, and there was a solemnity in my respect. 
 
 We went into the front court of Frapesle, and there found 
 all the party. The Comte de Mortsauf introduced me to the 
 lady with much graciousness, and she examined me with a 
 cold, reserved manner. Madame de Lenoncourt was then a 
 woman of fifty-six, extremely well-preserved, and with lordly 
 manners. Seeing her hard, blue eyes, her wrinkled temples, 
 her thin, ascetic face, her stately upright figure, her constant 
 quiescence, her dull pallor in her daughter brilliant white- 
 ness I recognized her as of the same race as my own mother, 
 as surely as a mineralogist recognizes Swedish iron. Her 
 speech was that of the old court circles ; she pronounced oit 
 as ait, spoke offrait torfroid, and of porteux for porteurs. I 
 was neither servile nor prim,. and I behaved so nicely that, as 
 we went to vespers, the Countess said in my ear, " You are 
 perfect." 
 
 The Count came up to me, took my hand, and said, " We 
 have not quarreled, Felix? If I was a little hasty, you will 
 forgive your old comrade. We shall probably stay to dine 
 here, and we hope to see you at Clochegourde on Thursday, 
 the day before the Duchess leaves us. I am going to Tours 
 on business. Do not neglect Clochegourde, my mother-in- 
 law is an acquaintance I advise you to cultivate ; her drawing- 
 room will pitch the keynote for the Faubourg Saint-Germain. 
 She has the tradition of the finest society, she is immensely
 
 90 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 well informed, and knows the armorial bearings of every 
 gentleman in Europe from the highest to the lowest." 
 
 The Count's good taste, aided perhaps by the counsels of 
 his good genius, told well in the new circumstances in which 
 he was placed by the triumph of his party. He was neither 
 arrogant nor offensively polite ; he showed no affectation, 
 and the Duchess no patronizing airs. Monsieur and Madame 
 de Chessel gratefully accepted the invitation to dinner on the 
 following Thursday. 
 
 The Duchess rather liked me, and her way of looking at me 
 made me understand that she was studying me as a man 
 of whom her daughter had spoken. On our return from 
 church she inquired about my family, and asked whether the 
 Vandenesse, who was already embarked in diplomacy, were 
 a relation of mine. 
 
 "He is my brother," said I. 
 
 Then she became almost affectionate. She informed me 
 that my grand-aunt, the old Marquise de Listomere, had been 
 a Grandlieu. Her manner was polite, as Monsieur de Mort- 
 sauf's had been on the day when he saw me for the first 
 time. Her eyes lost that haughty expression by which the 
 princes of the earth make you feel the distance that divides 
 you from them. 
 
 I knew hardly anything of my family; the Duchess told 
 me that my great-uncle, an old abbe whom I did not know 
 even by name, was a member of the privy council ; that my 
 brother had received promotion ; and, finally, that, by a clause 
 in the charter, of which I had heard nothing, my father was 
 restored to his title of Marquis. 
 
 " I am but a chattel, a serf to Clochegourde," said I to 
 the Countess in an undertone. 
 
 The fairy wand of the restoration had worked with a 
 rapidity quite astounding to children brought up under Im- 
 perial rule. To me these changes meant nothing. Madame 
 de Mortsauf s lightest word or merest gesture were the only
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 91 
 
 events to which I attached any importance. I knew nothing 
 of politics, nor of the ways of the world. I had no ambition 
 but to love Henriette better than Petrarch loved Laura. This 
 indifference made the Duchess look upon me as a boy. 
 
 A great deal of company came to Frapesle, and we were 
 thirty at dinner. How enchanting for a young man to 
 see the woman he loves the most beautiful person present 
 and the object of passionate admiration, while he knows the 
 light of those chastely modest eyes is for him alone, and is 
 familiar enough with every tone of her voice to find in her 
 speech, superficially trivial or ironical, proofs of an ever- 
 present thought of him, even while his heart is full of burn- 
 ing jealousy of the amusements of her world ! 
 
 The Count, delighted with the attentions paid him, was 
 almost young again ; his wife hoped it might work some 
 change in him ; I was gay with Madeleine, who, like all chil- 
 dren in whom the body is too frail for the wrestling soul, 
 made me laugh by her amazing remarks, full of sarcastic but 
 never malignant wit, which spared no one. It was a lovely 
 day. One word, one hope, born that morning had bright- 
 ened all nature, and, seeing me so glad, Henriette was glad 
 too. 
 
 " This happiness falling across my gray and cloudy life has 
 done me good," she told me next day. 
 
 Of course I spent the morrow at Clochegourde ; I had been 
 exiled for five days, and thirsted for life. The Count had 
 set out for Tours at five in the morning. 
 
 A serious matter of dispute had come up between the 
 mother and daughter. The Duchess insisted that the Coun- 
 tess should come to Paris, where she would find her a place at 
 court, and where the Count, by retracting his refusal, might 
 fill a high position. Henriette, who was regarded as a happy 
 wife, would not unveil her griefs to anybody, not even to her 
 mother, nor betray her husband's incapacity. It was to pre- 
 vent her mother from penetrating the secret of her home life
 
 92 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 that she had sent Monsieur de Mortsauf to Tours, where he 
 was to fight out some questions with the lawyers. I alone, as 
 she had said, knew the secrets of Clochegourde. 
 
 Having learned by experience how effective the pure air and 
 blue sky of this valley were in soothing the irritable moods 
 and acute sufferings of sickness, and how favorable the life at 
 Clochegourde was to her children's health, she gave these 
 reasons for her refusal, though strongly opposed by the 
 Duchess a domineering woman who felt humiliated rather 
 than grieved by her daughter's far from brilliant marriage. 
 Henriette could see that her mother cared little enough about 
 Jacques and Madeleine, a terrible discovery ! 
 
 Like all mothers who have been accustomed to treat a 
 married daughter with the same despotism as they exerted 
 over her as a girl, the Duchess adopted measures which 
 allowed of no reply; now she affected insinuating kindness 
 to extract consent to her views, and now assumed a bitter 
 iciness to gain by fear what she could not achieve by sweet- 
 ness ; then, seeing all her efforts wasted, she showed the same 
 acrid irony as I had known in my own mother. In the 
 course of ten days Henriette went through all the heart-rend- 
 ings a young wife must go through to establish her independ- 
 ence. You, who for your happiness have the best of mothers, 
 can never understand these things. To form any idea of this 
 struggle between a dry, cold, calculating, ambitious woman 
 and her daughter overflowing with the fresh, genial sweetness 
 that never runs dry, you must imagine the lily, with which I 
 have compared the Countess, crushed in the wheels of a 
 machine of polished steel. This mother had never had any- 
 thing in common with her daughter ; she could not suspect 
 any of the real difficulties which compelled her to forego every 
 advantage from the restoration, and to live her solitary life. 
 This word, which she used to convey her suspicions, opened 
 a gulf between the women which nothing could ever after 
 bridge over.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 93 
 
 Though families duly bury their terrible quarrels, look into 
 their life ; you will find in almost every house some wide in- 
 curable wounds blighting natural feeling ; or some genuine 
 and pathetic passion which affinity of character makes eternal, 
 and which gives an added shock to the hand of death, leaving 
 a dark and ineradicable bruise ; or, again, simmering hatred, 
 slowly petrifying the heart, and freezing up all tears at the 
 moment of eternal parting. 
 
 Tortured yesterday, tortured to-day, stricken by every one, 
 even by the two suffering little ones, who were guiltless alike 
 of the ills they endured and of those they caused, how could 
 this sad soul help loving the one person who never gave a 
 blow, but who would fain have hedged her round with a triple 
 barrier of thorns, so as to shelter her from storms, from every 
 touch, from every pain ? 
 
 Though these squabbles distressed me, I was sometimes glad 
 as I felt that she took refuge in my heart, for Henriette con- 
 fided to me her new griefs. I could appreciate her fortitude 
 in suffering, and the energy of patience she could maintain. 
 Every day I understood more perfectly the meaning of her 
 words, " Love me as my aunt loved me." 
 
 " Have you really no ambition? " said the Duchess to me 
 at dinner, in a severe tone. 
 
 "Madame," replied I, with a very serious mien, {f I feel 
 myself strong enough to conquer the world ; but I am only 
 one-and-twenty, and I stand alone." 
 
 She looked at her daughter with surprise ; she had believed 
 that, in order to keep me at her side, the Countess had snuffed 
 out all my ambition. 
 
 The time while the Duchess de Lenoncourt stayed at 
 Clochegourde was one of general discomfort. The Countess 
 besought me to be strictly formal ; she was frightened at a 
 word spoken low ; to please her I was obliged to saddle my- 
 self with dissimulation. 
 
 The great Thursday came ; it was a festival of tiresome
 
 94 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 formality, one of those days which lovers hate, when they are 
 used to the facilities of every-day life, accustomed to find their 
 place ready for them, and the mistress of the house wholly 
 theirs. Love has a horror of everything but itself. 
 
 The Duchess returned to enjoy the pomps of the court, and 
 all fell into order at Clochegourde. 
 
 My little skirmish with the Count had resulted in my being 
 more firmly rooted in the house than before ; I could come in 
 at any time without giving rise to the slightest remark, and 
 my previous life led me to spread myself like a climbing plant 
 in the beautiful soul which opened to me the enchanted world 
 of sympathetic feeling. From hour to hour, from minute to 
 minute, our brotherly union, based on perfect confidence, be- 
 came more intimate ; we were confirmed in our relative 
 positions : the Countess wrapped me in her cherishing affec- 
 tion in the white purity of motherly love ; while my passion, 
 seraphic in her presence, when I was absent from her grew 
 fierce and thirsty like red-hot iron. Thus I loved her with a 
 twofold love which by turns pierced me with the myriad darts 
 of desire, and then lost them in the sky, where they vanished 
 in the unfathomable ether. 
 
 If you ask me why, young as I was and full of vehement 
 craving, I was satisfied to rest in the illusory hopes of a pla- 
 tonic affection, I must confess that I was not yet man enough 
 to torment this woman, who lived in perpetual dread of some 
 disaster to her children, constantly expecting some outbreak, 
 some stormy change of mood in her husband ; crushed by 
 him when she was not distressed by some ailment in Jacques 
 or Madeleine, and sitting by the bed of one or the other 
 whenever her husband gave her a little peace. The sound of 
 a too impassioned word shook her being, a desire startled 
 her; for her I had to be love enshrined, strength in tender- 
 ness; everything, in short, that she was for others. 
 
 And, then, I may say to you, who are so truly woman, the
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 95 
 
 situation had its enchanting quietism, moments of heavenly 
 sweetness, and of the satisfaction that follows on tacit renun- 
 ciation. Her conscientiousness was infectious, her self-immo- 
 lation for no earthly reward was impressive by its tenacity ; 
 the living but secret piety which held her other virtues to- 
 gether affected all about her like spiritual incense. Beside, 
 I was young; young enough to concentrate my whole nature 
 in the kiss she so rarely allowed me to press on her hand, 
 giving me only the back of it, never the palm that being 
 to her, perhaps, the border-line of sensuality. Though two 
 souls never fused and loved with greater ardor, never was the 
 flesh more bravely or victoriously held in subjection. 
 
 Later in life I understood the causes of my complete hap- 
 piness. At that age no self-interest distracted my heart, no 
 ambition crossed the current of a feeling which, like an un- 
 stemmed torrent, fed its flow with everything it carried before 
 it. Yes, as we grow older, the woman is what we love in a 
 woman; whereas we love everything in the first woman we 
 love her children are our children, her house, her interests, 
 are our own ; her grief is our greatest grief; we love her dress 
 and her belongings; it vexes us more to see her corn spilt 
 than it would to lose our own money ; we feel ready to quarrel 
 with a stranger who should meddle with the trifles on the 
 mantel. This sanctified love makes us live in another, while 
 afterward, alas ! we absorb that other life into our own, and 
 require the woman to enrich our impoverished spirit with her 
 youthful feeling. 
 
 I was ere long one of the family, and found here for the 
 first time the infinite soothing which is to an aching heart 
 what a bath is to the tired limbs; the soul is refreshed on 
 every side, anointed in its inmost folds. You cannot under- 
 stand this: you are a woman, and this is the happiness you 
 give without ever receiving in kind. Only a man can know 
 the delicate enjoyment of being the privileged friend of the 
 mistress of another home, the secret pivot of her affections.
 
 96 Tff LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 The dogs cease to bark at you ; the servants, like the dogs, 
 recognize the hidden passport you bear; the children, who 
 have no insincerities, who know that their share will never 
 be smaller, but that you bring joy to the light of their life 
 the children have a spirit of divination. To you they become 
 kittenish, with the delightful tyranny that they keep for those 
 they adore and who adore them ; they are shrewdly knowing, 
 and your guileless accomplices; they steal up on tiptoe, smile 
 in your face, and silently leave you. Everything welcomes 
 you, loves you, and smiles upon you. A true passion is like 
 a beautiful flower, which it is all the more delightful to find 
 when the soil that produces it is barren and wild. 
 
 But if I had the delights of being thus naturalized in a 
 family where I made relationships after my own heart, I also 
 paid the penalties. Hitherto Monsieur de Mortsauf had con- 
 trolled himself in my presence ; I had only seen the general 
 outline of his faults, but I now discerned their application in 
 its fullest extent, and I saw how nobly charitable the Countess 
 had been in her description of her daily warfare. I felt all the 
 angles of his intolerable temper ; I heard his ceaseless outcries 
 about mere trifles, his complaints of ailments of which no sign 
 was visible, his innate discontent, which blighted her life, and 
 the incessant craving to rule, which would have made him 
 devour fresh victims every year. When we walked out in the 
 evening, he chose the way we went ; but, wherever it might 
 be, he was always bored by it ; when he got home he blamed 
 others for his fatigue it was his wife who had done it, by 
 taking him against his will the way she wanted to go; he 
 forgot that he had led us, and complained of being ruled by 
 her in every trifle, of never being allowed to decide or think 
 for himself, of being a mere cypher in the house. If his hard 
 words fell on silent patience he got angry, feeling the limit 
 to his power ; he would inquire sharply whether religion did 
 not require wives to submit to their husbands, and whether it 
 was decent to make a father contemptible before his children.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 97 
 
 He always ended by touching some sensitive chord in his wife ; 
 and when he had struck it, he seemed to find particular pleasure 
 in this domineering pettiness. 
 
 Sometimes he affected gloomy taciturnity and morbid de- 
 jection, which frightened his wife and led her to lavish on 
 him the most touching care. Like spoiled children, who 
 exert their power without a thought of their mother's alarms, 
 he allowed himself to be petted like Jacques or Madeleine; of 
 whom he was very jealous. At last, indeed, I discovered that 
 in the smallest, as in the most important matters, the Count 
 behaved to his servants, his children, and his wife as he had 
 to me over the backgammon. 
 
 On the day when I first understood, root and branch, those 
 miseries which, like forest creepers, stifled and crushed the 
 movement and the very breathing of this family, which cast a 
 tangle of fine but infinitely numerous threads about the 
 working of the household, hindering every advance of fortune 
 by hampering the most necessary steps, I was seized with 
 admiring awe, which subjugated my love and crushed it down 
 into my heart. What was I, good God ! The tears I had 
 swallowed filled me with a sort of rapturous intoxication \ it 
 was a joy to me to identify myself with this wife's endurance. 
 Till then I had submitted to the Count's tyranny as a smug- 
 gler pays his fines ; thenceforth I voluntarily received the 
 despot's blows to be as close as possible to Henriette. The 
 Countess understood, and allowed me to take my place at her 
 side, rewarding me by granting me to share her penance, as 
 of old the repentant apostate, eager to fly heavenward with 
 his brethren, won permission to die in the arena. 
 
 " But for you this life would be too much for me," she said 
 one night when the Count had been more annoying, more 
 acrid, and more whimsical than usual, as flies are in great 
 heat. 
 
 He had gone to bed. Henriette and I sat during part of 
 the evening under the acacias basking in the beams of sunset, 
 7
 
 98 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 the children playing near us. Our words, mere infrequent 
 exclamations, expressed the sympathetic feelings in which we 
 had taken refuge from our common sufferings. When words 
 failed us, silence served us faithfully; our souls entered into 
 each other, so to speak, without hindrance, but without the 
 invitation of a kiss ; each enjoying the charm of pensive torpor, 
 they floated together on the ripples of the same dream, dipped 
 together in the river, and came forth like two nymphs as 
 closely one as even jealousy could wish, but free from every 
 earthly tie. We plunged into a bottomless abyss, and came 
 back to the surface, our hands empty, but asking each other 
 by a look, " Out of so many days, shall we ever have one single 
 day for our own ? ' ' 
 
 When rapture culls for us these blossoms without root, why 
 is it that the flesh rebels ? In spite of the enervating poetry 
 of the evening which tinged the brickwork of the parapet 
 with sober and soothing tones of orange ; in spite of the 
 religious atmosphere, which softened the shouts of the chil- 
 dren, leaving us at peace, longing ran in sparks of fire through 
 my veins like the signal for a blaze of rockets. At the end 
 of three months I was beginning to be dissatisfied with the 
 lot appointed to me ; and I was softly fondling Henriette's 
 hand, trying thus to expend a little of the fever that was 
 scorching me. 
 
 Henriette was at once Madame de Mortsauf again ; a few 
 tears rose to my eyes, she saw them, and gave me a melting 
 look, laying her hand on my lips. 
 
 "Understand," said she, "that this costs me tears too. 
 The friendship that asks so great a favor is dangerous." 
 
 I broke out in a passion of reproach, I spoke of all I suf- 
 fered, and of the small alleviation I craved to help me to 
 endure it. I dared tell her that at my age, though the senses 
 were spiritualized, the spirit had a sex ; that I could die but 
 not without having spoken. 
 
 She reduced me to silence with a flashing look of pride, in
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 99 
 
 which I seemed to read the cacique's reply, " Am I then on a 
 bed of roses?" Perhaps, too, I was mistaken. Ever since 
 the day when, at the gate of Frapesle, I had wrongly ascribed 
 to her the idea which would build our happiness on a tomb, I 
 had been ashamed to stain her soul by uttering a wish tainted 
 with mere criminal passion. 
 
 Then she spoke, and in honeyed words told me that she 
 could never be wholly mine, that I ought to know that. I 
 understood, as she spoke the words, that if I submitted, I 
 should have dug a gulf between us. I bent my head. She 
 went on, saying that she had an inmost conviction that she 
 might love a brother without offense to God or man ; that 
 there is some comfort in thus taking such an affection as a 
 living image of Divine love, which, according to the good 
 Saint-Martin, is the life of the world. If I could not be to 
 her some such person as her old director, less than a lover but 
 more than a brother, we must meet no more. She could but 
 die, offering up to God this added anguish, though she could 
 not endure it without tears and torment. 
 
 " I have given you more than I ought," she said in conclu- 
 sion, " since there is nothing more that you can take, and I 
 am already punished." 
 
 I could but soothe her, promise never, never to cause her a 
 moment's pain, and vow to love her at twenty as old men love 
 their youngest born. 
 
 Next morning I came early to the house. She had no flow- 
 ers to put in the vases in her gray drawing-room. I tramped 
 across the fields and through the vineyards, hunting for 
 flowers to make her two nosegays ; and as I gathered them 
 one by one, cutting them with long stems and admiring them, 
 it struck that there was a harmony in their hues and foliage, a 
 poetry that found its way to the understanding by fascinating 
 the eye, just as musical phrases arouse a thousand associations 
 in loved and loving hearts. If color is organic light, must it 
 not have its meaning, as vibrations of the air have? Helped
 
 100 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 by Jacques and Madeleine, all three of us happy in contriving 
 a surprise for our dear one, I sat down on the lower steps of 
 the terrace flight, where we spread out our flowers and set to 
 work to compose two nosegays, by which I intended to sym- 
 bolize a sentiment. 
 
 Picture to yourself a fountain of flowers, gushing up, as it 
 were, from the vase and falling in fringed waves, and from 
 the heart of it my aspirations rose as silver-cupped lilies 
 and white roses. Among this cool mass twinkled blue corn- 
 flowers, forget-me-not, bugloss every blue flower whose hues, 
 borrowed from the sky, blend so well with white; for are 
 they not two types of innocence that which knows nothing 
 and that which knows all the mind of a child and the mind 
 of a martyr? Love has its blazonry, and the Countess read my 
 meaning. She gave me one of those piercing looks that are 
 like the cry of a wounded man touched on the tender spot ; 
 she was at once shy and delighted. What a reward I found 
 in that look ! What encouragement in the thought that I 
 could please her and refresh her heart ! 
 
 So I invented Father Castel's theory as applied to love and 
 rediscovered for her a lore lost to Europe, where flowers of 
 language take the place of the messages conveyed in the East 
 by color and fragrance. And it was charming to express my 
 meaning through these daughters of the sun, the sisters of the 
 blossoms that open under the radiance of love. I soon had 
 an understanding with the products of the rural flora, just as 
 a man I met at a later time had with bees. 
 
 Twice a week, during the remainder of my stay at Frapesle, 
 I carried out the long business of this poetical structure, for 
 which I needed every variety of grass, and I studied them all 
 with care, less as a botanist than as an artist, and with regard 
 to their sentiment rather than their form. To find a flower 
 where it grew I often walked immense distances along the 
 river-bank, through the dells, to the top of cliffs, across the 
 sandhills and commons, gathering ideas from among clumps
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 101 
 
 of heath. In these walks I discovered for myself pleasures 
 unknown to the student who lives in meditation, to the hus- 
 bandman engaged on some special culture, to the artisan tied 
 to the town, to the merchant nailed to his counting-house, 
 but known to some foresters, to some woodsmen, to some 
 dreamers. 
 
 Nature has certain effects of boundless meaning, rising to 
 the level of the greatest intellectual ideas. Thus, a blossom- 
 ing heath covered with diamonds of dew that hang on every 
 leaf sparkling in the sun, a thing of infinite beauty for one 
 single eye that may happen to see it. Or a forest nook, shut 
 in by tumbled boulders, broken by willows, carpeted with 
 moss, dotted with juniper shrubs it scares you by its wild, 
 hurtled, fearful aspect, and the cry of the hawk comes up to 
 you. Or a scorching sandy common with no vegetation ; a" 
 stony, precipitous plateau, the horizon reminding you of the 
 desert but there I found an exquisite and lonely flower, a 
 pulsatilla waving its violet silk pennon in honor of its golden 
 stamens ; a pathetic image of my fair idol, alone in her val- 
 ley ! Or, again, broad pools over which nature flings patches 
 of greenery, a sort of transition between animal and vegetable 
 being, and in a few days life is there floating plants and 
 insects, like a world in the upper air. Or, again, a cottage 
 with its cabbage garden, its vineyard, its fences, overhanging 
 a bog, and surrounded by a few meagre fields of rye em- 
 blematic of many a humble life. Or a long forest avenue, 
 like the nave of a cathedral where the pillars are trees, their 
 branches meeting like the groins of a vault, and at the end 
 a distant glade seen through the foliage, dappled with light 
 and shade, or glowing in the ruddy beams of sunset like the 
 painted glass window of a chancel, filled with birds for chor- 
 isters. Then, as you come out of the grove, a chalky fallow 
 where full-fed snakes wriggle over the hot, crackling moss 
 and vanish into their holes after raising their graceful, proud 
 heads. And over these pictures cast floods of sunshine, rip-
 
 102 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 pling like a nourishing tide, or piles of gray cloud in bars like 
 the furrows on an old man's brow, or the cool tones of a 
 faintly yellow sky banded with pale light and listen ! You 
 will hear vague harmonies in the depth of bewildering silence. 
 
 During the months of September and October I never col- 
 lected a nosegay which took me less than three hours of seek- 
 ing, I was so lost in admiration with the mild indolence of 
 a poet of these transient allegories which represented to me 
 the strongest contrasts of human life, majestic scenes in which 
 my memory now digs for treasure. To this day I often wed 
 to such grand spectacles my remembrance of the soul that 
 then pervaded nature. I still see in them my queen, whose 
 white dress floated through the copse and danced over the 
 lawns, and whose spirit came up to me like a promise of frui- 
 tion from every flower-cup full of amorous stamens. 
 
 No declaration, no proof of unbounded passion was ever 
 more contagious than were these symphonies of flowers, 
 wherein my cheated desires gave me such inspiration as Bee- 
 thoven could express in notes ; with vehement reaction on 
 himself, transcendent heavenward flights. When she saw 
 them Henriette was no longer Madame de Mortsauf. She 
 came back to them again and again ; she fed on them ; she 
 found in them all the thoughts I had woven into them, when, 
 to accept the offering, she looked up from her work-frame and 
 said, " Dear ! how lovely that is ! " 
 
 You can imagine this enchanting communication through 
 the arrangement of a nosegay, as you would understand Saadi 
 from a fragment of his poetry. Have you ever smelt in the 
 meadows, in the month of May, the fragrance which fills all 
 creatures with the heady joy of procreation ; which, if you 
 are in a boat, makes you dip your hands in the water ; which 
 makes you loosen your hair to the breeze, and renews your 
 thoughts like the fresh greenery on the trees of the forest ? 
 A small grass, the vernal anthoxanthum, is one of the chief 
 elements in this mysterious combination. No one can wear
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 103 
 
 it with impunity. If you put a few sprays of it in a nosegay, 
 with its shining variegated blades like a finely striped green- 
 and-white dress, unaccountable pulses will stir within you, 
 opening the rosebuds in your heart that modesty keeps closed. 
 Imagine, then, round the wide edge of the china jar a border 
 composed entirely of the white tufts peculiar to a sedum that 
 grows in the vineyards of Touraine, a faint image of the 
 wished-for forms, bowed like a submissive slave-girl. From 
 this base rise the tendrils of bindweed with its white funnels, 
 bunches of pink rest-harrow mingled with young shoots of 
 oak gorgeously tinted and lustrous ; these all stand forward, 
 humbly drooping like weeping willow, timid and suppliant 
 like prayers. Above, you see the slender blossoming sprays, 
 for ever tremulous, of quaking grass and its stream of yellowish 
 anthers; the snowy tufts of feathergrass from brook and 
 meadow, the green hair of the barren brome, the frail agrostis 
 pale, purple hopes that crown our earliest dreams, and that 
 stand out against the gray-green background in the light that 
 plays on all these flowering grasses. Above these, again, 
 there are a few China roses, mingling with the light tracery 
 of carrot leaves with plumes of cottongrass, marabout tufts of 
 meadow-sweet, umbels of wild parsley, the pale hair of trav- 
 elers' joy, now in seed ; the tiny crosslets of milky- white 
 candytuft and milfoil, the loose sprays of rose-and-black fumi- 
 tory, tendrils of the vine, twisted branches of the honey- 
 suckle in short, every form these artless creatures can show 
 that is wildest and most ragged flamboyant and trident ; 
 spear-shaped, dentate leaves, and stems as knotted as desire 
 writhing in the depths of the soul. And from the heart of 
 this overflowing torrent of love, a grand red double poppy 
 stands up with bursting buds, flaunting its burning flame 
 above starry jessamine and above the ceaseless shower of 
 pollen, a cloud dancing in the air and reflecting the sunshine 
 in its glittering motes. Would not any woman, who is alive 
 to the seductive perfume that lurks in the anthoxanthum,
 
 104 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 understand this mass of abject ideas, this tender whiteness 
 broken by uncontrollable impulses, and this red fire of love 
 imploring joys denied it in the hundred struggles of an un- 
 dying, unwearied, and eternal passion ? Set this appeal in 
 the sunshine of a window so as to do justice to all its subtle 
 details, its delicate contrasts and arabesque elegance, that its 
 mistress may see perhaps an open blossom moist with a tear 
 she will be very near yielding ; an angel, or the voice of her 
 children, alone will check her on the edge of the abyss. 
 
 What do we offer up to God? Incense, light and song, 
 the purest expression at our command. Well, then, was not 
 all that we offer to God dedicated to love in this poem of 
 glowing flowers, ever murmuring sadly to the heart while 
 encouraging hidden raptures, unconfessed hopes, and illusions 
 which flash and are gone like shooting stars on a hot night ? 
 
 These neutral pleasures were a comfort to us, helping us to 
 cheat nature, exasperated by long study of the beloved face 
 and by glances which find enjoyment in piercing to the very 
 core of the form they gaze on. To me I dare not say to 
 her these utterances were like the rifts through which the 
 water spurts in a solid dyke, and which often prevent a catas- 
 trophe by affording a necessary outlet. Abstinence brings 
 overwhelming exhaustion that finds succor in the few crumbs 
 dropping from the sky, which, from Dan to the Sahara, sheds 
 manna on the pilgrim. And I have found Henriette before 
 one of those nosegays, her hands hanging loosely, a prey to 
 those stormy contemplations when the feelings swell the 
 bosom, give light to the brow, surge up in waves that toss and 
 foam and leave us enervated by exhaustion. 
 
 I have never since gathered nosegays for any one ! 
 
 When we had invented this language for our own use, we 
 felt the sort of satisfaction that a slave finds in deceiving his 
 master. 
 
 All the rest of the month, when I hurried up the garden, I
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 105 
 
 often saw her face at the window, and when I went into the 
 drawing-room she was sitting at her frame. If I did not 
 arrive punctually at the time we had agreed upon, without 
 ever fixing an hour, I sometimes saw her white figure on the 
 terrace, and when I found her there she would say 
 
 " I came to meet you to-day. Must we not pet the youngest 
 child?" 
 
 The dreadful games of backgammon with the Count had 
 come to an end. His recent purchases required him to be 
 constantly busy, inspecting, verifying, measuring, and plan- 
 ning ; he had orders to give, field-work that required the 
 master's eye, and matters to be settled between him and his 
 wife. The Countess and I frequently walked out to join him 
 on his new land, taking the two children, who all the way 
 would run after butterflies, stag-beetles, and crickets; and 
 gather nosegays too or, to be exact, sheaves of flowers. 
 
 To walk with the woman he loves, to have her hand on his 
 arm, to pick her road for her ! These infinite joys are 
 enough for a man's lifetime. Their talk is then so confiding! 
 We went alone, we came back with the general a little 
 mocking name we gave the Count when he was in a good 
 humor. This difference in our order of march tinged our 
 happiness by a contrast of which the secret is known only to 
 hearts which meet under difficulties. On our way home, this 
 felicity a look, a pressure of the hand was checkered by 
 uneasiness. Our speech, freely uttered as we went, had 
 mysterious meanings as we came back, when one of us, after a 
 pause, found a reply to some insidious inquiry, or a discussion 
 we had begun was carried on in the enigmatic phraseology to 
 which our language lends itself, and which women invent so 
 cleverly. Who has not known the pleasure of such an under- 
 standing, in an unknown sphere, as it were, where spirits 
 move apart from the crowd and meet superior to all ordinary 
 laws? Once a mad hope rose in me, to be immediately 
 crushed when, in reply to the Count who asked what we were
 
 106 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 talking about, Henrietta said something with a double mean- 
 ing, which he took quite simply. This innocent jest amused 
 Madeleine, but it brought a blush to her mother's cheek ; 
 and, by a stern look, she told me that she was capable of 
 withdrawing her soul as she had once withdrawn her hand, 
 intending to be always a blameless wife. But a purely spir- 
 itual union has such charms that we did the same again on 
 the morrow. 
 
 Thus the hours, days, and weeks flew on, full of ever-new 
 felicity. We had come to the season of the vintage, in 
 Touraine always a high festival. By the end of September 
 the sun is less fierce than during harvest, making it safe to 
 linger in the open air without fear of sunstroke or fatigue. 
 It is easier, too, to gather grapes than to reap corn. The fruit 
 is fully ripe. The crops are carried, bread is cheaper, and in- 
 creased abundance makes life brighter. Then the fears that 
 always hang over the result of the year's toil, in which so 
 much money and so much sweat are expended, are relieved 
 by filled granaries and cellars waiting to be filled. The vint- 
 age comes as a jovial dessert to the harvest feast, and the sky 
 always smiles on it in Touraine, where the autumn is a beau- 
 tiful season. 
 
 In that hospitable province the vintagers are fed by the 
 owner ; and as these meals are the only occasions throughout 
 the year when these poor laborers have substantial and well- 
 cooked food, they look forward to them as, in patriarchal 
 households, the children count on anniversary festivals. They 
 crowd to the estates where the masters are known to be open- 
 handed. So every house is full of people and provisions. 
 The winepresses are always at work. The world seems alive 
 with the merry gang of coopers at work, the carts crowded 
 with laughing girls and men, who, getting better wages than 
 at any other time of year, sing on every opportunity. Again, 
 as another cause of enjoyment, all ranks mingle women and 
 children, masters and servants, every one takes part in the
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 107 
 
 sacred gathering. These various circumstances may account 
 for the joviality, traditional from age to age, which breaks 
 forth in these last fine days of the year, and of which the 
 remembrance inspired Rabelais of yore to give a Bacchic 
 form to his great work. 
 
 Jacques and Madeleine, who had always been ailing, had 
 never before taken part in the vintage, nor had I, and they 
 found childlike delight in seeing me a sharer in their pleasure. 
 Their mother had promised to come with us. We had been 
 to Villaines, where the country baskets are made, and had 
 ordered very nice ones ; we four were to gather the fruit off a 
 few rows left for us ; but we all promised not to eat too many 
 grapes. The Gros Co of the Touraine vineyards is so deli- 
 cious eaten fresh, that the finest table grapes are scorned in 
 comparison. Jacques made me solemnly promise that I would 
 go to see no other vineyards, but devote myself exclusively 
 to the Clos of Clochegourde. Never had these two little 
 creatures, usually so wan and pale, been so bright, and rosy, 
 and excited, and busy as they were that morning. They chat- 
 tered for the sake of chattering, went and came and trotted 
 about for no visible reason but that, like other children, they 
 had too much vitality to work off; Monsieur and Madame de 
 Mortsauf had never seen them so well. And I was a child 
 with them, more a child than they were perhaps, for I too 
 hoped for my harvest. 
 
 The weather was glorious ; we went up to the vineyards 
 and spent half the day there. How we vied with each other 
 in seeking the finest bunches, in seeing which could fill a 
 basket first ! They ran to and fro from the vines to their 
 mother, every bunch was shown to her as it was gathered. 
 And she laughed the hearty laugh of youth when, following 
 the little girl with my basketful, I said, in a mocking spirit 
 of playfulness, like Madeleine, "And look at mine, too, 
 mamma." 
 
 "Dear child," she said to me, " do not get too hot." Then,
 
 108 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 stroking my hair and my neck, she gave me a little slap on 
 the cheek, adding, " Thou art in a bath ! " 
 
 This is the only time I ever received from her that verbal 
 caress, the lover's tu. I stood looking at the pretty hedge- 
 rows full of red berries, of sloes, and blackberries; I listened 
 to the children shouting; I gazed at the girls pulling the 
 grapes, at the cart full of vats, at the men with baskets on 
 their backs I stamped every detail on my memory, down to 
 the young almond tree by which she was standing, bright, 
 flushed, and laughing, under her parasol. 
 
 Then I set to work to gather the fruit with a steady, word- 
 less perseverance, and a slow, measured step that left my 
 spirit free. I tasted the ineffable pleasure of a physical em- 
 ployment such as carries life along, regulating the rush of 
 passion which, but for this mechanical movement, was very 
 near a conflagration. I learned how much wisdom comes of 
 labor, and I understood monastic rule. 
 
 For the first time in many days, the Count was neither 
 sullen nor vicious. His boy so well, the future Due de Lenon- 
 court-Mortsauf, rosy and fair, and smeared with grape-juice, 
 gladdened his heart. This being the last day of the vintage, 
 the general had promised his people a dance in the evening 
 in the field by Clochegourde, in honor of the return of the 
 Bourbons; thus the festival was to be complete for everybody. 
 On our way home, the Countess took my arm ; she leaned on 
 me so as to let my heart feel all the weight of her hand, like 
 a mother who longs to impart her gladness, and said in my 
 ear 
 
 "You bring us good fortune." 
 
 And to me, knowing of her sleepless nights, her constant 
 alarms, and her past life, through which she had indeed been 
 supported by the hand of God, but in which all had been 
 barren and weariful, these words, spoken in her deep, soft 
 voice, brought such joys as no woman in the world could ever 
 give me again.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 109 
 
 " The monotonous misery of my days is broken and life is 
 bright with hope," she added after a pause. "Oh, do not 
 desert me ! Do not betray my innocent superstitions ! Be my 
 eldest, the providence of the little ones." 
 
 This is no romance, Natalie; none can discern the infinite 
 depth of such feelings who have not in early life sounded the 
 great lakes on whose shores we live. If to many souls the 
 passions have been as lava-torrents flowing between parched 
 banks, are there not others in which a passion subdued by 
 insurmountable obstacles has filled the crater of the volcano 
 with limpid waters? 
 
 We had one more such festival. Madame de Mortsauf 
 wished that her children should learn something of practical 
 life, and know by what hard labor money must be earned ; 
 she had, therefore, given each certain revenues depending on 
 the chances of produce. Jacques was owner of the walnut 
 crop, Madeleine of the chestnuts. A few days after we went 
 forth to the chestnut and walnut harvests. Thrashing Made- 
 leine's chestnut trees; hearing the nuts fall, their spiny husks 
 making them rebound from the dry velvety moss of the unfer- 
 tile soil on which chestnuts grow; seeing the solemn gravity 
 of the little girl as she looked at the piles, calculating their 
 value, which meant for her such pleasures as she could give 
 herself without control ; then the congratulations of Manette, 
 the children's maid, the only person who ever filled the 
 Countess' place with them; the lesson to be derived from this 
 little business, of toil requisite to reap the humblest harvest, 
 so often imperiled by variation of climate all these things 
 made up a little drama, the children's ingenuous delight form- 
 ing a charming contrast with the sober hues of early autumn. 
 
 Madeleine had a loft of her own where I saw the brown 
 crop safely stowed, sharing in her delight. I am thrilled to 
 this day as I remember the clatter of each basketful of chest- 
 nuts rolling out over the yellow chaff that formed the flooring. 
 The Count bought some for the house; the farm bailiffs, the
 
 110 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 laborers, every one in the neighborhood found buyers from 
 "Mignonne," a kindly name which the peasants in those 
 parts are ready to give even to a stranger, but which seemed 
 especially appropriate to Madeleine. 
 
 Jacques was not so lucky for his walnut harvest. It rained 
 several days ; but I comforted him by advising him to keep 
 his nuts for a time and sell them later. Monsieur de Chessel 
 had told me that the walnut crop had failed in le Brehemont, 
 in the district around Amboise, and in the country about 
 Vouvray. Nut oil is very largely used in Touraine. Jacques 
 would make at least forty sous on each tree, and there were 
 two hundred trees, so the sum would be considerable. He 
 meant to buy himself a saddle and bridle for a pony. His 
 wish led to a general discussion, and his father led him to 
 consider the uncertainty of such returns, and the need for 
 making a reserve fund for the years when the trees should be 
 bare of fruit, so as to secure an average income. 
 
 I read the Countess' heart in her silence ; she was delighted 
 to see Jacques listening to his father, and the father winning 
 back some of the reverence he had forfeited, and all thanks 
 to the subterfuge she had arranged. I told you when describ- 
 ing this woman that no earthly language can ever do justice 
 to her character and genius. While these little scenes are 
 enacted the spirit revels in them with joy, but does not 
 analyze them ; but how clearly they afterward stand out against 
 the gloomy background of a life of vicissitude ! They shine 
 like diamonds, set amid thoughts of baser alloy and regrets 
 that melt into reminiscences of vanished happiness ! Why 
 should the names of the two estates Monsieur and Madame de 
 Mortsauf had lately purchased, and which gave them so much 
 to do la Cassine and la Rhtoriere touch me far more than 
 the greatest names in the Holy Land or in Greece ? ' ' Qut aime, 
 le dire " (Let those who love tell), says La Fontaine. Those 
 names have the talismanic power of the starry words used in 
 sorcery, they are magical to me ; they call up sleeping images
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. Ill 
 
 which stand forth and speak to me ; they carry me back to 
 that happy valley ; they create a sky and landscape. But has 
 not conjuration always been possible in the realm of the 
 spiritual world ? So you need not wonder to find me writing 
 to you of such familiar scenes. The smallest details of that 
 simple and almost homely life were so many ties, slight as 
 they must seem, which bound me closely to the Countess. 
 
 The children's future prospects troubled Madame de Mort- 
 sauf almost as much as their feeble health. I soon saw the 
 truth of what she had told me with regard to her unconfessed 
 importance in the business of the property, which I gradually 
 understood as I studied such facts about the country as a states- 
 man ought to know. After ten years' struggles Madame de 
 Mortsauf had at last reformed the management of the lands. 
 She had quartered them mis en quatre a term used in those 
 parts for the rotation of crops, a method of sowing wheat on 
 the same field only once in four years, so that the land yields 
 some crop every year instead of lying fallow. To overcome the 
 pig-headed resistance of the peasantry, it had been necessary 
 to cancel the old leases, to divide the property into four large 
 holdings, and farm on half-profits, the system peculiar to Tou- 
 raine and the adjacent provinces. The landowner provides 
 the dwelling and outbuildings, and supplies seed to working 
 farmers, with whom he agrees to share the cost of husbandry 
 and the profits. The division is undertaken by a metivier (a 
 farm bailiff), who is authorized to take the half due to the 
 proprietor ; and this system, a costly one, is complicated by 
 the way of keeping accounts, which leads to constant changes 
 in the estimate of the shares. 
 
 The Countess had persuaded Monsieur de Mortsauf to keep 
 a fifth farm, consisting of the enclosed lands round Cloche- 
 gourde, in his own hands, partly to give him occupation, but 
 also to demonstrate to the sharefarmers by the evidence of 
 facts the superiority of the new methods. Being able here to 
 manage the crops, she had by degrees, with womanly tena-
 
 112 THE LILV OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 city, had two of the farmhouses rebuilt on the plan of the 
 farms in Artois and Flanders. Her scheme was self-evident. 
 She intended, when the leases on half-profits should expire, 
 to make these two farms into first-class holdings and let 
 them for rent in money to active and intelligent tenants, so 
 as to simplify the returns to Clochegourde. Dreading lest she 
 should die the first, she was anxious to leave to the Count an 
 income easily collected, and to the children a property which 
 no misadventure could make ruinous. 
 
 By this time the fruit trees planted ten years since were in 
 full bearing. The hedges which guaranteed the boundaries 
 against any dispute in the future had all grown up. The 
 poplars and elms were flourishing. With the recent addi- 
 tions, and by introducing the new system of culture, the 
 estate of Clochegourde, divided into four large holdings, 
 might be made to yield sixteen thousand francs a year in hard 
 cash, at a rent of four thousand francs for each farm ; exclu- 
 sive of the vineyards, the two hundred acres of coppice ad- 
 joining and the home farm. The lanes from these farms 
 were all to come into an avenue leading straight from Cloche- 
 gourde to the Chinon road. The distance to Tours by this 
 road was no more than five leagues ; farmers would certainly 
 not be lacking, especially at a time when everybody was talk- 
 ing of the Count's improvements and his success, and the 
 increased return from his land. 
 
 She proposed to spend about fifteen thousand francs on 
 each of the newly purchased properties, to convert the houses 
 on them into fine homesteads so as to let them to advantage 
 after farming them for a year or two, while placing there as 
 steward a man named Martineau, the most trustworthy of the 
 bailiffs, who would presently be out of place ; for the leases 
 of the four half-profit farms were about to fall in, and the 
 moment was coming for uniting them into two holdings and 
 letting them for a rent in money. 
 
 These very simple plans, complicated only by the necessary
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 113 
 
 outlay of more than thirty thousand francs, were at this time 
 the subject of long discussions between her and the Count 
 terrible arguments, in which she was emboldened only by the 
 thought of the children's interests. The mere thought, " If 
 I were to die to-morrow, what would become of them?" 
 made her sick at heart. Only gentle and peaceable souls, to 
 whom rage is impossible, and who long to see the peace they 
 feel within them reign around them, can ever understand 
 what an effort such a contest needs, what rushes of blood 
 oppress the heart before the struggle is faced, what exhaustion 
 follows after a battle in which nothing has been won. Just 
 now, when her children were less wan, less starveling, and 
 more full of life, for the fruitful season had had its effect on 
 them ; just now, when she could watch their play with moist- 
 ened eyes, and a sense of satisfaction that renewed her 
 strength by reviving her spirits, the poor woman was a victim 
 to the insulting thrusts and cutting innuendoes of determined 
 antagonism. The Count, startled by these changes, denied 
 their utility and their possibility with rigid oppugnancy. To 
 all conclusive reasoning he answered with the argument of a 
 child who should doubt the heat of the sun in summer. The 
 Countess won at last ; the triumph of commonsense over folly 
 salved her wounds, and she forgot them. 
 
 On that day she walked to la Cassine and la Rhetoriere, to 
 give orders for the buildings. The Count went on in front 
 alone, the children came between, and we followed slowly be- 
 hind, for she was talking in the sweet, low voice which made 
 her speech sound like tiny ripples of the sea murmuring on 
 fine sand. 
 
 She was "sure of success," she said. A rival service was 
 about to start on the road between Chinon and Tours under 
 the management of an active man, a cousin of Manette's, and 
 he wanted to rent a large farmstead on the high-road. He 
 had a large family ; the eldest son would drive the coach, the 
 second would attend to the heavy carrying business, while the 
 8
 
 114 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 father, settled at la Rabelaye, a farm half-way on the road, 
 would attend to the horses and cultivate the ground to ad- 
 vantage with the manure from the stables. She had already 
 found a tenant for the second farm, la Baude, lying close to 
 Clochegourde ; one of the four half-profit farmers, an honest, 
 intelligent, and active man, who understood the advantages 
 of the new system, had offered to take it on lease. As to la 
 Cassine and la Rhetoriere, the soil was the best in all the 
 country-side ; when once the houses were ready and the fields 
 fairly started, they would only have to be advertised at Tours. 
 Thus, in two years, the estate would bring in about twenty-four 
 thousand francs a year ; la Gravelotte, the farm in le Maine 
 recovered by Monsieur de Mortsauf, had just been let for 
 nine years, at seven thousand francs a year ; the Count's pen- 
 sion as major-general was four thousand francs ; if all this 
 could not be said to constitute a fortune, at any rate it meant 
 perfect ease ; and later, perhaps, further improvements might 
 allow of her going some day to Paris to attend to Jacques' 
 education two years hence, when the heir presumptive's 
 health should be stronger. 
 
 How tremulously did she speak the word Paris ! And I 
 was at the bottom of this plan ; she wanted to be as little apart 
 as possible from her friend. 
 
 At these words I caught fire ; I told her she little knew me ; 
 that, without saying anything to her, I had planned to finish 
 my own education by studying night and day so as to become 
 Jacques' tutor ; for that I could never endure to think of any 
 other young man at home in her house. 
 
 On this she grew very serious. 
 
 " No, Felix," said she. " This is not to be, any more than 
 your becoming a priest. Though you have by that speech 
 touched my motherly heart to the quick, the woman cares for 
 you too well to allow you to become a victim to your fidelity. 
 The reward of such devotion would be that you would be 
 irremediably looked down upon, and I could do nothing to
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 115 
 
 prevent it. No, no ! Never let me injure you in any way. 
 You, the Vicomte de Vandenesse, a tutor ? You, whose proud 
 motto is 'We se Vend' (For no guerdon). If you were Rich- 
 elieu himself, your life would be marred for ever. It would be 
 the greatest grief to your family. My friend, you do not know 
 all the insolence such a woman as my mother can throw into 
 a patronizing glance, all the humiliation into one word, all 
 the scorn into a bow ! " 
 
 "And, so long as you love me, what do I care for the 
 world?" 
 
 She affected not to hear, and went on 
 
 "Though my father is most kind and willing to give me 
 anything I may ask, he would not forgive you for having put 
 yourself into a false position and would refuse to help you 
 on in the world. I would not see you tutor to the Dauphin ! 
 Take society as you find it, make no blunders in life. My 
 friend, this offer, prompted by " 
 
 " By love," I put in. 
 
 "No, by charity," said she, restraining her tears; "this 
 crazy proposition throws a light on your character; your heart 
 will be your enemy. I insist henceforth on my right to tell 
 you certain truths; give my woman's eyes the care of seeing 
 for you sometimes. 
 
 "Yes, buried here in Clochegourde, I mean to look on 
 silent but delighted at your advancement. As to a tutor, be 
 easy on that score ; we will find some good old abb6, some 
 learned and venerable Jesuit, and my father will gladly pay 
 the sum needed for the education of the boy who is to bear 
 his name. Jacques is my pride ! And he is eleven years 
 old," she added after a pause. "But he, like you, looks 
 younger. I thought you were thirteen when I first saw you." 
 
 By this time we had reached la Cassine ; Jacques and Mad- 
 eleine and I followed her about as children follow their 
 mother ; but we were in the way. I left her for a moment 
 and went into the orchard, where the elder Martineau, the
 
 116 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 gamekeeper, with his son the bailiff, were marking trees to be 
 cut down ; they discussed the matter as eagerly as if it were 
 their own concern. I saw by this how much the Countess 
 was beloved. I expressed myself to this effect to a day laborer 
 who, with one foot on his spade and his elbow on the handle, 
 was listening to the two men learned in pomology. 
 
 "Oh yes, sir," said he, "she is a good woman, and not 
 proud, like those apes at Azay, who would leave us to die 
 like dogs rather than give a sou extra on a yard of ditching. 
 The day when she leaves the place, the Virgin will cry over 
 it, and we too. She knows what is due to her, but she knows 
 what hard times we have and considers us." 
 
 With what delight I gave all my spare cash to that 
 man ! 
 
 A few days after this a pony was bought for Jacques ; his 
 father, a capital horseman, wished to inure him very gradually 
 to the fatiguing exercise of riding. The boy had a neat little 
 outfit that he had bought with the price of his walnuts. The 
 morning when he had his first lesson, riding with his father 
 and followed by Madeleine's shouts of glee as she danced on 
 the lawn round which Jacques was trotting, was to the 
 Countess her first high festival as a mother. Jacques' pretty 
 collar had been worked by her hands ; he had a little sky-blue 
 cloth coat, with a varnished leather belt around the waist, 
 white tucked trousers, and a Scotch cap over his thick, fair 
 curls; he really was charming to look upon. All the servants 
 of the household came out to share the family joy, and the 
 little heir smiled as he passed his mother, without a sign of 
 fear. 
 
 This first act of manliness in the child who had so often 
 been at death's door, the hope of a happier future of which 
 this ride seemed the promise, making him look so bright, 
 so handsome, so healthy what a delightful reward ! Then 
 the father's joy, looking young again, and smiling for the first
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 117 
 
 time in many weeks, the satisfaction that shone in the eyes 
 of the assembled servants, the glee of the old Lenoncourt 
 huntsman, who had come over from Tours, and who, seeing 
 how well the child held his bridle, called out, " Bravo, Mon- 
 sieur le Vicomte ! " all this was too much for Madame de 
 Mortsauf and she melted into tears. She, who was so calm in 
 distress, was too weak to control her joy as she admired her 
 boy riding round and round on the path where she had so 
 often mourned him by anticipation as she carried him to and 
 fro in the sun. 
 
 She leaned on my arm without reserve, and said, as she 
 turned her eyes on me 
 
 " I feel as if I had never been unhappy. Stay with us 
 to-day." 
 
 The lesson ended, Jacques flew into his mother's arms, 
 and she clutched him to her bosom with the vehemence 
 that comes of excessive delight, kissing and fondling him 
 again and again. Madeleine and I went off to make two 
 splendid nosegays to dress the dinner-table in honor of the 
 young horseman. 
 
 When we returned to the drawing-room, the Countess said 
 to me 
 
 " The fifteenth of October is indeed a high day ! Jacques 
 has had his first riding lesson and I have set the last stitch in 
 my piece of work." 
 
 " Well, then, Blanche," said the Count, laughing, " I will 
 pay you for it." 
 
 He offered her his arm and led her into the inner court- 
 yard, where she found a carriage, a present from her father, 
 for which the Count had bought a pair of horses in England ; 
 they had arrived with those sent to the Due de Lenoncourt. 
 The old huntsman had arranged all this in the courtyard 
 during the riding lesson. We got into the carriage and went 
 off to see the line cleared for the avenue that was to lead 
 directly into the Chinon road, and that was cut straight
 
 118 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 through the new property acquired by the Count. On our re- 
 turn the Countess said to me, with deep melancholy 
 
 " I am too happy ; happiness is to me like an illness, it 
 overpowers me and I fear lest it should vanish like a dream." 
 
 I was too desperately in love not to be jealous, and I had 
 nothing to give her"! In my fury I tried to think of some 
 way of dying for her. 
 
 She asked me what thoughts had clouded my eyes, and I 
 told her frankly ; she was more touched than by any gifts and 
 poured balm on my spirit when, taking me out on the terrace 
 steps, she whispered to me 
 
 "Love me as my aunt loved me is not that to give your 
 life for me ? And if I take it so, is it not to lay me under 
 an obligation every hour of the day ? ' ' 
 
 " It was high-time I should finish my piece of work," she 
 went on, as we returned to the drawing-room, and I kissed 
 her hand as a renewal of my allegiance. " You perhaps do 
 not know, Felix, why I set myself that long task. Men find 
 a remedy against their troubles in the occupations of life ; 
 the bustle of business diverts their minds; but we women 
 have no support in ourselves to help us to endure. In order 
 to be able to smile at my children and my husband when I 
 was possessed by gloomy ideas, I felt the need of keeping my 
 grief in check by physical exertion. I thus avoided the 
 collapse that follows any great effort of resolve, as well as the 
 lightning strokes of excitement. The action of lifting my 
 arm in measured time lulled my brain and acted on my spirit 
 when the storm was raging, giving it the rest of ebb and flow 
 and regulating its emotions. I told my secrets to the stitches, 
 do you see ? Well, as I worked the last chain, I was thinking 
 too much of you ! Yes, my friend, far too much. What 
 you put into your nosegays I imparted to my patterns." 
 
 The dinner was a cheerful one. Jacques, like all children 
 to whom we show kindness, jumped upon me and threw his 
 arms around my neck when he saw the flowers I had picked
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 119 
 
 him by way of a crown. His mother pretended to be angry 
 at this infidelity to her, and the dear child gave her the newly 
 made posy she affected to covet, you know how ingenuously 
 and sweetly. 
 
 In the evening we played backgammon, I against Monsieur 
 and Madame de Mortsauf, and the Count was charming. 
 Finally, at nightfall, they walked with me as far as the turn- 
 ing to Frapesle, in one of those placid evenings when the 
 harmony of nature gives added depth to our feelings in pro- 
 portion as it soothes their vividness. 
 
 It had been a day by itself to this hapless woman, a spark 
 of light that often shone caressingly on her memory in days 
 of difficulty. 
 
 For, indeed, before long the riding lessons became a subject 
 of contention. The Countess, not unreasonably, was afraid 
 of the Count's hard speeches to his little son. Jacques was 
 already growing thinner, and dark rings came around his 
 blue eyes ; to save his mother, he would suffer in silence. I 
 suggested a remedy by advising him to tell his father he was 
 tired when the Count was angry, but this was an insufficient 
 palliative, so the old huntsman was to teach him instead of 
 his father, who would not give up his pupil without many 
 struggles. Outcries and discussions began again ; the Count 
 found a text for his perpetual fault-finding in the ingratitude 
 of wives, and twenty times a day he threw the carriage, the 
 horses, and the liveries in her teeth. 
 
 Finally, one of those disasters occurred which are a stalking- 
 horse for such tempers and such maladies of the brain ; the 
 expense of the works at la Cassine and la Rhetoriere, where 
 the walls and floors were found to be rotten, amounted to 
 half as much again as the estimate. A clumsy fellow at work 
 there came to report this to Monsieur de Mortsauf, instead of 
 telling the Countess privately. This became the subject of a 
 quarrel, begun mildly, but gradually increasing in bitterness ; 
 and the Count's hypochondria, which for some days had been
 
 120 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 in abeyance, now claimed arrears from the unfortunate Hen- 
 riette. 
 
 That morning I set out from Frapesle, after breakfast, at 
 half-past ten, to make my nosegays at Clochegourde with 
 Madeleine. The little girl brought out the two vases, setting 
 them on the balustrade of the terrace, and I wandered from 
 the gardens to the fields, seeking the lovely but rare flowers of 
 autumn. As I returned from my last expedition, I no longer 
 saw my little lieutenant in her pink sash and frilled cape, 
 and I heard a commotion in the house. 
 
 " The general," said Madeleine, in tears, and with her the 
 name was one of aversion for her father, " the general is 
 scolding our mother ; do go and help her." 
 
 I flew up the steps and went into the drawing-room, where 
 neither the Count nor his wife saw or noticed me. Hearing 
 the madman's noisy outcries, I first shut all the doors, and 
 then came back, for I had seen that Henriette was as white as 
 her gown. 
 
 " Never marry, Felix," exclaimed the Count excitedly. 
 " A wife has the devil for her counselor ; the best of them 
 would invent evil if it did not exist. They are all brute 
 beasts." 
 
 Then I had to listen to arguments without beginning and 
 without end. Monsieur de Mortsauf, recurring to his original 
 refusal, now repeated the sottish remarks of the peasants who 
 objected to the new system. He declared that if he had 
 taken the management of Clochegourde, they would have 
 been twice as rich by now. He worded his blasphemies with 
 insulting violence ; he swore, he rushed from pillar to post, 
 he moved and banged all the furniture, and in the middle of 
 a sentence he would stop and declare that his marrow was on 
 fire, or his brain running away in a stream, like his money. 
 His wife was ruining him ! Wretched man, of the thirty-odd 
 thousand francs a year he possessed, she had brought him 
 more than twenty thousand. The fortune of the Duke and.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 121 
 
 Duchess, bringing in fifty thousand francs a year, was entailed 
 on Jacques. 
 
 The Countess smiled haughtily, and gazed out at the sky. 
 
 "Yes!" he cried; "you, Blanche, are my tormentor. 
 You are killing me ! You want to be rid of me ! You are a 
 monster of hypocrisy ! And she laughs ! Do you know why 
 she can laugh, Felix ? ' ' 
 
 I said nothing, and hung my head. 
 
 " This woman," he went on, answering his own question, 
 " denies me all happiness she is no more mine than yours, 
 and calls herself my wife ! She bears my name, but she ful- 
 fills none of the duties which laws, human and divine, require 
 of her j she lies to God and man. She exhausts me with long 
 walks that I may leave her in peace ; I disgust her ; she hates 
 me, she does all she can to live the life of a girl. And she is 
 driving me mad by imposing privations on me for every- 
 thing goes to my poor head. She is burning me at a slow 
 fire and believes herself a saint that woman takes the sacra- 
 ment every month ! " 
 
 The Countess was by this time weeping bitterly, humiliated 
 by the disgrace of this man, to whom she could only say by 
 way of remonstrance : "Monsieur! Monsieur! Monsieur!" 
 
 Although the Count's words made me blush for him as 
 much as for Henriette, they moved me deeply, for they found 
 a response in the instinct of chastity and delicacy which is, 
 so to speak, the very material of a first love. 
 
 "She lives a maiden at my expense ! " cried the Count, 
 and again his wife exclaimed 
 
 " Monsieur ! " 
 
 "What do you mean," he went on, " by your pertinacious 
 monsieur? Am I not your master? Must I teach you to 
 know it?" 
 
 He went toward her, thrusting out his white, wolf-like face, 
 that was really hideous, for his yellow eyes had an expression 
 that made him look like a ravenous animal coming out of a
 
 122 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 wood. Henrietta slid off her chair on to the floor to avoid 
 the blow which was not struck, for she lost consciousness as 
 she fell, completely broken. 
 
 The Count was like an assassin who feels the blood-jet of 
 his victim ; he stood amazed. I raised the poor woman in 
 my arms, and the Count allowed me to lift her as if he felt 
 himself unworthy to carry her; but he went first and opened 
 the door of the bedroom next the drawing-room, a sacred 
 spot I had never entered. I set the Countess on her feet, 
 and supported her with my arm round her body, while Mon- 
 sieur de Mortsauf took off the upper coverlet, the eiderdown 
 quilt, and the bedclothes ; then, together, we laid her down 
 just as she was. As she recovered consciousness, Henriette 
 signed to us to undo her waistband ; Monsieur de Mortsauf 
 found a pair of scissors, and cut through everything. I held 
 some salts to her nose, and she presently opened her eyes. 
 The Count went away, ashamed rather than grieved. 
 
 Two hours went by in perfect silence, Henriette holding 
 my hand and pressing it without being able to speak. Now 
 and again she looked up to make me understand that she 
 longed only for peace without a sound ; then there was a 
 moment's truce, when she raised herself on her elbow and 
 murmured in my ear 
 
 " Unhappy man ! If you could but know " 
 
 She laid her head on the pillow again. The remembrance 
 of past sufferings, added to her present anguish, brought on 
 again the nervous spasms, which I had soothed only by the 
 magnetism of love its effects were hitherto unknown to me, 
 but I had used it instinctively. I now supported her with 
 gentle and tender firmness, and she gave me such looks as 
 brought tears to my eyes. 
 
 When the convulsive attack was over, I smoothed her dis- 
 ordered hair the first and only time I ever touched it then 
 again I held her hand, and sat a long time looking at the 
 room a brown-and-gray room, with a bed simply hung with
 
 / RAISED THE POOR WOMAN IN MY ARMS.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 123 
 
 cotton chintz, a table covered with an old-fashioned toilet 
 set, a poor sofa with a stitched mattress. What poetry I found 
 here ! What indifference to personal luxury ! Her only 
 luxury was exquisite neatness. The noble cell of a married 
 nun, stamped with holy resignation, where the only adorn- 
 ments were a crucifix by her bed, and over it the portrait of 
 her aunt ; then, on each side of the holy-water shell, sketches 
 of her two children, done in pencil by herself, and locks of 
 their hair when they were babies. What a hermitage for a 
 woman whose appearance in the world of fashion would have 
 cast the loveliest into the shade ! 
 
 Such was the retreat where tears were so constantly shed 
 by this daughter of an illustrious race, at this moment 
 swamped in bitterness, and rejecting the love that might have 
 brought her consolation. A hidden and irremediable mis- 
 fortune ! The victim in tears for the torturer, the torturer in 
 tears for his victim. 
 
 When the children and the maid came in, I left her. The 
 Count was waiting for me ; he already regarded me as a medi- 
 ator between his wife and himself; and he grasped my hands, 
 exclaiming, " Stay with us; stay with us, Felix ! " 
 
 "Unluckily," said I, " Monsieur de Chessel has company; 
 it would not do for his guests to wonder at the reason for my 
 absence; but I will return after dinner." 
 
 He came out with me and walked to the lower gate with- 
 out saying a word; then he accompanied me all the way to 
 Frapesle, unconscious of what he was doing. When there, I 
 said to him 
 
 " In heaven's name, Monsieur le Comte, leave the manage- 
 ment of your house to her if she wishes it, and do not torment 
 her." 
 
 " I have not long to live," he replied seriously; "she will 
 not suffer long on my account ; I feel that my head will burst. " 
 
 He turned away in a fit of involuntary egoism. 
 
 After dinner I went back to inquire for Madame de Mort-
 
 124 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 sauf, and found her better already. If these were for her the 
 joys of marriage, if such scenes were to be frequently re- 
 peated, how could she live ? What slow, unpunished murder ! 
 I had seen this evening the indescribable torture by which 
 the Count racked his wife. Before what tribunal could such 
 a case be brought ? 
 
 These considerations bewildered me ; I could say nothing 
 to Henriette, but I spent the night in writing to her. Of 
 three or four letters that I wrote, I have nothing left but this 
 fragment, which did not satisfy me; but though it seems to 
 me to express nothing, or to say too much about myself when 
 I ought only to have thought of her, it will show you the state 
 of my mind. 
 
 To Madame de Mortsauf. 
 
 " How many things I had to say to you this evening that I 
 had thought of on the way and forgot when I saw you ! Yes, 
 as soon as I see you, dearest Henriette, I feel my words out 
 of harmony with the reflections from your soul that add to 
 your beauty. And, then, by your side, I feel such infinite 
 happiness that the immediate experience effaces every memory 
 of what has gone before. I am born anew each time to a 
 larger life, like a traveler who, as he climbs a crag, discovers 
 a new horizon. In every conversation with you I add some 
 new treasure to my vast treasury. This, I believe, is the 
 secret of long and indefatigable attachments. So I can only 
 speak of you to yourself when I am away from you. In your 
 presence I am too much dazzled to see you, too happy to 
 analyze my happiness, too full of you to be myself, made too 
 eloquent by you to speak to you, too eager to seize the present 
 to be able to remember the past. Understand this constant 
 intoxication, and you will forgive its aberrations. When I 
 am with you I can only feel. 
 
 (' Nevertheless, I will dare to tell you, dear Henriette, that
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 125 
 
 never in all the joy you have given me, have I felt any rapture 
 to compare with the delights that filled my soul yesterday 
 when, after the dreadful storm, in which, with superhuman 
 courage, you did battle with evil, you came back to me alone 
 in the twilight of your room, whither the unfortunate scene 
 had led me. I alone was there to know the light that can 
 shine in a woman when she returns from the portal of death to 
 the gates of life, and the dawn of ajiew birth tinges her brow. 
 How harmonious was your voice ! How trivial words seemed 
 even yours as the vague recollection of past suffering made 
 itself heard in your adored tones, mingled with the divine 
 consolations, by which you at last reassured me as you thus 
 uttered your first thoughts ! I knew that you shone with 
 every choicest human gift, but yesterday I found a new Hen- 
 riette, who would be mine if God should grant it. I had a 
 glimpse yesterday of an inscrutable being, free from the bonds 
 of the flesh, which hinder us from exhaling the fire of the soul. 
 You were lovely in your dejection, majestic in your weakness. 
 
 "I found something yesterday more beautiful than your 
 beauty, something sweeter than your voice, a light more 
 glorious than the light of your eyes, a fragrance for which 
 there is no name yesterday your soul was visible and tan- 
 gible. Oh ! it was torment to me that I could not open my 
 heart and take you into it to revive you. In short, I yester- 
 day got over the respectful fear I have felt for you, for did 
 not your weakness draw us nearer to each other ? I learned 
 the joy of breathing as I breathed with you, when the spasm, 
 left you free to inhale our air. What prayers flew up to heaven 
 in one moment ! Since I did not die of rushing through the 
 space I crossed to beseech God to leave you to me yet awhile, 
 it is not possible to die of joy or of grief. 
 
 " That moment has left, buried in my soul, memories which 
 can never rise to the surface without bringing tears to my 
 eyes ; every joy will make the furrow longer, every grief will 
 make it deeper. Yes, the fears that racked my soul yesterday
 
 126 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 will remain a standard of comparison for all my sorrows to 
 come, as the happiness you have given me, dear perpetual 
 first-thought of my life, will prevail over every joy that the 
 hand of God may ever vouchsafe me. You have made me 
 understand Divine love, that trustful love, which, secure in' 
 its strength and permanency, knows neither suspicion nor 
 jealousy. ' ' 
 
 The deepest melancholy gnawed at my heart ; the sight 
 of this home was heart-breaking to a youth so fresh and new 
 to social emotions the sight, at the threshold of the world, 
 of a bottomless gulf, a dead sea. This hideous concentration 
 of woes suggested infinite reflections, and at my very first steps 
 in social life I had found a standard so immense that any 
 other scenes could but look small when measured by it. My 
 melancholy left Monsieur and Madame de Chessel to suppose 
 that my love affair was luckless, so that I was happy in not 
 injuring my noble Henriette by my passion. 
 
 On the following day, on going into the drawing-room, I 
 found her alone. She looked at me for a moment, holding 
 out her hand; she said, "Will the friend always persist in 
 being too tender ? ' ' The tears rose to her eyes ; she got up, 
 and added in a tone of desperate entreaty, " Never write to 
 me again in such a strain." 
 
 Monsieur de Mortsauf was most friendly. The Countess 
 had recovered her courage and her serene brow ; but her 
 pallor showed traces of yesterday's trouble which, though 
 subdued, was not extinct. 
 
 In the evening, as we took a walk, the autumn leaves rust- 
 ling under our feet, she said 
 
 "Pain is infinite, joy has its limits," a speech which re- 
 vealed the extent of her sufferings by comparison with her 
 transient happiness. 
 
 "Do not calumniate life," said I. "You know nothing 
 of love ; there are delights which flame up to the heavens."
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 127 
 
 "Hush," said she, "I do not want to know them. A 
 Greenlander would die in Italy ! I am calm and happy in 
 your society, I can tell you all my thoughts ; do not destroy 
 my confidence. Why should you not have the virtue of a 
 priest and the charms of a free man ? ' ' 
 
 "You could make me swallow a cup of hemlock," I replied, 
 laying her hand on my heart, which was beating rapidly. 
 
 "Again ! " she said, withdrawing her hand as if she felt 
 some sudden pain. "Do you want to deprive me of the 
 melancholy joy of feeling my bleeding wounds stanched by a 
 friend's harid? Do not add to my miseries ; you do not yet 
 know them all, and the most secret are the hardest of all to 
 swallow. If you were a woman, you would understand the 
 distress and bitterness into which her proud spirit is plunged 
 when she is the object of attentions which make up for nothing, 
 and are supposed to make up for everything. For a few days 
 now I shall be courted and petted ; he will want to be forgiven 
 for having put himself in the wrong. I could now gain assent 
 to the most unreasonable desires. And I am humiliated by 
 this servility, by caresses which will cease as soon as he thinks 
 I have forgotten everything. Is it not a terrible condi- 
 tion of life to owe the kindness of one's tyrant only to his 
 errors " 
 
 " To his crimes," I eagerly put in. 
 
 " Beside," she went on, with a sad smile, "I do not know 
 how to make use of this temporary advantage. At this mo- 
 ment I am in the position of a knight who would never strike 
 a fallen foe. To see the man I ought to honor on the ground, 
 to raise him only to receive fresh blows, to suffer more from 
 his fall than he himself does, and consider myself dishonored 
 by taking advantage of a transient success, even for a useful 
 end, to waste my strength, and exhaust all the resources of 
 my spirit in these ignominious struggles, to rule only at the 
 moment when I am mortally wounded ? Death is better ! 
 
 " If I had no children, I should let myself be carried down
 
 128 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 the stream ; but if it were not for my covert courage, what 
 would become of them? I must live for them, however 
 terrible life may be. You talk to me of love ! Why, my 
 friend, only think of the hell I should fall into if I gave that 
 man ruthless, as all weak men are the right to despise me ? 
 I could not endure a suspicion ! The purity of my life is my 
 strength. Virtue, my dear child, has holy waters in which 
 we may bathe, and emerge born again to the love of God ! " 
 
 " Listen, dear Henriette, I have only a week more to stay 
 here, and I want " 
 
 " What, you are leaving us? " said she, interrupting me. 
 
 " Well, I must know what my father has decided on for me. 
 It is nearly three months " 
 
 "I have not counted the days," she cried, with the vehe- 
 mence of agitation. Then she controlled herself, and added, 
 " Let us take a walk ; we will go to Frapesle." 
 
 She called the Count and the children, and sent for a shawl; 
 then, when all were ready, she, so deliberate and so calm, had a 
 fit of activity worthy of a Parisian, and we set out for Frapesle 
 in a body, to pay a visit which the Countess did not owe. 
 
 She made an effort to talk to Madame de Chessel, who, 
 fortunately, was prolix in her replies. The Count and Mon- 
 sieur de Chessel discussed business. I was afraid lest Monsieur 
 de Mortsauf should boast of his carriage and horses, but he 
 did not fail in good taste. 
 
 His neighbor inquired as to the work he was doing at la 
 Cassine and la Rhetoriere. As I heard the question, I glanced 
 at the Count, fancying he would avoid talking of a subject so 
 full of painful memories and so bitter for him ; but he demon- 
 strated the importance of improving the methods of agricul- 
 ture in the district, of building good farmhouses on healthy, 
 well-drained spots ; in short, he audaciously appropriated his 
 wife's ideas. I gazed at the Countess and reddened. This 
 want of delicacy in a man who, under certain circumstances, 
 had so much, this oblivion of that direful scene, this adoption
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 129 
 
 of ideas against which he had rebeled so violently, this belief 
 in himself, petrified me. 
 
 When Monsieur de Chessel asked him 
 
 "And do you think you will recover the outlay? " 
 
 "And more ! " he exclaimed positively. 
 
 Such vagaries can only be explained by the word insanity. 
 Henriette, heavenly soul, was beaming. Was not the Count 
 showing himself to be a man of sense, a good manager, an ad- 
 mirable farmer? She stroked Jacques' hair in rapture, de- 
 lighted for herself and delighted for her boy. What an odious 
 comedy, what a sardonic farce ! 
 
 At a later time, when the curtain of social life was raised 
 for me, how many Mortsaufs I saw, minus the flashes of chiv- 
 alry and the religious faith of this man. What strange and 
 cynical power is that which constantly mates the madman with 
 an angel, the man of genuine and poetic feelings with a mean 
 woman, a little man with a tall wife, a hideous dwarf with a 
 superb and beautiful creature ; which gives the lovely Juana a 
 Captain Diard whose adventures at Bordeaux you already 
 know ; pairs Madame de Beauseant with a d' Ajuda, Madame 
 d'Aiglemont with her husband, the Marquis d'Espard with his 
 wife ! I have, I confess, long sought the solution of this 
 riddle. I have investigated many mysteries, I have discovered 
 the reasons for many natural laws, the interpretation of a few 
 sacred hieroglyphics, but of this I know nothing ; I am still 
 studying it as if it were some India puzzle figure, of which 
 the Brahmins have kept the symbolical purpose secret. Here 
 the Spirit of Evil is too flagrantly the master, and I dare not 
 accuse God. Irremediable disaster ! who takes pleasure in 
 plotting you? Can it be that Henriette and her unrecognized 
 philosopher were right? Does their mysticism contain the 
 general purport of the human race ? 
 
 The last days I spent in this district were those of leafless 
 autumn, darkened with clouds which sometimes hid the sky 
 of Touraine, habitually clear and mild at that fine season of 
 9
 
 130 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 the year. On the day before I left, Madame de Mortsauf 
 took me out on the terrace before dinner. 
 
 " My dear Felix," said she, after taking a turn in silence 
 under the bare trees, " you are going into the world, and I 
 shall follow you there in thought. Those who have suffered 
 much have lived long. Never suppose that lonely spirits 
 know nothing of the world ; they see and judge it. If I am 
 to live in my friend's life, I do not wish to be uneasy, either 
 in his heart or in his conscience. In the heat of the fray it 
 is sometimes very difficult to remember all the rules, so let me 
 give you some motherly advice, as to a son. 
 
 " On the day when you leave, dear child, I will give you a 
 long letter in which you will read my thoughts as a woman 
 on the world, on men, on the way to meet difficulties in that 
 great seething of interests. Promise me not to read it till 
 you are in Paris. This entreaty is the expression of one of 
 the sentimental fancies which are the secret of a woman's 
 heart ; I do not think it is possible to understand it, but per- 
 haps we should be sorry if it were understood. Leave me 
 these little paths where a woman loves to wander alone." 
 
 "I promise," said I, kissing her hands. 
 
 "Ah!" said she, "but I have another pledge to ask of 
 you; but you must promise beforehand to take it." 
 
 "Oh, certainly!" I said, thinking it was some vow of 
 fidelity. 
 
 " It has nothing to do with me," she went on, with a bitter 
 smile. " Felix, never gamble in any house whatever ; I make 
 no exception." 
 
 "I will never play," I promised. 
 
 " That is well," said she. " I have found you a better use 
 to make of the time you would spend at cards. You will see 
 that while others are certain to lose sooner or later, you will 
 always win." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "The letter will tell you," she replied gaily, in a way to
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 131 
 
 deprive her injunctions of the serious character which are 
 given to those of our grandmothers. 
 
 The Countess talked to me for about an hour and proved 
 the depth of her affection by betraying how closely she had 
 studied me during these three months. She had entered into 
 the secret corners of my heart, trying to infuse her own into 
 it ; her voice was modulated and convincing, showing as 
 much by the tone as by her words how many links already 
 bound us to each other. 
 
 " If only you could know," she said in conclusion, " with 
 what anxiety I shall follow you on your way, with what joy 
 if you go straight, with what tears if you bruise yourself 
 against corners ! Believe me, my affection is a thing apart; 
 it is at once involuntary and deliberately chosen. Oh ! I long 
 to see you happy, powerful, respected you who will be to 
 me as a living dream." 
 
 She made me weep. She was at once mild and terrible. 
 Her feelings were too frankly expressed, and too pure to give 
 the smallest hope to a man thirsting for happiness. In return 
 for my flesh, left torn and bleeding in her heart, she shed on 
 mine the unfailing and unblemished light of the divine love 
 that can only satisfy the soul. She bore me up to heights 
 whither the shining wings of the passion that had led me to 
 kiss her shoulders could never carry me ; to follow her flight 
 a man would have needed to wear the white pinions of a 
 seraph. 
 
 " On every occasion," said I, "I will think, 'What would 
 my Henriette say ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes, I want to be both the Star and the Sanctuary," said 
 she, alluding to my childhood's dreams, and trying to realize 
 them, so as to cheat my desires. 
 
 "You will be my religion, my light, my all," I cried in a 
 voice of rapture. 
 
 "No," said she. "I can never be the giver of your 
 pleasures."
 
 132 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 She sighed, and gave me a smile of secret sorrow, the smile 
 of a slave in an instant of revolt. 
 
 From that day forth she was not merely a woman I loved 
 she was all I loved best. She dwelt in my heart not as a 
 woman who insists on a place there, whose image is stamped 
 there by devotion or excess of pleasure ; no, she had my 
 whole heart, and was indispensable to the action of its mus- 
 cles ; she became what Beatrice was to the Florentine poet, 
 or the spotless Laura to the Venetian the mother of great 
 thoughts, the unknown cause of saving determinations, my 
 support for the future, the light that shines in darkness like a 
 lily among sombre shrubs. Yes, she dictated the firm resolve 
 that cut off what was to be burned, that reinstated what was 
 in danger ; she endowed me with the fortitude of a Coligny 
 to conquer the conquerors, to rise after defeat, to wear out the 
 stoutest foe. 
 
 Next morning, after breakfasting at Frapesle, and taking 
 leave of the hosts who had been so kind to the selfishness of 
 my passion, I went to Clochegourde. Monsieur and Madame 
 de Mortsauf had agreed to drive with me as far as Tours, 
 whence I was to set out for Paris that night. On the way the 
 Countess was affectionately silent ; at first she said she had 
 a headache ; then she colored at the falsehood, and suddenly 
 mitigated it by saying that she could not but regret to see 
 me depart. The Count invited me to stay with them if, in 
 the absence of the Chessels, I should ever wish to see the 
 valley of the Indre once more. We parted heroically, with 
 no visible tears; but, like many a sickly child, Jacques had a 
 little emotional spasm which made him cry a little ; while 
 Madeleine, a woman already, clasped her mother's hand. 
 
 "Dear little man!" said the Countess, kissing Jacques 
 passionately. 
 
 When I was left alone at Tours, after dinner I was seized 
 by one of those inexplicable rages which only youth ever goes 
 through. I hired a horse, and in an hour and a quarter had
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 133 
 
 ridden back the whole distance from Tours to Pont de Ruan. 
 There, ashamed of letting my madness be seen, I ran down 
 the road on foot, and stole under the terrace on tiptoe, like a 
 spy. The Countess was not there ; I fancied she might be 
 ill. I had still the key of the little gate, and I went in. She 
 was at that very moment coming down the steps with her two 
 children, slowly and sadly, to revel in the tender melancholy 
 of the landscape under the setting sun. 
 
 " Why, mother, here is Felix," said Madeleine. 
 
 " Yes, I myself," I whispered low. " I asked myself why 
 I was at Tours when I could easily see you once more. Why 
 not gratify a wish which, a week hence, will be beyond fulfill- 
 ment?" 
 
 " Then he is not going away," cried Jacques, skipping and 
 jumping. 
 
 " Be quiet, do," said Madeleine ; " you will bring out the 
 general. 
 
 "This is not right," said the Countess. "What mad- 
 ness ! " 
 
 The words, spoken through tears in her voice, were indeed 
 a payment of what I may call usurious calculations in love ! 
 
 "I had forgotten to return you this key," I said, with a 
 smile. 
 
 " Then are you never coming back again ? " said she. 
 
 "Can we ever be apart?" I asked, with a look before 
 which her eyelids fell to veil the mute reply. 
 
 I went away after a few minutes spent in the exquisite 
 blankness of souls strung to the pitch at which excitement 
 ends and frenzied ecstasy begins. I went away, riding slowly, 
 and constantly looking back. When I gazed at the valley 
 for the last time from the top of the down, I was struck 
 by the contrast between its aspect now and when I first came 
 to it : was it not then as green, as glowing, as my hopes and 
 desires had sprung and glowed. Now, initiated into the dark
 
 134 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 and melancholy mysteries of a home, sharing the pangs of a 
 Christian Niobe, as sad as she, my spirit overshadowed, I saw 
 in the landscape, at this moment, the hues of my ideas. The 
 fields were cleared of their crops, the poplar leaves were fall- 
 ing, and those that remained were rust-color ; the vine-canes 
 were burned, the woods wore solemn tints of the russet which 
 kings of yore adopted for their dress, disguising the purple of 
 power under the brown hues of care. And, still in harmony 
 with my thoughts, the valley under the dying yellow rays of 
 the warm sun presented to me a responsive and living image 
 of my soul. 
 
 To part from the woman we love is a very simple or a very 
 dreadful thing, depending on one's nature ; I suddenly felt 
 myself in an unknown land of which I could not speak the 
 language ; I could find nothing to cling to, as I saw only 
 things to which my soul was no longer attached. Then my 
 love unfolded to its fullest extent, and my dear Henriette rose 
 to her fall dignity in the desert wherein I lived only by mem- 
 ories of her. It was an image so piously worshiped that I 
 resolved to remain unspotted in the presence of my secret 
 divinity, and in fancy I robed myself in the white garb of a 
 Levite, imitating Petrarch, who never appeared in the pres- 
 ence of Laura but in white from head to foot. 
 
 With what impatience did I look forward to the first night 
 when I should be under my father's roof, and might read the 
 letter, which I kept feeling during my journey, as a miser 
 feels a sum in bank-notes that he is obliged to carry about 
 with him. During the night I kissed the paper on which 
 Henriette had expressed her will, where I should find the 
 mysterious effluvium of her touch, whence the tones of her 
 voice would fall on my absorbed mental ear. I have never 
 read her letters but as I read that first one, in bed, and in 
 the deepest silence. I do not know how otherwise we can 
 read the letters written by a woman we love ; and yet there 
 are men who mingle the reading of such letters with the busi-
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 135 
 
 ness of daily life, taking them up and putting them down with 
 odious coolness. 
 
 Here, then, Natalie, is the exquisite voice which suddenly 
 sounded in the stillness of the night ; here is the sublime 
 figure which rose before me, pointing out the right road from 
 the cross-ways where I now stood : 
 
 "It is happiness, my friend, to be obliged to collect the 
 scattered fragments of my experience to transmit it to you 
 and arm you against the perils of the world in which you 
 must guide yourself with skill. I have felt the permitted joys 
 of motherly affection while thinking of you for a few nights. 
 While writing this, a sentence at a time, throwing myself for- 
 ward into the life you are about to lead, I went now and 
 again to my window. Seeing the turrets of Frapesle in the 
 moonlight, I could say to myself, ' He is asleep, while I am 
 awake for his sake,' a delightful emotion reminding me of the 
 first happy days of my life when I watched Jacques asleep in 
 his cradle, waiting for him to wake to feed him from my 
 bosom. Did you not come to me as a child-man whose soul 
 needed comforting by such precepts as you could not find to 
 nourish it in those dreadful schools where you endured so 
 much, and as we women have the privilege of affording you ? 
 
 "These trifles will influence your success ; they prepare and 
 consolidate it. Will it not be a form of spiritual motherhood 
 thus to create the system to which, as a man, you must refer 
 the various acts of life, a motherhood well understood by the 
 son ? Dear Felix, permit me, even if I should make some 
 mistakes, to give our friendship the seal of disinterestedness 
 that will sanctify it ; for in giving you up to the world, am I 
 not foregoing every claim on you? But I love you well 
 enough to sacrifice my own joys to your splendid future. 
 
 " For nearly four months you have led me to reflect 
 strangely on the laws and habits that govern our time. The 
 conversations I have held with my aunt, of which the purport
 
 136 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 must be given to you who have taken her place ; the events 
 of Monsieur de Mortsaufs life as he has related them to me ; 
 my father's dicta, familiar as he was with the court; the 
 greatest and the smallest facts have risen up in my mind for 
 the benefit of the adopted son whom I see now about to 
 plunge, almost alone, into the throng of men ; about to find 
 himself without an adviser in a country where many perish by 
 a heedless misuse of their best qualities, and some succeed by 
 a clever use of their bad ones. 
 
 " Above all, reflect on the brief utterance of my opinion 
 on society considered as a whole for to you a few words are 
 enough. Whether social communities had a divine origin, or 
 are the invention of man, I know not, nor do I know which 
 way they are going ; one thing seems certain, and that is : 
 that they exist. As soon as you accept a social life instead of 
 isolation, you are bound to adhere to its constitutional con- 
 ditions, and to-morrow a sort of contract will be signed be- 
 tween it and you. 
 
 " Does society, as now constituted, get more benefit out of 
 a man than it gives ? I believe so ; but if a man finds in it 
 more burden than profit, or if he purchases too dearly the 
 advantages he derives from it, these are questions for the 
 legislator and not for the individual. You ought, in my 
 opinion, to obey the general law in all things, without dis- 
 puting it, whether it hurts or advances your interest. Simple 
 as this principle may appear to you, it is not always easy of 
 application ; it is like the sap which must permeate the 
 smallest capillary vessels to give life to a tree, to preserve its 
 verdure, develop its bloom, and elaborate its fruit to a magnifi- 
 cence that excites general admiration. My dear, these laws 
 are not all written in a book ; customs also create laws ; the 
 most important are the least known ; there are neither pro- 
 fessors, nor treatises, nor any school of that law which guides 
 your actions, your conversation, your external life, and the 
 way in which you must appear in the world and meet fortune.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 137 
 
 If you sin against these unwritten laws, you must remain at 
 the bottom of the social community instead of dominating 
 it. Even though this letter should be full of echoes of your 
 own thoughts, suffer me to set before you my woman's policy. 
 
 "To formulate society by a theory of personal happiness, 
 grasped at the cost of everybody else, is a disastrous doctrine 
 which, strictly worked out, would lead a man to believe that 
 everything he secretly appropriates, without any offense dis- 
 cernible by the law, by society, or by an individual, is fairly 
 his booty or his due. If this were the charter, then a clever 
 thief would be blameless; a wife faithless to her duties, but 
 undetected, would be happy and good ; kill a man, and so 
 long as justice can find no proofs, if you have thus won a 
 crown, like Macbeth, you have done well ; your own interest 
 becomes the supreme law ; the only question is to navigate, 
 without witnesses or evidence, among the obstacles which law 
 and custom have placed between you and your satisfaction. 
 To a man who takes this view of society, my friend, the pro- 
 blem of making a fortune is reduced to playing a game where 
 the stakes are a million or the galleys, a position in politics or 
 disgrace. And, indeed, the green cloth is not wide enough 
 for all the players ; a sort of genius is ever necessary to calcu- 
 late a coup. 
 
 " I say nothing of religious beliefs or feelings ; we are con. 
 cerned merely with the wheels of a machine of iron or of gold, 
 and of the immediate results which men look for. 
 
 " Dear child of my heart, if you share my horror of this 
 criminal theory, society will resolve itself in your eyes, as in 
 every healthy mind, into a theory of duty. Yes, men owe 
 service to each other under a thousand different forms. In my 
 opinion, the duke and peer has far greater duties to the artisan 
 or the pauper than the artisan or the pauper has to the duke. 
 The obligations laid on us are greater in proportion to the 
 benefits we derive from society, in accordance with the 
 axiom as true in commerce as in politics that the burden
 
 138 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 of care is always in proportion to the profits accruing. Each 
 one pays his debt in his own way. When our poor farmer 
 at la Rhetoriere comes home to bed, tired out with his 
 labor, do you think he has not done his duty? He has 
 undoubtedly fulfilled it better than many a man in a high 
 position. Hence, in contemplating the world in which you 
 desire a place suitable to your intelligence and your faculties, 
 you must start with this maxim as fundamental principle 
 Never allow yourself to do anything against your own con- 
 science or against the public conscience. Though my in- 
 sistency may seem to you superfluous, I beseech you yes, 
 your Henriette beseeches you to weigh the full sense of these 
 two words. Simple as they may seem, they mean, my dear, 
 that uprightness, honor, loyalty, and good breeding are the 
 surest and quickest roads to fortune. In this selfish world there 
 will be plenty of people to tell you that a man cannot get on 
 by his feelings; that moral considerations, too tenaciously 
 upheld, hamper his progress ; you will see ill-bred men, boorish 
 or incapable of taking stock of the future, who will crush a 
 smaller man, be guilty of some rudeness to an old woman, or 
 refuse to endure a few minutes' boredom from an old man, 
 saying they can be of no use ; but later you will find these 
 men caught by the thorns they have neglected to break, and 
 missing fortune by a trifle ; while another, who has early 
 trained himself to this theory of duty, will meet with no ob- 
 stacles. He may reach the top more slowly, but his position 
 will be assured, and he will stand firm when others are tottering 
 to a fall. 
 
 "When I add that the application of this principle demands, 
 in the first place, a knowledge of manners, you will fancy, 
 perhaps, that my jurisprudence smacks of the court and of the 
 teaching I brought from the house of the Lenoncourts. My 
 dear friend, I attach the greatest importance to this training, 
 trivial as it may seem. The manners of the best company are 
 quite as indispensable as the varied and extensive knowledge
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 139 
 
 you already possess ; they have often taken its place ! Some 
 men, ignorant in fact, but gifted with mother-wit, and used 
 to argue soundly from their ideas, have attained to greatness 
 which has evaded the grasp of others, their superiors. I have 
 watched you carefully, Felix, to see whether your education 
 with other youths in various schools had spoilt anything 
 in you. I discerned, with great joy, that you may easily 
 assimilate what you lack little enough, God knows ! In 
 many persons, though brought up in good traditions, manners 
 are merely superficial ; for perfect politeness and noble man- 
 ners come from the heart and a lofty sense of personal dig- 
 nity. This is why, in spite of their training, some men of 
 birth are of very bad style, while others of humbler rank have 
 a natural good taste and need but a few lessons to acquire the 
 best manners without clumsy imitation. Take the word of a 
 poor woman who will never quit her valley A noble tone, a 
 gracious simplicity stamped on speech, action, and demeanor 
 nay, even on the details of a house constitute a sort of per- 
 sonal poetry, and give an irresistible charm ; judge, then, of 
 their effect when they come from the heart. 
 
 " Politeness, dear child, consists in forgetting yourself for 
 others ; with many people it is no more than a company 
 grimace that fails as soon as self-interest is rubbed too hard 
 and peeps through ; then a great man is ignoble. But true 
 politeness and on this I insist in you, Felix implies a 
 Christian grace ; it is the very flower of charity, and consists 
 in really forgetting self. In memory of Henriette, do not be 
 a fountain without water, have the spirit as well as the form. 
 Do not be afraid of finding yourself too often the dupe of 
 this social virtue ; sooner or later you will gather the harvest 
 of so much seed cast apparently to the winds. 
 
 " My father remarked, long ago, that one of the most 
 offensive things in superficial politeness is the misuse of prom- 
 ises. When you are asked to do something that is out of 
 your power, refuse point-blank and give no false hopes. On
 
 140 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 the other hand, give at once whatever you mean to grant ; 
 you will thus be credited with the grace of refusing as well as 
 the grace of conferring a benefit twofold honesty which 
 really elevates the character. I am not sure that we do not 
 earn more ill-will by a hope deceived than good-will by a 
 favor bestowed. 
 
 " Above all, my friend for such little things are all within 
 my province, and I may emphasize the things I feel that I 
 know be neither confidential, nor commonplace, nor over- 
 eager three rocks ahead. Too much confiding in others 
 diminishes their respect, the commonplace is despised, enthu- 
 siasm makes us a prey to adventurers. In the first place, dear 
 child, do not have more than two or three friends in the whole 
 course of your life, and your confidence is their right ; if you 
 give it to many, you betray them to each other. If you find 
 yourself more intimate with some men than with others, be 
 reserved about yourself, as reserved as though they some day 
 were to be your rivals, your opponents, or your enemies ; the 
 chances of life require this. Preserve an attitude neither cold 
 nor perfervid, try to hit the medium line, on which a man 
 may take his stand without compromising himself. Believe 
 me, a man of heart is as far from Philinte's feeble amiability 
 as from Alceste's harsh austerity. The genius of the comic 
 poet shines in the suggestion of a happy medium apprehended 
 by a high-minded spectator; and certainly every one will 
 have a leaning to the absurdities of virtue rather than to the 
 sovereign contempt that hides under the good-nature of 
 egoism, but they will probably preserve themselves from 
 either. As to commonplace civility, though it may make 
 some simpletons pronounce you to be a charming man, those 
 who are accustomed to gauge and value human intellects will 
 estimate your capacity, and you will soon be neglected, for 
 the commonplace is the resource of all weak men. Now, 
 weak men are looked down upon by a world which regards its 
 several members merely as organs and perhaps it is right :
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 141 
 
 nature crushes out every ineffectual creature. Indeed, the 
 kindly influence of women is perhaps the outcome of the 
 pleasure they take in struggling with a blind power, and 
 asserting the triumph of the heart's perceptions over the 
 brute strength of matter. But society, a stepmother rather 
 than a mother, adores the children who flatter her vanity. 
 
 "As for zeal, that first sublime error of youth which finds 
 real enjoyment in expending its strength, and so begins by 
 being its own dupe before it is duped by others, keep it for 
 the sentiments you share, keep it for woman and for God. 
 Never offer such treasures in the world's mart, nor in the 
 speculations of politics; they will only give you paste for 
 them. You surely must believe the adviser who enjoins noble 
 conduct on you in every particular, when she implores you 
 not to waste yourself in vain ; for, unfortunately, men will 
 esteem you in proportion to your usefulness, taking no ac- 
 count of your real worth. To use a figure of speech which 
 will abide in your poetic mind: A cypher, though it be never 
 so large, traced in gold or written in chalk, will never be 
 anything but a cypher. A man of our day said ' Never show 
 zeal ! ' Zeal verges on trickery, it leads to misunderstandings ; 
 you would never find a fervor to match your own in any one 
 above you ; kings, like women, think that everything is due 
 to them. Sad as this principle may seem, it is true ; but it 
 need not blight the soul. Place your purest feelings in some 
 inaccessible spot where their flowers may be passionately ad- 
 mired, where the artist may lovingly dream over the master- 
 piece. 
 
 " Duties, my friend, are not feelings. To do what you 
 ought is not to do what you please. A man must be ready to 
 die in cold blood for his country, but may give his life for a 
 woman with joy. 
 
 "One of the most important rules in the science of man- 
 ners is almost absolute silence concerning yourself. Allow 
 yourself, for the amusement of it, some day to talk about
 
 142 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 yourself to some mere acquaintances; tell them of your ail- 
 ments, your pleasures, or your business, you will see indiffer- 
 ence supervene on affected interest ; then, when they are 
 utterly bored, if the mistress of the house does not politely 
 check you, every one will find a clever excuse to withdraw. 
 But if you want to collect about you every man's sympathies, 
 to be regarded as an agreeable and witty man, always pleasant, 
 talk to them of themselves, find an opportunity for bringing 
 them to the front even by asking questions apparently irrele- 
 vant to the individual. Heads will bow, lips will smile at 
 you, and, when you have left, every one will sing your praises. 
 Your conscience and the voice of your heart will warn you of 
 the limit where the cowardice of flattery begins, where the 
 grace of conversation ends. 
 
 " One word more about talking in public. My friend, 
 youth is always inclined to a certain hastiness of judgment 
 which does it honor, but which serves it ill. Hence the 
 silence which used to be impressed on the young, who went 
 through an apprenticeship to their betters, during which they 
 studied life ; for, of old, the nobility had their apprentices as 
 artists had, pages attached to the masters who maintained 
 them. In these days young people have a sort of hot-house 
 training, sour at that, which leads them to judge severely of 
 actions, thoughts, and books; they cut rashly, and with a 
 new knife. Do not indulge in this bad habit. Your con- 
 demnation would be such censure as would hurt many of those 
 about you, and they would all perhaps be less ready to forgive 
 a secret wound than an offense given in public. Young men 
 are not indulgent, because they do not know life and its diffi- 
 culties. An old critic is kind and mild; a young critic is 
 merciless, for he knows nothing ; the other knows all. And 
 then there is at the back of every human action a labyrinth 
 of determining causes, of which God has reserved to Himself 
 the right of final judgment. Be severe only to yourself. 
 
 "Your fortune lies before you, but nobody in this world
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 143 
 
 can make a fortune unaided. My father's house is open to 
 you ; visit there frequently ; the connections you will form 
 there will be of use to you in a thousand ways. But do not 
 yield an inch of ground to my mother ; she crushes those who 
 bend, but admires the spirit of those who resist her. She is 
 like iron which, when hammered, can be welded with iron, 
 but by its mere contact breaks everything less hard than itself. 
 But cultivate my mother's acquaintance ; if she likes you, she 
 will introduce you to houses where you will pick up the in- 
 evitable knowledge of the world, the art of listening, speaking, 
 replying, coming in, and going away ; the tone of speech, the 
 indescribable something, which is not superiority any more 
 than the coat is genius, but without which the greatest talents 
 are never acceptable. I know you well enough to be sure 
 that I am not deluding myself when I picture you beforehand 
 just what I wish you to be simple in manner, gentle in tone, 
 proud without conceit, deferent to old people, obliging with- 
 out servility, and, above all, discreet. Use your wit, but not 
 merely to amuse your company, for you must remember that 
 if your superiority irritates a commonplace man, he will be 
 silent ; but he will afterward speak of you as ' most amusing,' 
 a word of scorn. Your superiority must always be leonine. 
 Indeed, do not try to please men. In your intercourse with 
 them I would recommend a coolness verging on such a degree 
 of impertinence as cannot offend them ; every man respects 
 those who look down on him, and such contempt will win 
 you the favor of women who value you in proportion to your 
 indifference to men. Never be familiar with persons in dis- 
 credit, not even if they do not merit their reputation, for the 
 world exacts an account alike of our friendships and our aver- 
 sions ; on this point let your judgment be slowly and fully 
 matured, but irrevocable. 
 
 " If men to whom you will have nothing to say justify your 
 aversion, your esteem will be valued ; and thus you will in- 
 spire that unspoken respect which raises a man above his fel-
 
 144 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 lows. Thus you will be armed with youth to attract, grace 
 to charm, and prudence to preserve your conquests. And all 
 I have said may be summed up in the old motto 'Noblesse 
 oblige. ' 
 
 " Now apply these principles to the policy of business. 
 You will hear many men declare that craft is the element of 
 success, that the way to push through the crowd is by divid- 
 ing it to make room. My friend, these principles held good 
 in the dark ages, when princes had to use rival forces to de- 
 stroy each other ; but in these days everything is open to the 
 day and such a system would serve you very ill. You will 
 always meet men face to face ; either an honest gentleman or 
 a treacherous foe, a man whose weapons are calumny, slander, 
 and dishonesty. Well, understand that against him you have 
 no better ally than himself ; he is his own enemy ; you can 
 fight him with the weapons of loyalty ; sooner or later he will 
 be despised. As to the first, your own frankness will conciliate 
 his esteem ; and when your interests are reconciled for every- 
 thing can be arranged he will be of service to you. Do not 
 be afraid of making enemies ; woe to him who has none in 
 the world you will move in ! But try never to give a handle 
 to ridicule or discredit. I say try, for in Paris a man is not 
 always free to act ; he is liable to inevitable circumstances ; 
 you cannot escape mud from the gutter, nor a falling tile. 
 There are gutters in the moral world, and those who fall try 
 to splash nobler men with the mud in which they are drown- 
 ing. But you can always command respect by showing your- 
 self invariably relentless in your final decision. 
 
 " In this conflict of ambitions, and amid these tangled diffi- 
 culties, always go straight to the point ; resolutely attack the 
 question, and never fight more than one point with all your 
 strength. You know how Monsieur de Mortsauf hated Na- 
 poleon ; he persistently cursed him, he watched him as the 
 police watch a criminal, every evening he called out on him 
 for the Due d'Enghien's death the only disaster, the only
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 145 
 
 death that ever wrung tears from him ; well, he admired him 
 as the boldest of leaders, and often expatiated on his tactics. 
 Cannot a similar strategy be applied in the war of interests ? 
 It would economize time, as Napoleon's economized men and 
 space. Think this over, for a woman is often mistaken about 
 such things, judging only by feeling and instinct. 
 
 " On one point I may confidently insist : all trickery and 
 craft is certain to be detected, and does harm in the end, 
 whereas every crisis seems to me less perilous when a man 
 takes his stand on plain-dealing. If I may quote myself as 
 an example, I may tell you that at Clochegourde, forced by 
 Monsieur de Mortsauf's temper to be on my guard against 
 any litigation, and to have every question settled at once by 
 arbitration, lest it should become a sort of illness to him 
 which he would enjoy giving himself up to, I have always 
 settled matters myself by going straight to the point and 
 saying to my opponent, ' Untie the knot or cut it.' 
 
 "You will often find yourself of use to others, doing them 
 some service, and getting small thanks ; but do not imitate 
 those who complain, and declare that they have met with 
 nothing but ingratitude. Is not that putting one's self on a 
 pedestal ? And is it not rather silly to confess one's scant 
 knowledge of the world ? And do you do good as a usurer 
 lends money ? Will you not do it for its own sake ? Noblesse 
 oblige ! At the same time, do not render men such service 
 as compels them to be ungrateful, for then they will become 
 your implacable enemies ; there is a despair of obligation as 
 there is a despair of ruin, which gives incalculable strength. 
 On the other hand, accept as little as you can. Do not 
 become the vassal of any living soul; depend on yourself 
 alone. 
 
 " I can only advise, dear friend, as to the minor matters 
 
 of life. In the political world everything has a different 
 
 aspect, the rules that guide your personal conduct must bow 
 
 to higher interests. But if you should reach the sphere in 
 
 10
 
 146 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 which great men have their being, you, like God, will be sole 
 judge of your decisions. You will be more than a man, you 
 will be the embodiment of the law ; you will be more than 
 an individual, you will represent the nation incarnate. But 
 though you will judge, you will also be judged. In later 
 times you will be called to appear before the Ages, and 
 you know history well enough to appreciate what the feelings 
 and deeds are which lead to true greatness. 
 
 "I now come to the serious point your conduct to 
 women. In the drawing-rooms where you will visit make 
 it a law to yourself never to squander yourself by indulging 
 in the trivialities of flirtation. One of the men of the last 
 century, who was in every way most successful, made it a 
 practice never to devote himself but to one lady in an even- 
 ing, and to select those who seemed forlorn. That man, my 
 dear boy, was supreme in his day. He had shrewdly calcu- 
 lated that in due time he would be persistently praised by 
 everybody. Most young men lose their most precious pos- 
 session, the time, namely, which is needful for making the 
 connections which are half of social life. While they are 
 intrinsically attractive they would have little to do to attach 
 others to their interests ; but that springtime is brief make 
 the most of it. Cultivate the society of influential women. 
 Influential women are old women ; they will inform you as 
 to the alliances and secrets of every family, and show you 
 the cross-roads that may take you quickly to the goal. They 
 will be really fond of you ; patronage is their last passion 
 when they are not bigots ; they will be of invaluable service, 
 they will speak well of you, and make other people want to 
 know you. 
 
 " Avoid young women ! Do not think that there is the 
 least personal animus in this advice. The woman of fifty 
 will do everything for you ; the woman of twenty, nothing ; 
 she will demand your whole life; the elder woman will only 
 ask for a moment, a little attention. Jest with young women,
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 147 
 
 take them very lightly, they are incapable of a serious thought. 
 Young women, my dear, are selfish, petty, incapable of true 
 friendship; they only love themselves and would sacrifice 
 you for a success. Beside, they will require your full devo- 
 tion, and your position will need the devotion of others two 
 irreconcilable propositions. No young woman will under- 
 stand your interests ; they will always be thinking of them- 
 selves, not of you, and do you more harm by their vanity 
 than good by their attachment ; they will unhesitatingly ap- 
 propriate your time ; they will mar your fortune and ruin 
 you with the best grace in the world. If you complain, the 
 silliest of them all can argue that her glove is worth the uni- 
 verse, that nothing can be more glorious than her service. 
 They will all tell you that they can give you happiness and 
 so make you forget your high destiny. The happiness they 
 give is variable ; your future greatness is certain. 
 
 "You do not know with what perfidious art they go about 
 to gratify their caprices, to make a transient liking appear as 
 a passion begun on earth to be eternal in heaven. When they 
 throw you over, they will tell you that the words, ' I love you 
 no longer,' justify their desertion, as the words, 'I love you,' 
 justified their love love that is irresponsible. My dear, the 
 doctrine is absurd. Believe me, true love is eternal, infinite, 
 always the same ; equable and pure without vehement out- 
 breaks ; it is found under white hairs when the heart is still 
 young. Nothing of the kind is to be found in women of 
 fashion ; they only act their part. 
 
 "This one will interest you by her sorrows, and seem the 
 sweetest and least exacting of her sex ; but when she has made 
 herself necessary she will gradually domineer over you and 
 make you do her bidding ; you will wish to be a diplomatist, 
 to go and come, to study men, interests, and foreign lands. 
 No, you must stay in Paris or at her country-house, she will 
 ingeniously tie you to her apron-string, and the more devoted 
 you are the less grateful will she be. That one will try to
 
 148 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 engage you by her submissiveness ; she would be your page 
 and follow you romantically to the ends of the earth ; she 
 would compromise herself for your sake and hang like a 
 stone around your neck. Thus one day you will be drowned, 
 but she will come to the top. 
 
 "The least crafty of their sex have endless snares; the 
 stupidest triumph by exciting no suspicions ; the least dan- 
 gerous of them all would be an audacious flirt who would fall 
 in love with you, hardly knowing why, who would desert you 
 without reason and take you up again out of vanity. But 
 they will all do you a mischief sooner or later. Every 
 young woman who goes into the world and lives on pleasure 
 and the triumphs of vanity is half-corrupt and will corrupt 
 you. 
 
 "That is not the chaste, meditative being in whose heart 
 you may reign for ever. Nay, the woman who loves you will 
 dwell in solitude, her highest festivals will be your looks, and 
 she will feed on your words. Then let that woman be all the 
 world to you, for you are all in all to her ; love her truly, give 
 her no pain, no rival, do not torture her jealousy. To be 
 loved, my dear, and understood is the highest happiness I 
 only wish that you may know it ; but do not compromise the 
 first bloom of your soul ; be very sure of the heart to which 
 you give your affections. That woman must never be herself, 
 never think of herself, but of you alone ; she will never con- 
 tradict you, she will not listen to her own interests ; she will 
 scent danger for you when you do not suspect it and forget 
 her own ; if she suffers, she will endure without complaining; 
 she will have no personal vanity, but she will respect what you 
 love in her. Return such love with even greater love. Love 
 begets love. 
 
 " And if you should be so happy as to find, what your poor 
 friend here can never have, an affection equally inspired and 
 equally felt, however perfect that love may be, remember still 
 that in a valley there lives for you a mother whose heart is so
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 149 
 
 deeply minded by the feeling with which you fill it that you 
 can never reach the bottom of it. 
 
 " Yes, you can never know the extent of the affection I bear 
 you : for it to show its full extent you would have had to be 
 bereft of your noble intellect ; you cannot think how far my 
 devotion would have carried me then. Do you doubt me 
 when I bid you avoid young women, who are all more or less 
 superficial, sarcastic, vain, frivolous, and wasteful, and attach 
 yourself to important dowagers, full of sense, as my aunt was, 
 who will do you good service, who will defend you against 
 secret calumny by quashing it, who will speak of you in terms 
 you cannot use in speaking of yourself? After all, am I not 
 generous when I bid you reserve your worship for the pure- 
 hearted angel to come ? If the words Noblesse oblige include 
 a great part of my first injunctions, my advice as to your deal- 
 ings with women may also be summed up in this chivalrous 
 motto, 'Les servir toutes, ri en aimer qu'unc* (Serve all, love 
 but one). 
 
 " Your learning is vast ; your heart, preserved by suffering, 
 is still unspotted, all is fair and good in you : then WILL ! 
 Your whole future lies in this one word, the watchword of 
 great men. You will obey your Henriette, my child, will you 
 not, and allow her still to tell you what she thinks of you and 
 your doings in the world ? I have a * mind's eye ' which can 
 foresee the future for you, as for my children ; then let me 
 make use of the faculty for your benefit ; it is a mysterious 
 gift which has brought peace into my life; and which, far 
 from waning, grows stronger in solitude and silence. 
 
 " In return, I ask you to give me a great joy ; I want to see 
 you growing great among men without having to frown over 
 one of your successes ; I want you very soon to raise your 
 fortune to a level with your name, and to be able to tell me 
 that I have contributed something more than a wish to your 
 advancement. This secret cooperation is the only pleasure I 
 can allow myself. I can waitt
 
 150 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 " I do not say farewell. We are divided, you cannot press 
 my hand to your lips ; but you must surely have understood 
 the place you fill in the heart of your 
 
 " HENRIETTE." 
 
 As I finished reading this letter, I seemed to feel a motherly 
 heart throbbing beneath my fingers at the moment when I was 
 still frozen by my mother's stern reception. I could guess 
 why the Countess had forbidden me to read this letter so long 
 as I was in Touraine; she had feared, no doubt, to see me 
 fall with my head at her feet and to feel them wetted by my 
 tears. 
 
 At last I made the acquaintance of my brother Charles, who 
 had hitherto been a stranger to me ; but he showed such arro- 
 gance in our most trifling intercourse as held us too far apart 
 for us to care for each other as brothers. All kindly feeling 
 is based on equality of mind and there was no point of con- 
 tact between us. He lectured me solemnly on various trivial 
 details which the mind or the heart knows by instinct ; he 
 always seemed distrustful of me ; if my love had not been to 
 me as a corner-stone, he might have made me awkward and 
 stupid by seeming to think that I knew nothing. He, never- 
 theless, introduced me into society, where my rusticity was to 
 be a foil to his accomplishment. But for the woes of my 
 childhood, I might have taken his patronizing vanity for 
 brotherly affection ; but mental isolation produces the same 
 effects as earthly solitude : the silence allows us to discern the 
 faintest echo, and the habit of relying on one's self develops 
 a sensitiveness so delicate that it vibrates to the lightest touch 
 of the affections that concern us. 
 
 Before knowing Madame de Mortsauf a stern look hurt me, 
 the tone of a rough word went to my heart ; I groaned over 
 it, though I knew nothing of the gentler life of caresses. 
 Whereas, on my return from Clochegourde, I could draw 
 comparisons which gave completeness to my premature knowl-
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 151 
 
 edge. Observation based on mere suffering is incomplete. 
 Happiness, has its lights too. But I allowed myself to be 
 crushed under Charles' superiority as my elder, all the more 
 readily because I was not his dupe. 
 
 I went alone to the Duchesse de Lenoncourt's house and 
 heard no mention made of Henriette ; no one but the good 
 old Duke, who was simplicity itself, ever spoke of her; but, 
 from the reception he gave me, I guessed that his daughter 
 had secretly recommended me. 
 
 Hardly had I begun to get over the loutish surprise which 
 a first sight of the great world produces in every tyro, when, 
 just as I was getting a glimpse of the resources it has for 
 ambitious men, and thinking of the joy of practicing Hen- 
 riette's axioms, while recognizing their entire truth, the events 
 of the twentieth of March supervened. My brother accom- 
 panied the court to Ghent, and I, by the Countess' advice 
 for I kept up a correspondence with her, frequent on my side 
 only I also went thither with the Due de Lenoncourt. His 
 habitual benevolence became a sincere desire to help me when 
 he found that I was devoted head, heart, and hands to the 
 Bourbons ; he presented me to his majesty. 
 
 The courtiers of disaster are few. Youth has artless enthu- 
 siasms and disinterested fidelity ; the King was a judge of men ; 
 what would have passed unnoticed at the Tuileries were con- 
 spicuous at Ghent, and I was so happy as to find favor with 
 Louis XVIII. 
 
 A letter from Madame de Mortsauf to her father, brought 
 with some dispatches by an emissary of the Vendeens, con- 
 tained a scrap for me, informing me that Jacques was ill. 
 Monsieur de Mortsauf, in despair alike at his son's frail health, 
 and at a second emigration of the sovereign, in which he had 
 no part, had added a few lines that enabled me to imagine my 
 dear lady's situation. Fretted by him, no doubt, for spend- 
 ing all her time by Jacques' bedside, getting no rest day or 
 night, scorning such vexations but incapable of controlling
 
 152 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 herself when she was expending herself wholly in nursing her 
 child, Henriette must be needing the support of a friendship 
 that had made life less burdensome to her, if it were only by 
 amusing Monsieur de Mortsauf. Several times already I had 
 had the Count out for a walk when he was threatening to 
 worry her an innocent trick of which the success had earned 
 me some of those looks expressing passionate gratitude, and 
 in which love reads a promise. Though I was eager to follow 
 in the footsteps of my brother Charles, recently sent to the 
 congress at Vienna; though, at the risk of my life even, I 
 longed to justify Henriette's predictions and free myself from 
 being his vassal, my ambition, my desire for independence, 
 my interests, which bid me remain with the King, all paled 
 before Madame de Mortsauf s heart-stricken image. I decided 
 on leaving the court at Ghent, and on going to serve my true 
 sovereign. 
 
 God rewarded me. The messenger sent out by the Ven- 
 d6ens could not return to France ; the King wanted a man 
 who would devote himself to be the bearer of his instructions. 
 The Due de Lenoncourt knew that his majesty would not 
 overlook the man who should undertake this perilous task ; 
 without consulting me, he obtained it for me, and I accepted 
 it, only too glad to be able to return to Clochegourde while 
 serving the good cause. 
 
 Thus, after having an audience of the King, at one-and- 
 twenty, I returned to France, where, either in Paris or in la 
 Vendee, I was to be so happy as to do his majesty's bidding. 
 By the end of May, being the object of pursuit to the Bona- 
 partists who were on my track, I was obliged to fly; affecting 
 to make my way homeward, I went on foot from place to 
 place, from wood to wood, across Upper Vendee, the Bocage, 
 and Poitou, changing my route as circumstances required. 
 
 I thus reached Saumur ; from Saumur I went to Chinon, 
 and from Chinon, in a single night, I arrived in the woods of 
 Neuil, where J met the Count, on horseback, on a common ;
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 153 
 
 he took me up behind him and carried me home, without 
 our meeting a soul who could recognize me. 
 
 " Jacques is better," was his first speech. 
 
 I explained to him my position as a diplomatic infantry- 
 man, hunted like a wild animal, and the gentleman rose up 
 in him, in arms to dispute with Chessel the risk of harboring 
 me. 
 
 When I saw Clochegourde I felt as if the past eight months 
 were but a dream. The Count said to his wife as we entered, 
 " Guess who is come with me ! Felix." 
 
 " Is it possible?" she asked, her arms hanging limp, and 
 looking quite amazed. 
 
 I came in ; we stood, both immovable, she riveted to her 
 seat, I on the threshold, gazing at each other with the fixed 
 avidity of two lovers who want to make up in one look for 
 lost time. But she, ashamed of her surprise, which laid her 
 heart bare, arose, and I went forward. 
 
 " I have prayed much for you," said she, holding out her 
 hand for me to kiss. 
 
 She asked for news of her father ; then, understanding my 
 fatigue, she went to arrange a room for me, while the Count 
 had some food brought, for I was dying of hunger. My room 
 was over hers, that which had been her aunt's ; she left me 
 to be taken to it by the Count, after setting foot on the 
 bottom step of the stairs, considering no doubt whether she 
 should show me the way herself; I turned around, she colored, 
 wished me a sound nap, and hastily withdrew. When I came 
 down to dinner I heard of the defeat at Waterloo, of Napo- 
 leon's flight, the march of the allies on Paris and the prob- 
 able return of the Bourbons. To the Count these events 
 were everything ; to us they were nothing. 
 
 Do you know what the greatest news was after I had 
 greeted the children, for I will say nothing of my alarm on 
 seeing how pale and thin the Countess was ? I knew the dis- 
 may I might produce by a gesture of surprise, and expressed.
 
 154 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 nothing but pleasure at seeing her. The great news for us 
 was, "You will have some ice." 
 
 She had often been annoyed last year because she had no 
 water cold enough for me ; for, drinking nothing else, I liked 
 it iced. God knows what it had cost her in importunities to 
 have an ice-house built. You, better than any one, know 
 that love is satisfied with a word, a look, a tone of voice, 
 an attention apparently most trifling ; its highest privilege is 
 to be its own evidence. Well, this word, with her look and 
 her pleasure, revealed to me the extent of her sentiments, as 
 I had formerly shown her mine by my conduct over the 
 backgammon. 
 
 But there was no end to the artless proofs of her tenderness. 
 By the seventh day after my arrival she was quite herself 
 again ; she was sparkling with health, glee, and youth ; I 
 found my beloved lily more beautiful, more fully developed, 
 just as I found all my heart's treasures increased. Is it not a 
 narrow soul only, or a vulgar heart, which finds that absence 
 diminishes feeling, effaces the impression of the soul, and 
 deteriorates the beauty of the person beloved ? To an ardent 
 imagination, to those beings in whom enthusiasm flows in 
 their blood, dying it with a fresher purple, and in whom pas- 
 sion takes on the form of constancy, has not absence such an 
 effect as the torments which fortified the faith of early Chris- 
 tians and made God visible to them ? Are there not, in a 
 heart full of love, certain undying hopes which give a higher 
 value to the image we desire by showing it in glimpses tinged 
 by the glow of dreams? Can we not feel such promptings as 
 lend the beauty of an ideal to those adored features by in- 
 forming them with thought? The past, remembered bit by 
 bit, is magnified ; the future is furnished with hopes. Be- 
 tween two hearts overcharged with such electric tension, the 
 first interview is then like a beneficent storm which revives 
 the earth and fertilizes it, while shedding on it the flashing 
 gleams of the lightning. How much exquisite pleasure I
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 155 
 
 tasted in finding that in us these thoughts, these experiences 
 were reciprocal ! With what rapture did I watch the growth 
 of happiness in Henriette ! 
 
 A woman who resuscitates under the eyes of the man she 
 loves gives a greater proof of feeling perhaps than one who 
 dies, killed by a suspicion, or withered on the stem for lack 
 of nutrition. Which of the two is the more pathetic I can- 
 not tell. Madame de Mortsauf s revival was as natural as the 
 effect of the month of May on the meadows, or of sunshine 
 and shower on drooping plants. Like our vale of love, Hen- 
 riette had gone through her winter; like it, she was born 
 anew with the spring. 
 
 Before dinner we went down to our beloved terrace. 
 There, as she stroked the head of her poor child, weaker now 
 than I had ever seen him, while he walked by her side in 
 silence as though he were sickening for some disease, she told 
 me of the nights she had spent by his sick-bed. For those 
 three months, she said, she had lived exclusively in herself; 
 she had dwelt, as it were, in a gloomy palace, dreading to 
 enter the rooms where lights were blazing, where banquets 
 were given that were forbidden to her ; she had stood at the 
 open door with one eye on her child and the other on a 
 vague face, with one ear listening to sorrow and the other 
 hearing a voice. She spoke in poems, suggested by solitude, 
 such as no poet has ever written ; and all quite simply, with- 
 out knowing that there might be the slightest trace of love or 
 taint of voluptuous thought, or of Oriental sweetness like a 
 rose of Frangistan. When the Count joined us she went on 
 in the same tone, as a wife proud of herself, who can look 
 her husband boldly in the face and kiss her son's brow with- 
 out a blush. 
 
 She had prayed much, holding her clasped hands over 
 Jacques for whole nights, willing that he should not die. 
 
 " I went up to the gates of the sanctuary," she said, "to 
 ask his life of God."
 
 156 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 And she had seen visions ; she repeated them to me ; but 
 when she presently said in her angel's voice these wonderful 
 words, "When I slept, my heart kept watch! " "That is 
 to say, you were almost crazy," said the Count, interrupting 
 her. 
 
 She was silenced, as if this was the first blow she had ever 
 had, as if she had forgotten that for thirteen years this man 
 had never failed to aim an arrow at her heart. Like a glori- 
 ous bird, she was stayed in her flight by this clumsy bullet ; 
 she fell into a mood of dull dejection. 
 
 " Dear me, monsieur," said she, after a pause, " will noth- 
 ing I say ever find favor before the bar of your wit ? Will you 
 never have pity on my weakness, nor any sympathy with my 
 womanly fancies ? ' ' 
 
 She paused. This angel already repented of having mur- 
 mured, and sounded the past and the future alike at a glance. 
 Could she be understood, had she not provoked some virulent 
 retort ? The blue veins throbbed strongly in her temples ; 
 she shed no tears, but her green eyes lost their color ; then she 
 looked down to the ground to avoid seeing in mine the exag- 
 geration of her suffering, her own feelings guessed by me, her 
 soul cherished in mine, and, above all, the sympathy, crim- 
 soned by young love, that was ready, like a faithful dog, to 
 fly at any one who should offend his mistress without measur- 
 ing the force or the dignity of the foe. At such a moment 
 the airs of superiority assumed by the Count were a thing to 
 see ; he fancied he had triumphed over his wife and battered 
 her with a hailstorm of words, reiterating the same idea again 
 and again, like the blows of an axe repeating the same sound. 
 
 "So he is the same as ever?" I asked when the Count 
 left us, called away by the stableman who came to fetch him. 
 
 " Always! " replied Jacques. 
 
 "Always most kind, my boy," said she to Jacques, trying 
 to screen Monsieur de Mortsauf from the criticism of his 
 children. " You see the present, you know nothing of the
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 157 
 
 past ; you cannot judge of your father without some injustice ; 
 and even if you were so unhappy as to see your father in the 
 wrong, the honor of the family would require you to bury 
 such secrets in the deepest silence." 
 
 " How are the improvements going on at la Cassine and la 
 Rhetoriere?" I inquired, to turn her mind from these bitter 
 reflections. 
 
 "Beyond my hopes," she replied. "The buildings being 
 finished, we found two capital farmers who took one at a rental 
 of four thousand five hundred francs, we paying the taxes, 
 and the other at five thousand ; the leases for fifteen years. 
 We have already planted three thousand young trees on the 
 two new farms. Manette's cousin is delighted with la Rabe- 
 laye ; Martineau has la Baude. The return on the four farms 
 is chiefly in hay and wood, and they do not fatten the soil, 
 as some dishonest farmers do, with the manure intended for 
 the arable land. So our efforts are crowned with complete 
 success. Clochegourde, apart from what we call the home 
 farm, from our woods and the vineyards, brings in nineteen 
 thousand francs, and the plantations will in time yield us an 
 annuity. I am struggling now to get the home farm placed 
 in the hands of our keeper, Martineau, whose place could be 
 filled by his son. He offers a rental of three thousand francs 
 if Monsieur de Mortsauf will only build him a house at la 
 Commanderie. We could then clear the approach to Cloche- 
 gourde, finish the proposed avenue to the Chinon road, and 
 have nothing in our own hands but the wood and the vine- 
 yards. If the King returns, we shall have our pension again, 
 and we shall accept it after a few days' contest with our wife's 
 common sense ! Thus Jacques' fortune will be perfectly se- 
 cure. When we have achieved this result I shall leave it to 
 monsieur to save for Madeleine, and the King will endow her, 
 too, as is customary. My conscience is at peace, my task is 
 nearly done. And you ? " she asked. 
 
 I explained my mission and showed her how wise and
 
 158 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 fruitful her advice had been. Had she been gifted with sec- 
 ond sight to see events so accurately ? 
 
 " Did I not say so in my letter? " replied she. " But it is 
 only for you that I can exercise that strange faculty, of which 
 I have spoken to no one but Monsieur de la Berge, my di- 
 rector ; he explains it by divine intervention. Often, after 
 any deep meditation to which my fears for the children have 
 given rise, my eyes used to close to the things of this world 
 and awake to another realm. When I saw Jacques and Made- 
 leine as luminous figures, they were well for some little time ; 
 when I saw them wrapped in mist, they soon after fell ill. As 
 for you, not only do I always see you radiant, but I hear a 
 soft voice telling me what you ought to do without words, 
 by spiritual communication. By what law is it that I can use 
 this marvelous faculty only for my children's behoof and 
 yours?" she went on, becoming thoughtful. "Is it that 
 God means to be a father to them ? " she added, after a pause. 
 
 "Allow me to believe that I obey you alone," I earnestly 
 answered. 
 
 She gave me one of those whole-hearted, gracious smiles 
 which so intoxicated my soul that I should not in such a 
 moment have felt a death-blow. 
 
 "As soon as the King reaches Paris, go there, leave Cloche- 
 gourde," she said. " Degrading as it is to sue for place and 
 favor, it is, on the other hand, ridiculous not to be at hand to 
 accept them. There will be great changes. The King will 
 need capable and trustworthy men ; do not fail him. You will 
 find yourself in office while still young, and you will benefit 
 by it ; for statesmen, as for actors, there is a certain routine of 
 business which no genius can divine ; it must be taught. My 
 father learned that from the Due de Choiseul. Think of me," 
 she added, after a pause; "let me enjoy the pleasures of 
 superiority in a soul that is all my own. Are you not my 
 son? " 
 
 " Your son ? " I said sullenly.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 159 
 
 "Nothing but my son," said she, mimicking me. "And 
 is not that a good enough place to hold in my heart ? " 
 
 The bell rang for dinner, she took my arm, leaning on it 
 with evident pleasure. 
 
 "You have grown," she said, as we went up the steps. 
 When we reached the top she shook my arm as if my fixed 
 gaze held her too eagerly ; though her eyes were downcast 
 she knew full well that I looked at her alone, and she said in 
 her tone of affected impatience, so gracious and so insinu- 
 ating 
 
 " Come, let us look at our favorite valley." 
 
 She turned, holding her white silk parasol over our heads, 
 and clasping Jacques closely to her side ; the movement of her 
 head, by which she directed my attention to the Indre, to the 
 punt, and the fields, showed me that since my visit and our 
 walks together she had made herself familiar with those misty 
 distances and hazy curves. Nature was the cloak that had 
 sheltered her thoughts ; she knew now what the nightingale 
 sobs over at night, and what the marsh-bird repeats in its 
 plaintive, droning note. 
 
 At eight o'clock that evening I was present at a scene 
 which touched me deeply, and which I had never before wit- 
 nessed, because I had always remained to play with Monsieur 
 de Mortsauf while she went into the dining-room before put- 
 ting the children to bed. A bell rang twice and all the house- 
 servants appeared. 
 
 " You are our guest; will you submit to convent rule?" 
 she asked, leading me away by the hand with the look of inno- 
 cent gaiety that is characteristic of all truly pious women. 
 
 The Count followed us. Masters, children, and servants, 
 all knelt bareheaded in their accustomed places. It was 
 Madeleine's turn to say prayers ; the dear child did it in her 
 thin, young voice, its artless tones clearly audible in the har- 
 monious country silence, and giving each phrase the holy 
 purity of innocence, that angelic grace. It was the most
 
 160 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 touching prayer I ever heard. Nature whispered a response 
 to the child's words in the myriad low rustlings of the evening 
 hour, an accompaniment as of an organ softly played at the 
 time of vespers. 
 
 Madeleine was on her mother's right hand, Jacques on the 
 left. The pretty curly heads, and, rising between them, the 
 mother's plaits of hair; above them, again, Monsieur de Mort- 
 sauf s perfectly white hair and ivory yellow skull, formed a 
 picture of which the coloring seemed to repeat to the mind 
 the idea suggested by the melody of prayer ; and to fulfill the 
 conditions of unity which stamp the sublime, the devout little 
 assembly was wrapped in the subdued light of sunset, while 
 the room was touched with the red beams. The poetical or 
 the superstitious soul could thus imagine that the fires of 
 heaven were shed on the faithful worshipers kneeling there 
 before God without distinction of rank, all equals, as the 
 church requires. My thoughts reverted to patriarchal times, 
 and my fancy gave added dignity to the scene, itself so grand 
 in its simplicity. The children bade their father good-night, 
 the servants bowed, the Countess went away, each child 
 holding a hand, and I went back to the drawing-room with 
 the Count. 
 
 "You will have found salvation there and perdition here," 
 said he, pointing to the backgammon board. 
 
 The Countess joined us in about half an hour, and brought 
 her work-frame to the table. 
 
 "This is for you," said she, unrolling the canvas ; "but 
 the work has hung fire these three months past. Between 
 that red carnation and that rose, my poor boy was very 
 ill." 
 
 " Come, come," said Monsieur de Mortsauf ; "do not talk 
 about it. Size-cinq, master king's messenger." 
 
 When I went to my room, I sat motionless to hear her 
 moving about below. Though she was calm and pure, I was 
 tormented by crazy ideas and intolerable cravings.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 161 
 
 "Why could she not be mine?" thought I. "Perhaps 
 she, like me, is tossed on the whirlwind of the senses? " 
 
 At one o'clock I crept down the stairs, treading without a 
 sound, and outside her door I lay down ; with my ear to the 
 crack I heard her soft and even breathing, like a child's. 
 When I was quite chilled I went up again and to bed, where 
 I slept quietly till morning. 
 
 To what predestination, to what taint of nature can I 
 ascribe the pleasure I find in going to the edge of a precipice, 
 in sounding the abyss of evil, in peering into its depths, 
 shuddering at the chill, and drawing back in anguish. That 
 hour at night spent on the threshold of her door, where I 
 wept with frenzy, without her ever knowing on the morrow 
 that she had trodden on my tears and my kisses wept over 
 her virtue, ruined and respected by turns, cursed and then 
 worshiped that hour, a madness in the eyes of many persons, 
 was an inspiration of the same nameless feeling that carries 
 on a soldier. Men have told me that in such a mood they 
 have risked their life, rushing in front of a battery, to see 
 whether they would escape the grapeshot, and whether they 
 would not enjoy thus trying to leap the gulf of probabilities, 
 like Jean Bart smoking while he sat on a powder barrel. 
 
 On the following day I went out and gathered two nose- 
 gays; the Count admired them the Count, who cared for 
 nothing of the kind, and for whom Champenetz's jest seemed 
 to have been invented : " He builds dungeons in the air ! " 
 
 I spent several days at Clochegourde, paying short calls 
 only at Frapesle, where I dined, however, three times. The 
 French army took up its quarters at Tours. Though I was 
 evidently life and health to Madame de Mortsauf, she en- 
 treated me to get to Chateauroux and return as fast as pos- 
 sible to Paris through Issoudun and Orleans. I tried to rebel ; 
 she insisted, saying that her familiar had counseled her; I 
 obeyed. Our parting this time was watered with tears ; she 
 11
 
 162 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 was afraid of the captivations of the world I was about to live 
 in. Should I not have to enter seriously into the whirl of 
 interests, of passions, of pleasures, which make Paris an ocean 
 fraught with perils no less to chaste affections than to a clear 
 conscience? I promised her that I would write her every 
 evening the events and the thoughts of the day. At this 
 promise she laid her weary head on my shoulder, and said 
 
 " Omit nothing ; everything will interest me." 
 
 She gave me letters to the Duke and Duchess, on whom I 
 called the day after my arrival. 
 
 "You are in luck," said the Duke. " Dine here and come 
 with me to the palace this evening ; your fortune is made. 
 The King mentioned your name this morning, adding, ' He 
 is young, able, and faithful.' And the King regretted not 
 knowing whether you were dead or alive, and whither the 
 course of events had led you after you had so well fulfilled 
 your mission." 
 
 That evening I was a master of appeals to the council of 
 state, and was appointed to certain secret employment for the 
 King a confidential post which was to be permanent so long 
 as he should reign, not splendid in appearance, but with no 
 risk of overthrow, and which placed me at the heart of gov- 
 ernment, and was, in fact, the very foundation of all my pros- 
 perity. 
 
 Madame de Mortsauf had seen clearly, and I owed every- 
 thing to her : power and wealth, happiness and knowledge ; 
 she guided and purified my heart, and gave my purpose that 
 unity without which the powers of youth are vainly fritted 
 away. At a later date I had a colleague. Each of us was on 
 service for six months at a time. We could at need take each 
 other's place ; we had a room in the palace, a carriage at our 
 command, and a handsome allowance for expenses when called 
 upon to travel. 
 
 It was a strange position ! We were the secret disciples of 
 a monarch to whose policy his enemies have since done signal
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 163 
 
 justice ; we heard his judgment on all matters internal and 
 foreign ; we had no acknowledged influence, but were occa- 
 sionally consulted, as Laforet was consulted by Moliere, and 
 we heard the hesitancy of long experience corrected by the 
 conscience of youth. 
 
 Our prospects were indeed settled in a way to satisfy our 
 ambition. Beside my pay as master of appeals, paid out of 
 the revenue of the council of state, the King gave me a thou- 
 sand francs a month out of the privy purse, and not unfre- 
 quently made me a present. Though the King knew full well 
 that a young man of three-and-twenty could not long with- 
 stand the amount of work he piled upon me, my colleague, now 
 a peer of France, was not appointed till the month of August, 
 1817. A choice was so difficult, our functions demanded such 
 various qualities, that the King was long in coming to a deci- 
 sion. He did me the honor to ask me which of the young men 
 among whom he was prepared to choose would best suit me as 
 a companion. One of the number was a former comrade of 
 mine at the Lepitre boarding-house, and I did not name him. 
 The King asked me why, not understanding why I should 
 pass him over. 
 
 "Your majesty," said I, "has mentioned men of equal 
 loyalty, but of different degrees of ability. I have named the 
 man I consider the most capable, feeling certain that we shall 
 always agree." 
 
 My judgment coincided with the King's, who was always 
 grateful for the sacrifice I had made. On this occasion he 
 said to me, "You will be the first of the two." And he gave 
 my colleague to understand this ; still, in return for this ser- 
 vice, my deputy became my friend. 
 
 The consideration with which I was treated by the Due de 
 Lenoncourt was the standard for that shown me by the rest of 
 the world. The mere words " The King is greatly interested 
 in this young man ; he has a future before him ; the King 
 likes him" would have sufficed in lieu of talents; but they
 
 164 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 also added to the kindness shown to a young official the in- 
 describable tribute that is paid only to power. 
 
 Either at the Due de Lenoncourt's or at my sister's house 
 married at about this time to our cousin the Marquis de 
 Listomere, the son of the old aunt I had been wont to visit 
 in the He Saint-Louis I gradually made the acquaintance of 
 the most influential persons of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. 
 
 Henriette ere long threw me into the heart of the circle 
 known as the "Petit-Chateau" (little castle), by the good 
 offices of the Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, whose grand- 
 niece she was by marriage. She wrote of me in such glowing 
 terms that the Princess at once invited me to call on her. I 
 was assiduous and was so happy as to please her ; she became 
 not my patroness, but a friend whose feelings were almost 
 maternal. The old Princess set her heart on making me inti- 
 mate with her daughter Madame d'Espard, with the Duchesse 
 de Langeais, the Vicomtesse de Beauseant, and the Duchesse 
 de Maufrigneuse women who, by turns, held the sceptre of 
 fashion and who were all the more gracious to me because I 
 made no claims upon them, and was always ready to be of 
 service to them. 
 
 My brother Charles, far from ignoring me, thenceforth re- 
 lied on my support ; but my rapid success was the cause of 
 some secret jealousy, which at a later period gave me much 
 annoyance. My father and mother, amazed by such unex- 
 pected good fortune, felt their vanity flattered and at last rec- 
 ognized me as their son ; but as the sentiment was to some 
 extent artificial, not to say acted, this revulsion had not much 
 effect on my ulcerated heart. Beside, affection that is tainted 
 with selfishness excites little sympathy; the heart abhors 
 every form of calculation and profit. 
 
 I wrote regularly to my dear Henriette, who answered me 
 in a letter or two each month. Thus her spirit hovered over 
 me, her thoughts traversed space and kept a pure atmosphere 
 about me. No woman could attract me. The King knew of
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 165 
 
 my reserve ; in such matters he was of the school of Louis 
 XV., and used to laugh and call me " Mademoiselle de Van- 
 denesse," but the propriety of my conduct was very much 
 approved by him. I am quite sure that the patience which 
 had become a habit during my childhood, and yet more at 
 Clochegourde, did much to win me the King's good graces ; 
 he was always most kind to me. He no doubt indulged a 
 fancy for reading my letters, for he was not long under any 
 mistake as to my blameless life. One day when the Duke was 
 in attendance I was writing from the King's dictation, and 
 he, seeing the Duke come in, looked mischievously at us both. 
 " Well, that confounded fellow Mortsauf still persists in 
 living on?" said he, in his fine ringing voice, to which he 
 could at will give a tone of biting sarcasm. 
 " Yes, still," replied the Duke. 
 
 " But the Countess de Mortsauf is an angel whom I should 
 very much like to see here," the King went on. " However, 
 I can do nothing; but perhaps my secretary," and he turned 
 to me, " may be more fortunate. You have six months' 
 leave. I shall engage as your colleague the young man of 
 whom we were speaking yesterday. Enjoy yourself at Clo- 
 chegourde, Master Cato ! " and he smiled as he was wheeled 
 out of the room in his chair. 
 
 I flew like a swallow to Touraine. For the first time I was 
 about to show myself to the woman I loved, not only as 
 rather less of a simpleton, but in the paraphernalia of a 
 young man of fashion whose manners had been formed in the 
 politest circles, whose education had been finished by the 
 most charming women, who had at last won the reward of his 
 sufferings, and who had made good use of the experience of 
 the fairest angel to whom heaven ever intrusted the care of a 
 child. 
 
 When I had stayed at Clochegourde at the time of my 
 mission in la Vendee, I had been in shooting dress ; I wore a 
 jacket with tarnished white metal buttons, finely striped
 
 166 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 trousers, leather gaiters, and shoes. My long tramp and the 
 thickets had served me so ill that the Count was obliged to 
 lend me some linen. This time, two years' residence in 
 Paris, the duty of attending the King, the habits of wealth, 
 my now complete development, and a youthful countenance 
 which beamed with indescribable light, derived from the 
 serenity of a soul magnetically united to the pure soul at 
 Clochegourde that went forth to me all had transfigured me; 
 I was sure of myself without being conceited ; I was deeply 
 satisfied at finding myself, young as I was, at the top of the 
 tree ; I had the proud consciousness of being the secret main- 
 stay of the most adorable woman on earth, and her uncon- 
 fessed hope. 
 
 I felt perhaps some stirrings of vanity when the postillion's 
 whip cracked in the newly-made avenue from the Chinon 
 road to Clochegourde, and a gate, I had never seen, opened in 
 an enclosing wall that had been recently built. I had not 
 written to announce my arrival to the Countess, wishing to 
 take her by surprise ; but this was a twofold blunder : in the 
 first place, she suffered the shock of a pleasure long wished 
 for, but regarded as impossible, and she also proved to me 
 that elaborate surprises are always in bad taste. 
 
 When Henriette beheld a young man where she had re- 
 membered a boy, her eyes fell with a tragical droop; she 
 allowed me to take her hand and kiss it without showing any 
 of the heartfelt pleasure which I had been wont to perceive 
 in her sensitive thrill ; and when she raised her face to look 
 at me again, I saw that she was pale. 
 
 "So you do not forget old friends!" said Monsieur de 
 Mortsauf, who had neither altered nor grown older. 
 
 The two children sprang into my arms ; I saw in the door- 
 way the grave face of the Abbe" de Dominis, Jacques' tutor. 
 
 "No," said I to the Count, "and henceforth I shall have 
 six months of every year to devote always to you. Why, 
 what is the matter?" I said to the Countess, putting my arm
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 167 
 
 around her waist to support her, in the presence of all her 
 family. 
 
 "Oh! leave me!" she exclaimed with a start; "it is 
 nothing." 
 
 I read her soul, and answered her secret thought ; I said to 
 her, ' ' Do you no longer acknowledge me for your faithful 
 slave?" 
 
 She took my arm, turned away from the Count, the chil- 
 dren, the abbe, and all the servants who had hurried out, and 
 led me round the lawn, still within sight of them all. When 
 we had gone so far that she thought she could not be heard 
 
 "Felix, my friend," she said, "forgive the alarms of a 
 woman who has but one clue by which to guide herself in an 
 underground labyrinth, and fears to find it broken. Tell me 
 once more that I am more than ever your Henriette, that you 
 will not desert me, that nothing can dislodge me, that you 
 will always be my faithful friend. I have had a sudden vision 
 of the future and you were not there as usual, with a radiant 
 face and your eloquent eyes fixed on mine ; you had your back 
 to me." 
 
 " Henriette, dear idol, whom I worship more than I do 
 God; lily, flower of my life, how can you, who are my con- 
 science, fail to know that I am so entirely part of your heart, 
 that my soul is here when my body is in Paris? Need I tell 
 you that I have traveled hither in seventeen hours ; that every 
 turn of the wheel bore with it a world of thought and longing, 
 which broke out like a tempest the moment I saw you " 
 
 " Tell me, tell me ! I am sure of myself. I can listen to 
 you without sinning. God does not desire my death; He 
 sends you to me as He gives the breath of life to His crea- 
 tures, as He sheds rain from the clouds on a barren land. 
 Speak, tell me, do you love me with a holy love? " 
 
 "With a holy love." 
 
 "And forever?" 
 
 "Forever."
 
 168 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 "As a Virgin Mary, to be left shrouded in her draperies 
 under her spotless crown ? " 
 
 " As a visible Virgin." 
 
 "As a sister? " 
 
 " As a sister too dearly loved." 
 
 "As a mother?" 
 
 " As a mother I secretly long for." 
 
 "Chivalrously, without hope?" 
 
 " Chivalrously, but hoping." 
 
 " In short, as if you were still but twenty, and had your 
 shabby, blue evening-coat?" 
 
 " Oh, far better ! I love you like that, but I also love you 
 
 as " She looked at me in keen alarm. "As you loved 
 
 your aunt." 
 
 " Ah ! I am happy; you have relieved my fears," said she, 
 going to the others, who were puzzled by our private colloquy. 
 
 " Be still a child here ! for you are but a child. If your 
 best policy is to be a man to the King, understand that here 
 it is to be a boy. As a boy you will be loved. I shall al- 
 ways resist the powers of the man, but what can I deny a 
 child ? Nothing ; he can ask nothing that I would not grant. 
 We have told all our secrets," she added, looking at the Count 
 with a saucy smile, in which I saw her a girl again in all her 
 simple nature. " I am now going in to dress." 
 
 Never for three years had I known her voice so thoroughly 
 happy. It was the first time I heard those swallow-like notes, 
 that childlike tone of which I have spoken. 
 
 I had brought a sportsman's outfit for Jacques and a work- 
 box for Madeleine which her mother always used ; in short, 
 I had made up for the shabbiness to which I had hitherto 
 been condemned by my mother's parsimony. The delight 
 of the two children as they displayed their presents to each 
 other seemed to annoy the Count, who was always aggrieved 
 if he was not the centre of attentions. I gave Madeleine a 
 look of intelligence and followed the Count, who wanted to
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 169 
 
 talk about himself. He led me to the terrace ; but we paused 
 on the steps at each solemn fact he impressed upon me. 
 
 " My poor, dear Felix," said he, " you find them all happy 
 and in good health. It is I who give shadow to the picture. 
 I have absorbed their maladies, and I can bless God for hav- 
 ing inflicted them on me. I used not to know what ailed 
 me ; but I know now I have a disease of the pylorus ; I can 
 digest nothing." 
 
 " By what good luck have you become as learned as a pro- 
 fessor of the College of Physicians?" said I, smiling. "Is 
 your doctor so indiscreet as to tell you this ? " 
 
 "Heaven preserve me from consulting doctors!" he ex- 
 claimed, with the look of repugnance that most imaginary 
 invalids show at the thought of medical treatment. 
 
 Then I had to listen to a crazy harangue, in the course of 
 which he was ridiculously confidential, complaining of his 
 wife, his servants, his children, and his life, taking evident 
 delight in repeating his remarks of every day to a friend who, 
 not knowing them, might be startled by them and who was 
 obliged by politeness to seem interested. He must have been 
 satisfied, for I listened with deep attention, trying to formu- 
 late this inconceivable character, and to guess what new tor- 
 ments he was inflicting on his wife, though she had not said so. 
 
 Henriette herself put an end to the monologue by coming 
 out on the steps. The Count saw her, shook his head, and 
 added 
 
 " You, Felix, listen to me ; but no one here has any pity 
 for me." 
 
 And he went away as though aware that he would be in the 
 way during my conversation with Henriette, or perhaps as a 
 chivalrous attention to her, knowing that he would give her 
 pleasure by leaving us together. His character was full of 
 really inexplicable contradictions, for he was jealous, as all 
 weak persons are ; but his confidence in his wife's saintliness 
 knew no bounds ; perhaps it was the irritation to his vanity
 
 170 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 caused by the superiority of her lofty virtue that gave rise to 
 his constant antagonism to the Countess' wishes, whom he 
 loved to defy as children defy their mother and their masters. 
 Jacques was at his lessons, Madeleine was dressing ; thus I 
 had an hour to walk alone with the Countess on the terrace. 
 
 " Well, dear angel," I asked, " so the chain is heavier than 
 ever, the sands more scorching, the thorns more thickly set?" 
 
 " Be silent," said she, guessing what thoughts had been 
 suggested to me by the Count's conversation. "You are here 
 and all is forgotten ! I am not, I have not been unhappy." 
 
 She danced a few light steps as if to flutter her white dress, 
 to let the breezes play with her frills of snowy tulle, her loose 
 sleeves, her bright ribbons, her cape, and the airy curls of her 
 hair dressed a la Sevigne ; I saw her for the first time really 
 girlish and young, naturally gay, and as ready for sport as a 
 child. I experienced both the tears of happiness and the 
 delight a man feels in giving pleasure. 
 
 "Sweet flower of humanity," cried I, "that my fancy 
 caresses and my spirit kisses ! Oh my lily ! still intact and 
 erect on its stem, still white, proud, fragrant, and alone ! " 
 
 "That is enough, monsieur," she said, with a smile. 
 " Talk to me about yourself, and tell me everything." 
 
 And then, under the moving canopy of quivering leaves, 
 we had a long conversation, full of endless parentheses, each 
 subject dropped and taken up again, in which I initiated her 
 into my whole life and all my occupations. I described my 
 rooms in Paris, for she wanted to know everything, and I 
 joy then not fully appreciated ! I had nothing to conceal. 
 As she thus read all my soul, and learned all the details of my 
 life full of overwhelming toil, as she discerned the import- 
 ance of my functions, in which, but for the strictest honesty, 
 it would be so easy to cheat and grow rich, and which I 
 exercised with such fidelity that the King, as I told her, 
 nicknamed me Mademoiselle de Vandenesse, she clasped my 
 hand and kissed it, leaving on it a tear of joy. This sudden
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 171 
 
 inversion of our parts, this splendid praise, the swiftly ex- 
 pressed feeling, even more swiftly understood. " You are 
 indeed the master I could have obeyed, the fulfillment of my 
 dream ! " all the avowal expressed in this action, whose very 
 humility was dignity, betraying love in a sphere far above the 
 senses ; this whirl of heavenly emotions fell on my heart and 
 crushed me. I felt so small ! I wished I could die at her feet. 
 
 " Oh ! " I exclaimed, " you women will always outdo us in 
 every way. How could you doubt me ? for you did doubt 
 me just now, Henriette." 
 
 " Not in the present," she replied, looking at me with the 
 ineffable sweetness that softened the light in her eyes for me 
 alone. " But seeing you so handsome, I said to myself: Our 
 plans for Madeleine will be marred by some woman who will 
 guess what treasures lie below, who will worship you, rob us 
 of our Felix, and destroy everything for us." 
 
 " Still Madeleine !" said I, with an expression of surprise 
 which only half-distressed her. " Is it to Madeleine that I 
 remain faithful? " 
 
 We then sat in silence, very provokingly interrupted by 
 Monsieur de Mortsauf. My heart was full, but I had to keep 
 up a conversation beset with difficulties, in which my truthful 
 replies as to the policy then carried out by the King offended 
 the Count's views, while he insisted on my explaining his 
 majesty's intentions. Notwithstanding my questions as to 
 his horses, the state of agriculture, whether he was satisfied 
 with his five farms, if he meant to fell the trees in the old 
 avenue, he constantly came back to politics with the petulance 
 of an old maid and the pertinacity of a child ; for minds of 
 this type always eagerly turn to the side where light shines, 
 they blunder up to it again and again, buzzing round but 
 getting no nearer, exhausting one's spirit as bluebottle flies 
 weary the ear by humming against the window-pane. 
 
 Henriette said nothing. I, to put an end to a dialogue 
 which the warmth of youth might have heated to a flame, re-
 
 172 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 plied in assenting monosyllables, thus avoiding a useless dis- 
 cussion ; but Monsieur de Mortsauf was far too clear-sighted 
 not to discern the offensive side of my politeness. Presently 
 he turned restive, vexed at being constantly agreed with ; his 
 eyebrows and the wrinkles in his forehead twitched, his tawny 
 eyes flashed, his bloodshot nose turned redder than ever, as 
 on that day when, for the first time, I witnessed one of his fits 
 of frenzy. Henriette gave me a beseeching look to convey 
 to me that she could not exert on my behalf the firmness 
 she employed in justifying or defending the children. 
 
 I then answered the Count, taking him seriously, and man- 
 aging him with the greatest skill. 
 
 "Poor dear! poor dear!" she said, murmuring the words 
 again and again ; they fell on my ear like a breath of air. 
 Then, when she thought she could interfere with some success, 
 she exclaimed, interrupting us 
 
 "Do you know, gentlemen, that you are desperately un- 
 amusing?" 
 
 Recalled by this remark to the chivalrous deference due to 
 a woman, the Count ceased discussing politics ; it was now 
 his turn to be bored as we talked of trifles, and he left us free 
 to walk together, saying that perpetually pacing up and down 
 on the same spot made him giddy. 
 
 My gloomy conjectures were accurate. The fair scenery, 
 the mild atmosphere, the clear sky, the exquisite poetry of 
 this valley, which for fifteen years had soothed the acutest 
 vagaries of this sick brain, had now lost their power. At an 
 age when in most men the rough edges wear down and the 
 angles rub smooth, this old gentleman's temper was more 
 aggressive than ever. For some months now he had been 
 contradictory for contradiction's sake, without reason, without 
 justifying his opinions ; he asked the wherefore of everything, 
 fussed over a delay or a message, interfered incessantly in 
 domestic matters, and demanded an account of the smallest 
 details of the househeld, till he wore out his wife and his
 
 THE *LILY OF THE VALLEY. 173 
 
 servants, leaving them no freedom of action. Formerly he had 
 not given way to his temper without some plausible reason, 
 now his fractiousness was incessant. The care of his money 
 and the anxieties of husbandry, with the stir of a busy life, 
 had perhaps diverted his atrabilious humor by giving his anx- 
 ious spirit something to work on, and employing his active 
 mind ; perhaps it was want of occupation that now left his 
 disorder to react upon itself; having nothing outside him to 
 fret it, it took the form of fixed ideas ; the physical individual 
 had become the victim of the moral individual. 
 
 He was now his own doctor. He compared medical works, 
 and believed he had all the complaints of which he read the 
 descriptions ; then he took the most elaborate precautions to 
 guard his health ; always something new, impossible to foresee, 
 more impossible to satisfy. At one time he would have no 
 noise ; and when the Countess had succeeded in establishing 
 total silence he would suddenly complain of living in a tomb, 
 and say that there was a medium between making no noise 
 and the muteness of La Trappe. Sometimes he affected abso- 
 lute indifference to all earthly things ; then the whole house 
 breathed again : the children could play, the work of the 
 household was carried on without any fault-finding ; suddenly, 
 in the midst of it all, he would cry out piteously, "You want 
 to kill me ! My dear, if it concerned the children, you would 
 know by instinct what annoyed them ! " he would say to his 
 wife, adding to the injustice of the words by the hard, cold 
 tone in which he spoke them. Then he was for ever dressing 
 and undressing, studying the least variations of temperature, 
 and never doing anything without consulting the barometer. 
 In spite of his wife's motherly care, he never found any food 
 to his liking, for he declared that his stomach was always out 
 of order, and that painful digestion hindered his sleeping; at 
 the same time, he ate, drank, digested and slept in a way that 
 the most learned physician might have admired. His endless 
 caprices wore out the household ; like all servants, they were the
 
 174 THE LILY OF THE VA'LLEY. 
 
 slaves of routine, and incapable of accommodating themselves 
 to the exigencies of constantly varying orders. The Count 
 would desire that all the windows were to be left open, as fresh 
 air was indispensable to his health ; a few days later the air 
 was too damp, or too hot, he could not endure it ; he scolded, 
 he quarreled over it, and, to be in the right, would deny his 
 previous order. This lack of memory, or of honesty, of 
 course gave him the victory in every discussion when his wife 
 tried to prove that he contradicted himself. 
 
 A residence at Clochegourde was so unendurable that the 
 Abb6 de Dominis, an exceedingly learned man, had fallen 
 back on the solution of certain problems and intrenched him- 
 self in affected absence of mind. The Countess no longer 
 hoped to be able to keep the secret of his fits of mad fury 
 within the family circle, as of old. The servants had already 
 witnessed many scenes when the prematurely old man's un- 
 reasoning rage passed all bounds ; they were so much attached 
 to the Countess that nothing was ever repeated, but she lived 
 in daily terror of some outburst in public of a frenzy which no 
 respect of persons could now control. At a later time I heard 
 terrible details of the Count's behavior to his wife ; instead of 
 being a help to her he overwhelmed her with gloomy predic- 
 tions, making her responsible for future ills because she refused 
 to follow the insane medical treatment he wished to inflict on 
 the children. If the Countess went out walking with Jacques 
 and Madeleine, her husband would prophesy of coming 
 storms in spite of a clear sky; then, if by chance his prediction 
 was justified by the event, his conceit was so much gratified 
 as to be indifferent to the harm done to his children. If one 
 of them fell ill, the Count exercised his wit in finding a cause 
 for the attack in the system of nursing adopted by his wife, 
 which he would dispute in its minutest details, always ending 
 with these brutal words, " If your children are ill again, it is 
 all your own doing ! " 
 
 He carried this system into the smallest points of domestic
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 175 
 
 management, in which he always saw the worst side of things, 
 and made himself "the devil's advocate," to quote his old 
 coachman's expression. The Countess had arranged that 
 Jacques and Madeleine should have their meals at a different 
 hour from their parents, and had thus preserved them from 
 the dreadful effects of the Count's malady, meeting every storm 
 as it broke. The children rarely saw their father. 
 
 By an illusion peculiar to selfish people, the Count had no 
 suspicion of the mischief he caused. In his confidential con- 
 versation with me he had, indeed, blamed himself for too 
 great leniency to his family. Thus he wielded the knout, 
 felling and destroying everything about him as a monkey 
 might have done, and after wounding his victim denied that 
 he had ever touched her. I understood now what had drawn 
 the lines, as fine as razor-cuts, across the Countess' brow ; I 
 had noticed them as soon as I saw her. There is a sort of 
 modesty in noble souls that keeps them from uttering their 
 sorrows ; they hide their griefs from those they love, out of 
 pride and a feeling of luxurious charity. And in spite of my 
 urgency, I did not at once extract this confession from Hen- 
 riette. She feared to distress me ; she let things out, bit by 
 bit, with sudden blushes; but I was not slow to guess the 
 aggravated bitterness that her husband's want of occupation 
 had infused into the domestic miseries of Clochegourde. 
 
 " Henriette," said I a few days later, showing her that I 
 had sounded the depths of her new griefs, "did you not make 
 a mistake when you planned your estate so completely as to 
 leave the Count nothing to employ him?" 
 
 "Nay, dear," she said with a smile, "my position is so 
 critical as to need all my attention ; believe me, I have studied 
 every alternative they are all exhausted. It is true, worries 
 increase every day. As Monsieur de Mortsauf and I are al- 
 ways together, I cannot diminish them by distributing them 
 to several points ; everything must bring the same suffering on 
 me. I had thoughts of amusing Monsieur de Mortsauf by
 
 176 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 advising him to introduce the culture of silk-worms at Cloche- 
 gourde ; there are some mulberry trees here already, survivors 
 from that industry, once known in Touraine ; but I under- 
 stood that he would be none the less tyrannical at home, 
 that all the thousand troubles of the undertaking would fall 
 upon me. 
 
 "You see, my observing friend," she went on, "while a 
 man is young his bad qualities are controlled by the outer 
 world, impeded in their rise by the other passions, checked 
 by respect of persons; but later, in retirement, as a man 
 grows old, little faults come forth, all the more terrible be- 
 cause they have so long been kept under. Human weakness 
 is essentially cowardly; it grants neither peace nor truce; 
 what has once been surrendered yesterday it insists on to-day, 
 to-morrow, and for ever after ; it takes possession of all that 
 is conceded and demands more. Strength is merciful ; it 
 yields to conviction ; it is just and peaceable, while the pas- 
 sions that are born of weakness are pitiless. They are never 
 satisfied but when they can behave like children, who like 
 stolen fruit better than what they may eat at table. Monsieur 
 de Mortsauf takes a real pleasure in stealing a march on me ; 
 he who would never deceive anybody loves to deceive me so 
 long as the trick remains unknown." 
 
 One morning, about a month after my arrival, as we came 
 out from breakfast, the Countess took my arm, hurried out by 
 a railed gate that opened into the orchard, and dragged me 
 away to the vineyard. 
 
 "Oh! he will kill me!" she cried. "And yet I must 
 live, if only for the children's sake ! Can I not have a single 
 day's respite? Must I always be stumbling over brambles, 
 expecting every moment to fall, compelled every moment to 
 summon all my strength to keep my balance ! No living 
 creature can endure such an expenditure of energy. If only 
 I knew the ground I should be called upon to struggle over,
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 177 
 
 if my endurance were a fixed quantity, my spirit would bend 
 to it ; but no, the attack comes every day in a new form and 
 finds me defenseless ; my trouble is not single, but manifold. 
 Felix, Felix, you could never imagine the odious aspect his 
 tyranny has assumed, or the odious 'measures suggested to 
 
 him by his medical books. Ah ! my friend " she leaned 
 
 her head on my shoulder without finishing her sentence. 
 " What is to become of me ; what can I do?" she went on, 
 fighting with the ideas she had not uttered. " How can I 
 contend with him ? He will kill me. No, I will kill myself 
 only that is a crime ! Can I fly ? There are the children ! 
 Demand a separation ? But how, after fifteen years of married 
 life, am I to tell my father that I cannot live with Monsieur 
 de Mortsauf when, if my father or my mother were to come 
 here, he would be calm, well-conducted, polite, and witty. 
 And, beside, has a married woman a father and a mother? 
 She belongs, body and soul, to her husband. I used to live 
 in peace ; if not happy, I found some strength in my chaste 
 isolation. I confess it, if I am bereft of that negative comfort, 
 I, too, shall go mad ! My objection is founded on reasons 
 not personal to myself. Is it not wicked to bring poor little 
 creatures into the world, who are doomed from birth to con- 
 stant suffering? At the same time, this question of conduct 
 is so serious that I cannot solve it unaided : I am judge and 
 party to the suit. I will go to Tours to-morrow and consult 
 the Abbe Birotteau, my new director for my dear and 
 worthy Abbe de la Berge is dead," she said in a parenthesis. 
 " Though he was stern, I shall always miss his apostolic firm- 
 ness ; his successor is an angel of mildness who is too easily 
 touched to reprimand me. However, what courage can fail 
 to find refreshment in religion ? What reason but will gain 
 strength from the voice of the Holy Ghost ? 
 
 " Dear God ! " she exclaimed, drying her tears and looking 
 up to heaven, " for what am I thus punished ? But we must 
 believe yes, Felix," she said, laying her hand on my arm, 
 12
 
 178 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 " let us believe that we must pass through a red-hot crucible 
 before we can mount holy and perfect to the higher spheres. 
 Ought I to be silent ? Does God forbid my crying out to a 
 friend's heart. Do I love him too well ? " She clasped me to 
 her as though she feared to lose me. " Who will answer my 
 doubts ? My conscience does not reproach me. The stars 
 above shine down on men ; why, then, should not the soul, that 
 living star, shed its fires over and round a friend when only 
 pure thoughts go out to him? " 
 
 I listened in silence to this terrible outcry, holding her 
 clammy hand in my own, which was moister still ; I grasped 
 it with a force to which my Henriette responded with equal 
 pressure. 
 
 "You are there, are you?" exclaimed the Count, coming 
 toward us bareheaded. 
 
 Since my return he had insisted on always being the third 
 whenever we met, either because he counted on some amuse- 
 ment, or because he suspected the Countess of telling me of 
 all her sorrows and bewailing herself to me ; or, again, be- 
 cause, perhaps, he was morbidly jealous of a pleasure he did 
 not share. 
 
 "How he follows me about!" said she in a tone of 
 despair. " We will go to look at the clos (field), and then we 
 shall avoid him. Stoop low behind the hedges and we shall 
 escape." We screened ourselves behind a thick hedge, and 
 reaching the vineyard at a run, found ourselves far enough 
 from the Count under an alley of almond trees. 
 
 " Dear Henriette," said I, holding her arm pressed against 
 my heart, and standing still to contemplate her in her sorrow, 
 " you could once steer me wisely through the perilous ways 
 of the great world. Allow me now to give you some instruc- 
 tions to help you to end the single-handed duel in which you 
 must infallibly be defeated, for you and he are not fighting 
 with equal weapons. Cease, struggle no longer against a 
 madman "
 
 THE LIL Y OF THE VALLE Y. 179 
 
 " Hush ! " she exclaimed, keeping back the tears that filled 
 her eyes. 
 
 " Listen to me, my dearest. After an hour of his talk, 
 which I endure for your sake, my mind is often bewildered 
 and my head aches ; the Count makes me doubt my very 
 senses; the same things repeated are stamped in my brain in 
 spite of myself. A strongly marked monomania is not infec- 
 tious ; when madness takes the form of affecting a man's 
 views and hides itself behind perpetual discussions, it may 
 act terribly on those who live with it. Your patience is sub- 
 lime, but is it not stultifying ? For your own sake, for your 
 children's, change your system with the Count. Your ex- 
 quisite submissiveness has increased his egoism ; you treat him 
 as a mother treats the child she spoils. But now, if you wish 
 to live and you do," I added, looking her in the face, "ex- 
 ert all the influence you have over him. He loves and he 
 fears you you know it ; make him fear you more ; meet his 
 diffused willfulness with a narrow, set will. Increase your 
 power, just as he has managed to increase the concessions you 
 have granted ; imprison his infirmities in a narrow moral 
 sphere, as a maniac is imprisoned in a cell." 
 
 " Dear boy," said she, smiling bitterly, " none but a heart- 
 less woman could play such a part. I am a mother ; I should 
 make a feeble executioner. I can suffer yes ; but to make 
 others suffer! Never," she said, "not even to attain some 
 great or conspicuous advantage. Should I not have to falsify 
 my feelings, disguise my voice, set my face, restrain every 
 gesture ? Do not require such lies of me. I can stand be- 
 tween Monsieur de Mortsauf and his children ; I can take his 
 blows so that they may fall on no one else ; that is the utmost 
 I can do to reconcile so many antagonistic interests." 
 
 "Let me worship you! Saint, thrice saintly!" I ex- 
 claimed, kneeling on one knee, kissing her dress, and wiping 
 on it the tears that rose to my eyes. " But if he should kill 
 you ! " said I.
 
 180 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 She shuddered, turned pale, and raising her moisture-laden 
 eyes to heaven 
 
 "God's will be done," she replied. 
 
 " Do you know what the King said to your father when 
 speaking of you : ' That old wretch of a Mortsauf still lives 
 on?"' 
 
 "What is a jest on the King's lips is a crime here," she 
 replied. 
 
 In spite of our precautions, the Count had tracked us; 
 bathed in sweat, he came up with us under a walnut tree, 
 where the Countess had paused to speak these grave words. 
 As soon as I saw him, I began to discuss the vintage. Had 
 he any unjust suspicions ? I know not, but he stood looking 
 at us without saying a word, or heeding the damp chill that 
 falls from a walnut tree. 
 
 After a few minutes, during which he spoke in broken sen- 
 tences of little or no meaning, with pauses of very great signifi- 
 cance, the Count said he had a sick headache; he complained 
 of it mildly, not claiming our pity nor describing his indis- 
 position in exaggerated terms. We paid no heed to him. 
 When we went in he felt still worse, talked of going to bed, 
 and did so without ceremony, with a simplicity that was very 
 unusual. We took advantage of the armistice granted to us 
 by his fit of hypochondria and went down to our beloved 
 terrace, taking Madeleine with us. 
 
 " Let us go out on the river," said the Countess after a 
 few turns , "we will go to see the fish caught by the game- 
 keeper for to-day's supply." 
 
 We went out of the little gate, found the punt, got into it, 
 and slowly pushed up stream. Like three children, delighted 
 with trifles, we looked at the flowers on the banks, at the 
 blue and green dragon-flies, and the Countess wondered that 
 she could enjoy such tranquil pleasures in the midst of so 
 much acute grief. But does not the calm influence of nature 
 moving on, indifferent to our struggles, exert a consoling
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 181 
 
 charm? The swirl of passion, with its suppressed longings, 
 harmonizes with that of the river; the flowers, unforced by 
 the hand of man, express his most secret dreams ; the de- 
 licious see-saw of a boat vaguely repeats the thoughts that 
 float in the brain. 
 
 We felt the lulling influence of this twofold poetry. Our 
 words, strung to the diapason of nature, were full of mysteri- 
 ous grace, and our eyes shone with brighter beams, as they 
 caught the light so lavishly shed by the sun on the scorching 
 shore. The river was like a road on which we flew. In short, 
 disengaged from the mechanical movement exerted in walk- 
 ing, the mind took possession of creation. And was not the 
 excited glee of the little girl in her freedom so pretty in her 
 movements, so puzzling in her remarks the living expression 
 of two souls set free, and indulging in the ideal creation of 
 the being dreamed of by Plato, and known to all whose youth 
 has been filled with happy love ? 
 
 To give you an idea of that hour, not in its indescribable 
 details, but as a whole, I may say that we loved each other in 
 every creature, in every object that we saw about us ; we felt 
 outside us the happiness each longed for; it sank so deeply 
 into our hearts that the Countess drew off her gloves and let 
 her beautiful hands play in the water, as if to cool some secret 
 fires. Her eyes spoke ; but her lips, parted like a rose to the 
 air, would have closed on a desire. You know the harmony 
 of deep notes in perfect concord with a high treble ; it always 
 reminds me of the harmony of our two souls that day, never 
 more to be repeated. 
 
 " Where do your men fish," I asked, " if you can only fish 
 from your own banks ? ' ' 
 
 " Near the bridge at Ruan," said she. " The river is ours 
 now from the bridge at Ruan down to Clochegourde. Mon-r 
 sieur de Mortsauf has just bought forty acres of meadow with 
 the savings of the last two years and the arrears of his pen- 
 sion. Does that surprise you ?"
 
 182 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 "I? I only wish that the whole valley was yours!" I 
 exclaimed, and she answered with a smile. 
 
 We were presently above Pont de Ruan, at a spot where 
 the Indre widens and where the men were fishing. 
 
 "Well, Martineau?" said she. 
 
 " Oh, Madame la Comtesse, luck is against us. We have 
 been out three hours, working up from the mill, and we have 
 caught nothing." 
 
 We landed to help draw the net once more, standing, all 
 three of us, in the shade of a poplar, with silvery bark, of a 
 kind common on the Danube and the Loire, which in spring- 
 time sheds a silky white fluff, the wrapper of its catkins. 
 The Countess had resumed her serene dignity ; she repented 
 of having confessed her pangs to me, and of crying out like 
 Job instead of weeping like a Magdalen a Magdalen bereft 
 of lovers, of feasts and dissipations, but not without perfume 
 and beauty. 
 
 The net was drawn at her feet, full of fish tench, barbel, 
 pike, perch, and an enormous carp leaped upon the grass. 
 
 "They were sent on purpose ! " said the keeper. 
 
 The laborers stared open-eyed with admiration of the woman 
 standing like a fairy who had touched the net with her wand. 
 
 At this moment a groom appeared, riding at a gallop across 
 the fields, and filling her with qualms of horror. Jacques was 
 not with us ; and a mother's first instinct, as Virgil has so 
 poetically expressed it, is to clasp her children to her bosom 
 on the slightest alarm. 
 
 "Jacques!" she cried. "Where is Jacques? What has 
 happened to my boy ? " 
 
 She did not love me ; if she had loved me, for my suffer- 
 ings too, she would not have uttered this cry as of a lioness 
 in despair. 
 
 " Madame la Comtesse, Monsieur le Comte is much worse." 
 
 She drew a breath of relief, and ran off with me, followed 
 by Madeleine.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 183 
 
 "Come after me slowly," said she, "that the dear child 
 may not overheat herself. You see, Monsieur de Mortsauf's 
 walk in this heat had put him into a perspiration, and stand- 
 ing in the shade of the walnut trees may bring misfortune on 
 us." 
 
 The words revealed her purity of mind. The Count's 
 death a misfortune ! 
 
 She hurried on to Clochegourde, went in by a break in the 
 wall and crossed the vineyard. I returned as slowly as she 
 could wish. Henriette's words had enlightened me, but as 
 the lightning-flash which destroys the garnered harvest. Dur- 
 ing that hour on the river I had fancied that she cared most 
 for me ; I now felt bitterly that her words were perfectly sin- 
 cere. The lover who is not all in all is nothing. So I was 
 alone in my love with the longing of a passion that knows all 
 its wants, that feeds on anticipation, on hoped-for kindness, 
 and is satisfied with the joys of imagination, because it con- 
 founds with them those it looks for in the future. If Hen- 
 riette loved me, she still knew nothing of the joys or the 
 storms of love. She lived on the feeling itself, as a saint is 
 the spouse of God. 
 
 I was the object with which her thoughts were bound up, 
 the sensations she misunderstood, as a swarm of bees clings to 
 some blossoming bough ; but I was not the element of life to 
 her, only an adventitious fact. A king unthroned, I walked 
 on, wondering who should restore me to my kingdom. In 
 my crazy jealousy I blamed myself for never having greatly 
 dared, for not having tightened the bonds of an affection 
 which now seemed to me refined out of all reality by the 
 chains of self-evident right conferred by possession. 
 
 The Count's indisposition, caused probably by a chill under 
 the walnut tree, in a few hours had become serious. I went 
 off to Tours to fetch a physician of note, Monsieur Origet, 
 whom I could not bring back till the evening; but he spent 
 the night and the next day at Clochegourde. Though he had
 
 184 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 sent the groom to fetch a large number of leeches, he thought 
 immediate bleeding necessary and had no lancet with him. 
 I rushed off to Azay, in dreadful weather ; I roused Monsieur 
 Deslandes the surgeon, and made him come off with the ra- 
 pidity of a bird. Ten minutes later the Count would have 
 succumbed ; bleeding saved him. 
 
 In spite of this first triumph the doctor pronounced him in 
 a dangerously high fever, one of those attacks which come on 
 people who have ailed nothing for over twenty years. The 
 Countess was overwhelmed ; she believed herself to be the 
 cause of this disastrous illness. Unable to thank me for what 
 I did she was content to give me an occasional smile, with an 
 expression that was equivalent to the kiss she had pressed on 
 my hand ; I wished I could read in it the remorse of an illicit 
 passion ; but it was an act of contrition, painful to see in so 
 pure a soul, and the expression of admiring affection for him 
 whom she considered noble, while she accused herself alone 
 of an imaginary crime. She loved indeed as Laura de Noves 
 loved Petrarch, and not as Francesca da Rimini loved Paolo 
 a crushing discovery for a man who had dreamed of the 
 union of these two types of love. The Countess was reclin- 
 ing, her frame exhausted, her arms lying limp, in a dirty arm- 
 chair in Count Mortsaufs room a place that reminded me of 
 a wild boar's den. 
 
 Next evening, before leaving, the doctor told the Countess, 
 who had watched all night, that she must send for a nurse ; 
 the illness would be long. 
 
 "A nurse!" she exclaimed. "No, no. We will nurse 
 him," she added, looking at me. " We owe it to ourselves 
 to save him." 
 
 At these words, the doctor glanced at us with an observing 
 eye full of astonishment. The expression of her words was 
 enough to lead him to suspect some crime that had failed in 
 the execution. He promised to come twice a week, suggested 
 the treatment to be pursued by Monsieur Deslandes, and de.-
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 186 
 
 scribed the alarming symptoms which might necessitate his 
 being fetched from Tours. 
 
 To secure the Countess at least one night's rest out of two, 
 I proposed that she should allow me to sit up with the Count 
 in turns with her ; and thus, not without difficulty, I per- 
 suaded her to go to bed the third night. When all was still 
 in the house, during a minute when the Count was dozing, I 
 heard a sigh of anguish from Henriette's room. My anxiety 
 was so keen that I went to see her ; she was on her knees be- 
 fore her pric-Dieu (kneeling bench) in tears and accusing her- 
 self: "Ah, God! if this is the price of a murmur," she 
 cried, " I will never complain again." 
 
 " You have left him ! " she exclaimed as she saw me. 
 
 " I heard you wailing and moaning, and I was alarmed 
 about you." 
 
 " About me? Oh, I am quite well," she said. 
 
 She wanted to be sure that Monsieur de Mortsauf was really 
 asleep. We went down together, and by the light of a lamp 
 we looked at him. He was weakened by loss of blood rather 
 than sleeping ; his restless hands were trying to pull the 
 counterpane up. 
 
 "They say that is a trick of the dying," said she. "Oh, 
 if he were to die of this illness brought on by us, I would 
 never marry again ; I swear it ! " she went on, solemnly hold- 
 ing out her hand over the Count's head. 
 
 "I have done all that I can to save him," I answered. 
 
 " You ! Oh, you are most good ! " said she. "It is I 
 I am the guilty one." 
 
 She bent down over the puckered brow, wiped away the 
 moisture with her hair, and gave it a sacred kiss. But I noted, 
 not without secret satisfaction, that she bestowed this caress as 
 an expiation. 
 
 " Blanche some drink," said the Count in a feeble voice. 
 
 " You see, he only recognizes me," she said as she brought 
 him a glass. And by her tone and her affectionate attentions
 
 186 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 to him she tried to heap insult on the feelings that bound us, 
 immolating them to the sick man. 
 
 " Henriette," said I, "go and take some rest, I entreat 
 you." 
 
 " Henriette no more ! " she said, interrupting me with im- 
 perious haste. 
 
 "Go to bed, or you will be ill. Your children he him- 
 self would desire you to spare yourself. There are times when 
 selfishness is a sublime virtue." 
 
 "Yes," said she. 
 
 And she went, urging me to watch her husband, by gestures 
 that might have seemed to indicate approaching delirium if 
 the grace of childhood had not mingled with the passionate 
 entreaty of repentance. 
 
 This scene, frightful as compared with the usual state of this 
 placid soul, alarmed me ; I feared the extravagance of her con- 
 science. When the doctor next came, I explained to him the 
 scruples, as of a sacred ermine, that were tormenting my 
 spotless Henriette. This confidence, though very guarded, 
 dispelled Monsieur Origet's suspicions, and he soothed the 
 terrors of that sweet soul by assuring her that, from whatever 
 cause, the Count must have had this violent attack, and that 
 the chill he had taken under the walnut tree had been beneficial 
 rather than injurious by bringing it on. Thus the Countess 
 felt no remorse. 
 
 For fifty-two days the Count hovered between life and 
 death. Henriette and I sat up with him in turn, each for 
 twenty-six nights. Monsieur de Mortsauf undoubtedly owed 
 his recovery to our care, and the scrupulous exactitude with 
 which we carried out Monsieur Origet's instructions. Like 
 all philosophical doctors, whose shrewd observation justifies 
 them in doubting a noble action, even when it is merely the 
 secret fulfillment of a duty, this man, while noticing the rivalry 
 of heroism between the Countess and me, could not help
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 187 
 
 watching us with inquisitive eyes, so fearful was he of being 
 cheated of his admiration. 
 
 " In such a case as this," said he on the occasion of his 
 third visit, " death finds a ready auxiliary in the mind when 
 it is so seriously affected as that of the Count. The doctor, 
 the nurse, those who are about the patient, hold his life in 
 their hands ; for a single word, a mere gesture of apprehension, 
 may be as fatal as poison." 
 
 As he spoke thus Origet studied my face and my expression ; 
 but he read in my eyes the sincerity of an honest soul. For, 
 indeed, throughout this cruel illness, my mind was never once 
 invaded by the very slightest of those involuntary evil ideas 
 which sometimes sear the most innocent conscience. 
 
 For those who contemplate nature as a whole, everything 
 tends to union by assimilation. The spiritual world must be 
 governed by an analogous principle. In a pure realm all is 
 pure. In Henriette's presence there was a fragrance as of 
 heaven itself; it seems as though any not irreproachable 
 thought must alienate me from her for ever. Hence she was 
 not only my happiness, she was also my virtue. Finding us 
 always unfailingly attentive and careful, the doctor put an 
 indescribable tone of pious pathos into his words and manner, 
 as if he were thinking "These are the real sufferers; they 
 hide their wounds and forgot them." 
 
 By an effect of contrast which, as this worthy man assured 
 us, is common enough in such wrecks of manhood, Monsieur 
 de Mortsauf was patient and tractable, never complained, and 
 showed the most wonderful docility he who in health could 
 not do the least thing without a thousand comments. The 
 secret of this submission to medicinal treatment, formerly so 
 scouted, was a covert dread of death, another contrast in a 
 man of unblemished courage. And this fear may, perhaps, 
 account for various singular features in the altered temper he 
 owed to his misfortunes. 
 
 Shall I confess to you, Natalie, and will you believe me ?
 
 188 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY, 
 
 Those fifty days, and the month that came after, were the 
 golden days of my life. In the infinite expanse of the soul is 
 not love what, in a broad valley, the river is to which flow all 
 the rains, the brooks and torrents, into which are borne the 
 trees and flowers, the gravel of its banks, and. the fragments 
 of the higher rocks ; it is fed alike by storms and by the slow 
 tribute of rippling springs. Yes, when we love, everything 
 feeds love. 
 
 The first great danger past, the Countess and I became ac- 
 customed to sickness. In spite of the confusion caused by 
 the constant care needed by the Count, his room, which we 
 had found in such disorder, was made neat and pretty. Ere 
 long we lived there like two beings dropped on a desert island ; 
 for not only do troubles isolate us, but they silence the petty 
 conventionality of the world. And then for the sick man's 
 benefit we were forced into contact such as no other event could 
 have brought about. How often did our hands meet, hereto- 
 fore so shy, in doing her husband some service. Was it not 
 my part to support and help Henriette ? Carried away by a 
 duty that may be compared with that of a soldier at an out- 
 post, she would often forget to eat ; then I would bring her 
 food, sometimes on her knee a hasty meal necessitating a 
 hundred little services. It was a childish scene on the brink 
 of a yawning grave. She would hastily order me to prepare 
 what might save the Count some discomfort, and employ me 
 on a variety of trivial tasks. 
 
 In the early days, when the imminence of danger stifled the 
 subtle distinctions of ordinary life, as on the field of battle, 
 she inevitably neglected the reserve which every woman, even 
 the most simple-minded, maintains in her speech, looks, and 
 behavior when she is surrounded by the world or by her 
 family, but which is incompatible with the undress of in- 
 timacy. Would she not come to call me at the chirp of awak- 
 ening birds in a morning wrapper that sometimes allowed me 
 a glimpse of the dazzling charms, which, in my wild hopes, I
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 189 
 
 regarded as my own ? Though always dignified and lofty, 
 could she not also be familiar? And, indeed, during the first 
 few days, that danger so completely eliminated every pas- 
 sionate meaning from the privacy of our intimate intercourse, 
 that she thought of no harm ; and afterward, when reflection 
 came, she felt perhaps that any change of demeanor would 
 imply an insult as much to herself as to me. We found our- 
 selves insensibly familiarized, half- wed, as it were. She showed 
 herself nobly confiding, as sure of me as of herself. Thus I 
 grew more deeply into her heart. 
 
 The Countess was my Henriette once more, Henriette con- 
 strained to love me yet more, as I strove to be her second self. 
 Ere long, I never had to wait for her hand, which she would 
 give me irresistibly at the least beseeching glance; and I 
 could study with delight the outliness of her fine figure without 
 her shrinking from my gaze, during the long hours while we 
 sat listening to the patient's slumbers. The slender joys we 
 allowed ourselves, the appealing looks, the words spoken in a 
 whisper not to awake the Count, the hopes and fears repeated 
 again and again, in short the myriad details of this fusion of 
 two hearts so long sundered, stood out distinctly against the 
 sad gloom of the real scene before us? We read each other's 
 souls through and through in the course of this long test, to 
 which the strongest affections sometimes succumb, unable to 
 withstand the familiarity of every hour, and dropping away 
 after testing the unyielding cohesion which makes life so 
 heavy or so light a burden. 
 
 You know what mischief comes of a master's long illness, 
 what disorder in his business; there is never time for any- 
 thing ; the stoppage put to his life hampers the movement of 
 the house and family. Though everything always fell on 
 Madame de Mortsauf, the Count was of use on the estate ; he 
 went to talk to the farmers, he called on the business agents, 
 he drew the rents ; if she was the soul, still he was the body. 
 I now appointed myself steward that she might nurse the
 
 190 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 Count without fear of ruin out of doors. She accepted every- 
 thing without apologies, without thanks. This partition of 
 household cares was another happy community of interests, 
 and the orders I gave in her name. In her room in the even- 
 ing we often discussed the children's prospects. These con- 
 versations lent a still further semblance of reality to our 
 make-believe married life. How gladly would Henriette lend 
 herself to my playing the master's part, putting me in his 
 place at table, sending me to speak to the gamekeeper ; and 
 all with simple innocence, but not without the secret pleasure 
 which the most virtuous woman on earth must feel at finding 
 a middle course combining strict observation of every law 
 with the satisfaction of her unconfessed wishes. The Count, 
 nullified by illness, was no longer a weight on his wife or on 
 the house ; and now the Countess was herself, she had a right 
 to attend to me and make me the object of endless cares. 
 What joy I felt on discovering in her a purpose of which she, 
 perhaps, was but vaguely conscious, though it was exquisitely 
 expressed of revealing to me all the worth of her person and 
 her character, of making me feel the change that came over 
 her when she felt herself understood ! This blossom, con- 
 stantly curled up in th"e cold atmosphere of her home, un- 
 folded before my eyes and for me alone ; she had as much 
 delight in opening as I had in looking on with the inquisitive 
 eye of love. 
 
 On the mornings when I slept late, after sitting up all 
 night, Henriette was up before any one. She preserved the 
 most perfect silence ; Jacques and Madeleine, without need- 
 ing to be told, went away to play. She would devise endless 
 wiles to lay my table herself, and she would serve my break- 
 fast with such a sparkle of glee in every movement, with such 
 a wild swallow-like precision, with such a color in her cheeks, 
 such quaverings in her voice, such a lynx-like keenness of 
 eye ! Can such expansions of the soul be described ? She 
 was often overpowered by fatigue ; but if by chance at one of
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 191 
 
 these moments I needed anything she found fresh strength 
 for me, as for her children ; she started up active, busy, and 
 glad. She loved to shed her tenderness like sunbeams through 
 the air. Yes, Natalie, some women here below enjoy the 
 privileges of angelic spirits, and, like them, diffuse the light 
 which Saint-Martin, the unknown philosopher, tells us is in- 
 telligent, melodious, and fragrant. 
 
 Henrietta, secure in my reticence, rejoiced in lifting the 
 heavy curtain which hid the future from us by showing her- 
 self to me as two women: the woman in bonds who had 
 fascinated me in spite of her asperities ; the woman freed, 
 whose sweetness was to seal my love to eternity. What a dif- 
 ference ! Madame de Mortsauf was a love-bird transported 
 into cold Europe, sadly drooping on its perch, mute and 
 dying in the cage where it is kept by some naturalist ; Hen- 
 riette was the bird singing its Oriental raptures in a grove on 
 the banks of the Ganges, and flying like a living gem from 
 bough to bough amid the rosy flowers of an ever-blooming 
 Volkameria. 
 
 Her beauty was renewed, her spirit revived. These con- 
 stant fireworks of gladness were a secret between our two 
 souls ; for to the Countess the eye of the Abbe de Dominis, 
 who represented the world, was more alarming than her hus- 
 band's. She, like me, took pleasure in giving her words 
 ingenious turns ; she hid her glee under a jest and veiled the 
 evidences of her affection under the specious flag of gratitude. 
 
 " We have put your friendship to the severest tests, Felix," 
 she would say at dinner. " We may surely grant him such 
 liberties as we allow to Jacques, Monsieur 1'Abbe?" 
 
 The austere abb6 replied with the kindly smile of a pious 
 man who reads "hearts and finds them pure ; indeed, he always 
 treated the Countess with the respect mingled with adoration 
 that we feel for angels. 
 
 Twice in those fifty days the Countess went perhaps across 
 the border-line that limited our affection ; but those two occa-
 
 192 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 sions were shrouded in a veil that was not lifted till our day 
 of supreme avowals. One morning, in the early days of the 
 Count's illness, just when she was repenting of having treated 
 me so severely by denying me the harmless privileges of a 
 chastened affection, I sat waiting for her to take my place. I 
 was overtired, and fell asleep, my head resting against the 
 wall. I awoke with a start, feeling my forehead touched by 
 something mysteriously cool, that gave me a sensation as if a 
 rose had lain on it. I saw the Countess some steps away from 
 me, saying 
 
 "Here I am!" 
 
 I went away, but, as I wished her good-morning, I took 
 her hand and felt that it was moist and trembling. 
 
 " Are you ailing? " I askfed. 
 
 "Why do you ask? " she inquired. I looked at her, 
 coloring with confusion. 
 
 " I had been dreaming," I answered. 
 
 One evening, during the last visits paid by Origet, who had 
 pronounced the Count certainly convalescent, I was in the 
 garden with Jacques and Madeleine ; we were all three lying 
 on the steps absorbed in a game of jackstraws that we had 
 contrived with splinters of straw and hooks made of pins. 
 Monsieur de Mortsauf was asleep. The doctor, while waiting 
 for his horse to be put to, was talking in a low voice to the 
 Countess in the drawing-room. Monsieur Origet presently 
 left without my noticing his departure. After seeing him off, 
 Henriette leaned against the window, whence she looked down 
 on us for a long time, though we did not know it. It was one 
 of those hot evenings when the sky turns to copper color, 
 when the country sends out a thousand confused voices to the 
 echoes. A last gleam of sunshine lingered oh the roofs, the 
 flowers of the garden scented the air, the bells of the cattle 
 being brought home to the byres came from afar. And we, 
 in sympathy with the stillness of this calm hour, stifled our 
 laughter for fear of waking the Count.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 193 
 
 Suddenly, above the flutter of a gown, I heard the guttural 
 gasp of a strongly suppressed sob ; I rushed into the drawing- 
 room, I found the Countess sitting in the window recess, her 
 handkerchief to her face j she knew my step, and, by an im- 
 perious gesture, desired me to leave her alone. I went up to 
 her, heartsick with alarm, and wanted to force away her 
 handkerchief; her face was drowned in tears. She fled to 
 her own room, and did not come out till it was time for 
 prayers. For the first time in those fifty days I led her to the 
 terrace, and asked her the cause of her agitation ; but she 
 affected the most flippant cheerfulness, justifying it by Origet's 
 good news. 
 
 "Henriette, Henriette," said I, "you knew that when I 
 found you crying. Between us a lie is preposterous. Why 
 would you not allow me to wipe away your tears ? Can they 
 have been for me ? " 
 
 " I was thinking," she answered, "that to me this illness 
 has been a respite from misery. Now that there is nothing 
 more to fear for Monsieur de Mortsauf I must fear for myself. ' ' 
 
 She was right. The Count's returning health was marked 
 by his grotesque moods ; he began to declare that neither his 
 wife, nor I, nor the doctor knew how to treat him ; we were 
 all ignorant of his complaint and of his constitution, of his 
 sufferings, and of the suitable remedies. Origet, infatuated 
 by heaven knows what quackery, thought it was a degeneracy 
 of the secretions, while he ought only to have studied the dis- 
 order of the pylorus ! 
 
 One day, looking at us mischievously, like a man who 
 has spied out or guessed something, he said to his wife, with 
 a smile 
 
 " Well, my dear, and if I had died you would have re- 
 gretted me, no doubt, but, confess, you would have been 
 resigned." 
 
 " I should have worn court mourning, red and black," she 
 said, laughing, to silence him. 
 13
 
 194 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 It was especially with regard to his food, which the doctor 
 had carefully limited, forbidding that the patient's craving 
 should be satisfied, that we had the most violent scenes and 
 outcries, with which nothing could be compared in the past, 
 for the Count's temper was all the more atrocious for having 
 been to sleep, so to speak. Fortified by the physician's orders 
 and the faithfulness of the servants, and confirmed by me, 
 for I saw in this contest a way of teaching her to govern 
 her husband, the Countess was resolute in her resistance ; she 
 listened with a calm countenance to his frenzy and scolding ; 
 by thinking of him as a child as he was she accustomed 
 herself to hear his abusive words. Thus at last I was so 
 happy as to see her assert her authority over this disordered 
 mind. The Count called out, but he obeyed ; and he obeyed 
 all the more after the greatest outcry. 
 
 In spite of the evidence of the results, Henriette would 
 often shed tears at the sight of this feeble and haggard old 
 man, his forehead yellower than a falling leaf, his eyes dim, 
 his hands tremulous ; she would blame herself for her stern- 
 ness and could seldom resist the delight she saw in the Count's 
 eyes when, as she doled out his meals, she exceeded the doc- 
 tor's restrictions. She was all the sweeter and milder to him 
 for having been so to me ; still, there were shades of differ- 
 ence which filled my heart with boundless joy. She was not 
 indefatigable; she knew when to call the servants to wait 
 on the Count if his whims were too many in rapid succession, 
 and he began to complain of her misunderstanding him. 
 
 The Countess purposed an act of thanksgiving to God for 
 Monsieur de Mortsauf 's recovery ; she commanded a special 
 mass and bade me offer her my arm to escort her to church. 
 I did her bidding ; but during the service I went to call on 
 Monsieur and Madame de Chessel. On my return she tried 
 to scold me. 
 
 "Henriette," said I, "I am incapable of deceit. I can 
 throw myself into the water to rescue my enemy when he is
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 195 
 
 drowning, I can lend him my cloak to warm him in short, I 
 can forgive, but I cannot forget." 
 
 She said nothing, but pressed my arm to her heart. 
 
 " You are an angel ; you were, no doubt, sincere in your 
 thanksgiving," I went on. "The mother of the Prince of 
 the Peace was snatched from the hands of a mob who wanted 
 to kill her, and when the Queen asked her, ' What did you 
 do?' 'I prayed for them,' she said. Women are all like 
 that ; I am a man, and necessarily imperfect." 
 
 "Do not slander yourself," said she, shaking my arm 
 sharply. " Perhaps you are better than I am." 
 
 "Yes," I replied, "for I would give eternity for a single 
 day of happiness, while to you ! " 
 
 " Me! " she cried, with a haughty glance. 
 
 I was silent, and my eyes fell under the lightning of her 
 eyes. 
 
 " Me ! " she went on. " Of what me are you speaking? 
 There are in me many mes. Those children," and she 
 pointed to Jacques and Madeleine, " are part of me. Felix," 
 she said in a heart-rending tone, "do you think me selfish? 
 Do you think that I could sacrifice eternity to recompense 
 him who is sacrificing this life for me ? The thought is a 
 shocking one ; it is contrary to every sentiment of religion. 
 Can a woman who falls so low rise again ? Can her happiness 
 absolve her ? You will drive me soon to decide the question ! 
 Yes, I am betraying at last a secret of my conscience ; the 
 idea has often crossed my mind, I have expiated it by bitter 
 penance; it was the cause of the tears you wanted me to 
 account for the other day " 
 
 "Are you not attributing too great importance to certain 
 things on which ordinary women set a high value and which 
 you ought to " 
 
 "Oh," cried she, interrupting me, "do you value them 
 less?" 
 
 Such an argument put an end to all reasoning.
 
 196 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 "Well," she went on, " I will tell you ! Yes, I could be 
 so mean as to desert the poor old man whose life is in my 
 hands. But, dear friend, those two poor, feeble little crea- 
 tures you see before us, Jacques and Madeleine would not 
 they be left with their father ? And do you think, I ask you, 
 do you believe that they could survive three months under 
 that man's insensate tyranny? If by failing in my duty, I 
 alone" she smiled loftily. "But should I not be killing 
 my two children? Their doom would be certain. Great 
 God ! " she exclaimed, "how can we talk of such things? 
 Go and marry, and leave me to die." 
 
 She spoke in a tone of such concentrated bitterness that 
 she stifled the outburst of my passion. 
 
 "You cried out up there, under the walnut tree. I have 
 just cried out here, under these alders. That is all. Hence- 
 forth I am silent." 
 
 "Your generosity overwhelms me," said she, looking up to 
 heaven. 
 
 We had by this time reached the terrace and found the 
 Count seated there in a chair, in the sunshine. The sight of 
 that sunken face, hardly animated by a faint smile, extin- 
 guished the flames that had flared up from the ashes. I leaned 
 against the parapet, contemplating the picture before me : the 
 infirm man with his two still delicate children ; his wife, pale 
 with watching and grown thin from excess of work, from the 
 alarms, and perhaps from the joys, of these two dreadful 
 months, though at this moment she was deeply flushed from 
 the emotions of the scene she had gone through. At the 
 sight of this suffering 'family, shrouded under the tremulous 
 foliage through which fell the gray light of a dull autumn 
 day, I felt the ties relax which hold body and soul together. 
 I experienced for the first time that moral revulsion which, it 
 is said, the stoutest fighters feel in the fury of the fray, a sort 
 of chilling madness that makes a coward of the bravest, a 
 bigot of a disbeliever, which induces total indifference to
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 197 
 
 everything, even to the most vital sentiments to honor, to 
 love ; for doubt robs us of all knowledge of ourselves, and 
 disgusts us with life. Poor nervous creatures, who, by your 
 high-strung organization, are delivered over defenseless to I 
 know not what fatality, who shall be your peers and judges? 
 I understood how the bold youth who had erewhile put out 
 a hand to grasp the marshal's baton, who had been no less 
 skilled in diplomacy than intrepid as a captain, had become 
 the unconscious murderer I saw before me ! Could my own 
 desires, at this moment wreathed with roses, bring me, too, to 
 such an end ? Appalled alike by the cause and the effect, 
 asking, like the impious, where in all this was providence, I 
 could not restrain two tears that fell down my cheeks. 
 
 " What is the matter, dear, good F6lix ? " asked Madeleine 
 in her childish voice. 
 
 Then Henriette dispelled those black vapors and gloom by 
 an anxious look, which shone on my soul like the sun. 
 
 At this moment the old groom from Tours brought me a 
 letter, at the sight of which I could not help uttering a cry 
 of surprise, and Madame de Mortsauf trembled at my dismay. 
 I saw the seal of the cabinet. The King ordered me back. 
 I held the letter out to her ; she read it in a flash. 
 
 " He is going away ! " said the Count. 
 
 "What will become of me ? " she said to me, for the first 
 time contemplating her desert without sunshine. 
 
 We paused in a stupefied frame of mind which oppressed 
 us all equally, for we had never before so acutely felt that we 
 were all indispensable to each other. The Countess, as she 
 talked even of the most indifferent matters, spoke in an altered 
 voice, as though the instrument had lost several strings and 
 those that remained were loosened. Her movements were 
 apathetic, her looks had lost their light. I begged her to 
 confide her thoughts to me. 
 
 " Have I any thoughts? " said she. 
 
 She led me away to her room, made me sit down on the
 
 198 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 sofa, hunted in the drawer of her dressing-table, and, then, 
 kneeling down in front of me, she said 
 
 " Here is all the hair I have lost these twelve months past; 
 take it it is yours by right ; you will some day know how 
 and why." 
 
 I gently bent over her, she did not shrink to avoid my lips, 
 and I pressed them to her brow solemnly, with no guilty 
 excitement, no inviting passion. Did she mean to sacrifice 
 everything ? Or had she, like me, only come to look over 
 the precipice ? If love had prompted her to abandon herself, 
 she could not have been so profoundly calm, have given me 
 that religious look, or have said in her clear voice 
 
 "You have quite forgiven me?" 
 
 I set out in the evening, she accompanied me on the road 
 to Frapesle, and we stood under the walnut tree ; I pointed it 
 out to her, telling her how I had first seen it, four years ago. 
 
 "The valley was so lovely ! " I exclaimed. 
 
 "And now?" she said eagerly. 
 
 " Now you are under the tree," said I ; " and the valley is 
 our own." 
 
 She bent her head, and there we parted. She got into the 
 carriage again with Madeleine and I into mine, alone. 
 
 On my return to Paris, I was fortunately taken up by a 
 press of work which forcibly diverted my mind, and obliged 
 me to live apart from the world, which forgot me. I corre- 
 sponded with Madame de Mortsauf, to whom I sent my journal 
 every week, and who replied twice a month. It was an ob- 
 scure and busy life, resembling the overgrown, flowery nooks, 
 quite unknown, which I had admired in the depths of the 
 woods when composing fresh poems of flowers during the last 
 fortnight. 
 
 All ye who love, bind yourselves by these delightful duties ; 
 impose a rule on yourselves to be carried out, as the church 
 does on Christians every day.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 199 
 
 The rigorous observances created by the Roman Catholic 
 religion are a grand idea; they trace deeper and deeper 
 grooves of duty in the soul by the repetition of acts which 
 encourage hope and fear. The feelings always flow, a living 
 stream, in these channels which keep the current within 
 bounds and purify it, perpetually refreshing the heart and 
 fertilizing life by the abounding treasures of hidden faith, a 
 divine spring multiplying the single thought of a single love. 
 
 My passion, a relic of the Middle Ages, recalling the days 
 of chivalry, became known, I know not how; perhaps the 
 King and the Due de Lenoncourt spoke of it. From this 
 uppermost sphere, the story, at once romantic and simple, of 
 a young man piously devoted to a beautiful woman who had 
 no public, who was so noble in her solitude, and faithful 
 without the support of duty, no doubt became known in the 
 Faubourg Saint-Germain. I fouud myself the object of incon- 
 venient attention in drawing-rooms, for an inconspicuous life 
 has advantages which, once tasted, make the parade of a life 
 in public unendurable. Just as eyes that are accustomed to 
 see none but subdued colors are hurt by broad daylight, so 
 there are minds averse to violent contrasts. I was then one 
 of these ; you may be surprised now to hear it ; but have 
 patience, the eccentricities of the Vandenesse you know will 
 be accounted for. 
 
 I found women amiably disposed toward me and the world 
 kind. 
 
 After the Due de Berry's marriage the court became splen- 
 did once more, the French fetes were revived. The foreign 
 occupation was a thing of the past, prosperity returned, 
 amusements were possible. Personages of illustrious rank or 
 considerable wealth poured in from every part of Europe to 
 the capital of intelligence, where all the advantages and the 
 vices of other countries were magnified and intensified by 
 French ingenuity. 
 
 Five months after leaving Clochegourde, my good angel
 
 200 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 wrote me a letter in despair, telling me that her boy had had 
 a serious illness, from which he had recovered indeed, but 
 which had left her in dread for the future ; the doctor had 
 spoken of care being needed for his lungs a terrible verdict 
 that casts a black shadow on every hour of a mother's life. 
 Hardly had Henriette drawn a breath of relief as Jacques was 
 convalescent, before his sister made her anxious. Madeleine, 
 the pretty flower that had done such credit to her mother's 
 care, went through an illness which, though not serious, was a 
 cause of anxiety in so fragile a constitution. 
 
 Crushed already by the fatigues of Jacques' long sickness, 
 the Countess had no courage to meet this fresh blow, and the 
 sight of these two beloved beings made her insensible to the 
 increasing torment of her husband's temper. Storms, each 
 blacker than the last, and bringing with it more stones, up- 
 rooted by their cruel surges the hopes that were most deeply 
 rooted in her heart. Weary of strife she had submitted alto- 
 gether to the Count's tyranny, for he had regained all his lost 
 ground. 
 
 " When all my strength was devoted to enfolding my chil- 
 dren," she wrote me, "could I use it to defy Monsieur de 
 Mortsauf, could I defend myself against his aggressions when 
 I was fighting with death ? As I make my onward way, alone 
 and feeble, between the two young, melancholy creatures at 
 my side, I feel an invincible disgust of life. What blow can 
 hurt me, or what affection can I respond to when I see Jacques 
 motionless on the terrace, life no longer beaming in anything 
 but his beautiful eyes, made larger by emaciation, as hollow 
 as an old man's, and where fatal prognostic his forward 
 intelligence is contrasted with his bodily weakness? When I 
 see at my side my pretty Madeleine so lively, so fond, so 
 brightly colored, now as pale as the dead ; her very hair and 
 eyes seem to me more pallid, she looks at me with languishing 
 eyes as if she was bidding me farewell. No food tempts her, 
 or, if she has a fancy for anything, she alarms me by her
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 201 
 
 strange appetites ; the innocent child, though one with my 
 heart, blushes as she confesses to them. 
 
 " Do what I will, I cannot amuse my children ; they smile 
 at me, but the smile is forced from them by my playfulness 
 and is not spontaneous ; they cry because they cannot respond 
 to my fondness. Illness has left them completely run down, 
 even their affection. So you may imagine how dismal Cloche- 
 gourde is. Monsieur de Mortsauf reigns unopposed. 
 
 "Oh my glory, my dear friend!" she wrote me again, 
 " you must love me well indeed if you can love me still 
 can love me, so apathetic as I am, so unresponsive, so petri- 
 fied by grief. ' ' 
 
 At this juncture, when I felt myself more deeply appealed 
 to than ever, when I lived only in her soul, on which I strove 
 to shed the luminous breath of morning and the hope of pur- 
 pled evenings, I met, in the rooms of the Elysee Bourbon, 
 one of those superb English ladies who are almost queens. 
 Immensely wealthy, the daughter of a race unstained by any 
 mesalliance since the time of the Conquest, married to an old 
 man, one of the most distinguished members of the British 
 peerage all these advantages were no more than accessories 
 adding to her beauty, her manners, her wit, a faceted lustre 
 that dazzled before it charmed you. She was the idol of the 
 day, and reigned all the more despotically over Paris society 
 because she had the qualities indispensable to success, the iron 
 hand in a velvet glove spoken of by Bernadotte. 
 
 You know the curious individuality of the English the 
 impassable and arrogant channel, the icy St. George's straits 
 that they set between themselves and those who have not 
 been introduced to them. The human race might be an 
 ant-heap on which they tread ; they recognize none of their 
 species but those whom they accept ; they do not understand 
 the language even of the rest ; those have lips that move and 
 eyes that see ; but neither voice nor looks can reach so high ; 
 to them the herd are as though they were not. Thus the
 
 202 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 English are an image of their island where the law rules 
 everything ; where in each sphere everything is uniform ; 
 where the practice of virtue seems to be the inevitable work- 
 ing of wheels that move at fixed hours. 
 
 These fortifications of polished steel built up round an 
 Englishwoman, caged by golden wires into her home, where 
 her feeding trough and drinking cup, her perches and her 
 food are all perfection, lend her irresistible attractions. 
 Never did a nation more elaborately scheme for the hypocrisy 
 of a married woman by placing her always midway between 
 social life and death. For her there is no compromise be- 
 tween shame and honor ; the fall is utter, or there is no slip ; 
 it is all or nothing the To be or not to be of Hamlet. This 
 alternative, combined with the habits of disdain to which 
 manners accustom her, makes an Englishwoman a creature 
 apart in the world. She is but a poor creature, virtuous per- 
 force, and ready to abandon herself, condemned to perpetual 
 falsehood buried in her soul ; but she is enchanting in form, 
 because the race has thrown everything into form. Hence 
 the beauties peculiar to the women of that country: the exalt- 
 ation of an affection in which life is compulsorily summed 
 up, their extravagant care of their person, the refinement of 
 their love so elegantly expressed in the famous scene in 
 Romeo and Juliet, in which Shakespeare has with one touch 
 depicted the Englishwoman. 
 
 To you, who envy them so many things, what can I say 
 that you do not know about these fair sirens, apparently im- 
 penetrable but so quickly known, who believe that love is 
 enough for love, and who taint their pleasures with satiety by 
 never varying them, whose soul has but one note, whose voice 
 but one word an ocean of love, in which, if a man has not 
 bathed, he will for ever remain ignorant of one form of poetic 
 sensuality, just as a man who has never seen the sea must 
 always lack certain chords to his lyre ? 
 
 You know the purport of these words. My acquaintance
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 203 
 
 with Lady Dudley was notorious. At an age when the senses 
 exert their greatest power over our decisions, and in a man 
 whose fires had been so violently suppressed, the image of the 
 saint who was enduring her long martyrdom at Clochegourde 
 shone so brightly that he could resist every fascination. This 
 fidelity was the distinction that won me Lady Arabella's 
 attention. My obstinacy increased her passion. What she 
 longed for, like many Englishwomen, was something con- 
 spicuous and extraordinary. She craved for spice, for pepper 
 on which to feed her heart, as English epicures insist on 
 pungent condiments to revive their palate. The lethargy 
 produced in these women's lives by unfailing perfection in 
 everything about them, and methodical regularity of habits, 
 reacts in a worship of the romantic and difficult. I was inca- 
 pable of gauging this character. The more I retired into cold 
 disdain, the more eager was Lady Dudley. This contest, of 
 which she boasted, excited some curiosity in certain drawing- 
 rooms, and this was the first fruits of satisfaction which made 
 her feel it incumbent on her to triumph. Ah ! I should have 
 been saved if only some friend had repeated the odious speech 
 she had uttered concerning Madame de Mortsauf and me 
 " I am sick," she said, "of this turtle-dove sighing ! " 
 Though I have no wish to justify my crime, I must point 
 out to you, Natalie, that a man has less chances of resisting a 
 woman than you women have of evading our pursuit. Our 
 manners forbi'd to our sex those tactics of stern repression 
 which in you are baits to tempt the lover, and which indeed 
 propriety requires of you. In us, on the contrary, some juris- 
 prudence of masculine coxcombry treats reserve as ridiculous ; 
 we leave you the monopoly of modesty to secure to you the 
 privilege of conferring favors ; but reverse the parts, and a 
 man is crushed by satire. Protected as I was by my passion, 
 I was not at an age to be insensible to the threefold attrac- 
 tions of pride, devotion, and beauty. When Lady Arabella 
 laid at my feet the homage paid to her at a ball of which she
 
 204 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 was the queen, when she watched my eye to read whether I 
 admired her dress, and thrilled with pleasure when she pleased 
 me, I was agitated by her agitation. She stood on ground, 
 too, whence I could not fly : it was impossible for me to refuse 
 certain invitations in the diplomatic circle; her rank opened 
 every house to her ; and with the ingenuity which women 
 can display to obtain the thing they wish for, she contrived 
 at table that the mistress of the house should seat me next to 
 her. 
 
 Then she would murmur in my ear 
 
 " If I were loved as Madame de Mortsauf is, I would sacri- 
 fice everything to you. ' ' She proposed the humblest condi- 
 tions with a smile, she promised uncompromising reticence, 
 or besought me to allow her only to love me. She spoke 
 these words to me one day, satisfying alike the capitulation 
 of a timid conscience and the unbridled cravings of youth 
 
 " Your friend for ever, and your mistress when you please !" 
 
 Finally she resolved to make my sense of honor the means 
 to my ruin; she bribed my manservant; and one evening, 
 after a party where she had shone with such beauty that she 
 was sure of having captivated me, I found her in my rooms. 
 This scandal was heard of in England, where the aristocracy 
 was in as much consternation as heaven at the fall of its 
 highest angel. Lady Dudley came down from her clouds in 
 the British empyrean, kept nothing but her own fortune, and 
 tried by self-sacrifice to eclipse the woman whose virtue had 
 led to this celebrated scandal. Lady Arabella, like the devil 
 on the pinnacle of the temple, took pleasure in showing me 
 the richest kingdoms of her ardent world. 
 
 Read my confession, I beseech you, with indulgence. It 
 deals with one of the most interesting problems of human 
 life, with a crisis through which the greater portion of man- 
 kind must pass, and which I long to account for, if it were 
 only to light a beacon on the reef. This beautiful English 
 lady, so slender, so fragile ; this milk-white woman, so crushed,
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 205 
 
 so breakable, so meek, with her refined brow crowned with 
 such soft tan-brown hair ; this creature, whose brilliancy seems 
 but a transient phosphorescence, has a frame of iron. No 
 horse, however fiery, can defy her sinewy wrist, her hand 
 that seems so weak, and that nothing can tire. She has the 
 foot of the roe, a small, wiry, muscular foot of indescribable 
 beauty of form. Her strength fears no rivalry ; no man can 
 keep up with her on horseback ; she would win a steeplechase 
 riding a centaur ; she shoots stags, and does it without check- 
 ing her horse. Her frame knows not perspiration ; it radiates 
 a glow in the air, and lives in water, or it would perish. 
 
 Her passion is quite African ; her demands are a tornado 
 like the sand-spouts of the desert the desert whose burning 
 vastness is to be seen in her eyes, the desert all azure and 
 love, with its unchanging sky and its cool, star-lit nights. 
 
 What a contrast to Clochegourde ! The East and the 
 West ; one attracting to herself the smallest atoms of moisture 
 to nourish her ; the other exhaling her soul, enveloping all 
 who were faithful to her in a luminous atmosphere. This one 
 eager and slight ; the other calm and solid. 
 
 Tell me, have you ever duly considered the general bearing 
 of English habits ? Are they not the apotheosis of matter, a 
 definite, premeditated, and skillfully adapted epicureanism? 
 Whatever she may do or say, England is materialist uncon- 
 sciously perhaps. She has religious and moral pretensions 
 from which the divine spirituality, the soul of Catholicism, is 
 absent ; its fruitful grace can never be replaced by any hypoc- 
 risy, however well acted. She possesses in the highest degree 
 the science of life, which adds a grace to the smallest details 
 of materialism : which makes your slipper the most exquisite 
 slipper in the world ; which gives your linen an indescribable 
 fragrance ; which lines and perfumes your drawers with cedar ; 
 which pours out at a fixed hour a delicious cup of tea, scien- 
 tifically infused ; which banishes dust, and nails down carpets 
 from the very doorstep to the inmost nook of the house ;
 
 206 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 which washes the cellar walls, polishes the door knocker, 
 gives elasticity to the springs of a carriage ; which turns all 
 matter into a nutritious pulp, a comfortable, lustrous, and 
 cleanly medium in the midst of which the soul expires in en- 
 joyment and which produces a terrible monotony of ease ; 
 which results in a life uncrossed and devoid of initiative ; 
 which, in one word, makes a machine of you. 
 
 Thus I came suddenly, in the heart of this English luxury, 
 on a woman perhaps unique of her sex, who entangled me 
 in the meshes of that love born anew from its death, whose 
 prodigality I met with severe austerity that love which has 
 overpowering charms and an electricity of its own, which often 
 leads you to heaven through the ivory gates of its half-slum- 
 bers, or carries you up mounted behind its winged shoulders. 
 A horribly graceless love that laughs at the corpses of those 
 it has slain ; love devoid of memory, a cruel love, like English 
 politics, and to which almost every man succumbs. 
 
 You understand the problem now. Man is composed of 
 matter and spirit. In him the animal nature culminates and 
 the angel begins. Hence the conflict we all have felt be- 
 tween a future destiny of which we have presentiments and 
 the memories of our original instincts from which we are not 
 wholly detached the love of the flesh and the love that is 
 divine. One man amalgamates the two in one ; another 
 abstains. This one seeks the whole sex through, to satisfy 
 his anterior appetites; that one idealizes it in a single woman, 
 who to him epitomizes the universe. Some hover undecided 
 between the raptures of matter and those of the spirit ; others 
 spiritualize the flesh and ask of it what it can never give. If, 
 considering these general features of love, you take into ac- 
 count the repulsions and the affinities which, being the out- 
 come of diversity of constitution, presently break the bonds 
 between those who have not tested each other ; if you add to 
 this the errors resulting from the hopes of those who live 
 more especially by the mind, by the heart, or by action who
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 207 
 
 think, or feel, or act and whose vocation is cheated or mis- 
 prized in an association of two human beings, each equally 
 complex, you will be largely indulgent to some misfortunes 
 to which society is pitiless. 
 
 Well, Lady Arabella satisfies the instincts, the organs, the 
 appetites, the vices, and the virtues of the subtle matter of 
 which we are compounded ; she was the mistress of my body. 
 Madame de Mortsauf was the wife of my soul. The love 
 the mistress could satisfy has it limits; matter is finite, its 
 properties have recognized forces, it is liable to inevitable 
 saturation ; I often felt an indescribable void in Paris with 
 Lady Dudley. Infinity is the realm of the heart ; love un- 
 bounded was at Clochegourde. I was passionately in love 
 with Lady Arabella, and certainly, though the animal in her 
 was supreme, she had also a superior intelligence ; her ironi- 
 cal conversation embraced everything. 
 
 But I worshiped Henriette. If at night I wept with joy, 
 in the morning I wept with remorse. There are some women 
 shrewd enough to conceal their jealousy under angelic sweet- 
 ness ; these are women who, like Lady Dudley, are past thirty. 
 Women then know how to feel and calculate both at once ; 
 they squeeze out the juice of the present and yet think of the 
 future ; they can stifle their often quite justifiable groans with 
 the determination of a hunter who does not feel a wound as 
 he rides in pursuit of the bugle call. 
 
 Without ever speaking of Madame de Mortsauf, Arabella 
 tried to kill her in my soul, where she constantly found her, 
 and her" own passion flamed higher under the breath of this 
 ineradicable love. To triumph, if possible, by comparisons 
 to her own advantage, she would never be suspicious, nor 
 provoking, nor curious, as most young women are ; but, like 
 a lioness that* has carried her prey in her mouth and brought 
 it to her den to devour, she took care that nothing should dis- 
 turb her happiness and watched me like an unsubdued con- 
 quest. I wrote to Henriette under her very eyes, she never
 
 208 THE LILY OF THE VALLEV. 
 
 read a single line, she never made the least attempt to know 
 the address on my letters. I was perfectly free. She seemed 
 to have said to herself, " If I lose, I shall blame no one but 
 myself." 
 
 And she trusted proudly to a love so devoted that she would 
 have laid down her life without hesitation if I had asked it 
 of her. In fact, she made me believe that if I should aban- 
 don her she would at once kill herself. 
 
 It was a thing to hear when she sang the praises of the 
 Indian custom for widows to burn themselves on their hus- 
 band's funeral pyre. 
 
 " Though in India the practice is a distinction reserved to 
 the higher castes, and is consequently little appreciated by 
 Europeans, who are incapable of perceiving the proud dignity 
 of the privilege, you must confess," she would say to me, 
 "that in the dead level of our modern manners the aristoc- 
 racy cannot resume its place unless by exceptional feelings. 
 How can I show the middle-class that the blood flowing in 
 my veins is not the same as theirs, if not in dying in another 
 way than they die ? Women of no birth can have diamonds, 
 silks, horses, even coats-of-arms, which ought to be ours 
 alone, for a name can be purchased ! But to love, unabashed, 
 in opposition to the law, to die for the idol she has chosen, 
 and make a shroud of the sheets off her bed to bring earth and 
 heaven into subjection to a man and thus rob the Almighty of 
 His right to make a god, never to be false to him, not even 
 for virtue's sake for to refuse him anything in the name of 
 duty is to abandon one's self to something that is not he 
 whether it be another man or a mere idea, it is a betrayal ! 
 These are the heights to which vulgar women cannot rise; 
 they know only two roads the highway of virtue or the miry 
 path of the courtesan." 
 
 She argued, you see, from pride ; she flattered all my van- 
 ities by deifying them ; she set me so high that she could only 
 reach to my knees ; all the fascinations of her mind found
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 209 
 
 expression in her slave-like attitude and absolute submission. 
 She would remain a whole day lounging at my feet in silence, 
 gazing at me, waiting on my pleasure like a seraglio slave. 
 What words can describe the first six months when I gave 
 myself up to the enervating joys of an affection full of rap- 
 tures varied by the knowledge of experience that was con- 
 cealed under the vehemence of passion. Such joys, a revela- 
 tion of the poetry of the senses, constitute the strong link 
 that binds young men to women older than themselves ; but 
 this link is the convict's chain ; it leaves an indelible scar, 
 implanting a premature distaste for fresh and innocent love 
 rich in blossom only, which cannot serve us with alcohol in 
 curiously chased golden cups, enriched with precious stones, 
 sparkling with inexhaustible fires. 
 
 When I tasted the enjoyments of which I had dreamed, 
 knowing nothing of them, which I had expressed in my nose- 
 gays, and which the union of souls makes a thousand times 
 more intense, I found no lack of paradoxes to justify myself 
 in my own eyes for the readiness with which I slaked my 
 thirst at this elegant cup. Often when I felt lost in immeas- 
 urable lassitude, my soul, freed from my body, flew far from 
 earth, and I fancied that such pleasures were a means of anni- 
 hilating matter and freeing the spirit for its sublimest flights. 
 Not un frequently Lady Dudley, like many another woman, 
 took advantage of the excitement superinduced by excessive 
 happiness to bind me by solemn vows ; and she could even 
 tempt me into blaspheming and denouncing the angel at 
 Clochegourde. 
 
 Being a traitor, I became a cheat. I wrote to Madame de 
 Mortsauf as though I were still the boy in the ill-made blue 
 coat of whom she was so fond ; but, I own, her gift of second- 
 sight appalled me when I thought of the disaster any indis- 
 cretion might bring on the charming castle of my hopes. 
 Often in the midst of my happiness a sudden pang froze me ; 
 I heard the name of Henriette spoken by a voice from on 
 14
 
 210 THE LILY OP THE VALLEY. 
 
 high, like the " Cain, where is Abel?" of the Scripture nar- 
 rative. 
 
 My letters remained unanswered. I was in mortal anxiety 
 and wanted to set out for Clochegourde. Arabella raised no 
 obstacles, but she spoke as a matter of course of going with 
 me to Touraine. Her fancy, spurred by difficulty, her pre- 
 sentiments, justified by more happiness than she had hoped 
 for, had given birth in her to a real affection, which she now 
 meant should be unique. Her womanly wit showed her that 
 this journey might be made a means of detaching me com- 
 pletely from Madame de Mortsauf ; and I, blinded by alarm 
 and misled by genuine guilelessness, did not see the snare in 
 which I was to be caught. 
 
 Lady Dudley proposed the fullest concessions, and antici- 
 pated every objection. She agreed to remain in the country 
 near Tours, unknown, disguised, never to go out by daylight, 
 and to choose for our meetings an hour of the night when no 
 one could recognize us. 
 
 I started on horseback from Tours for Clochegourde. I 
 had my reasons for this ; I needed a horse for my nocturnal 
 expeditions, and I had an Arab, sent to the Marchioness by 
 Lady Hester Stanhope, which I had taken in exchange for the 
 fahious picture by Rembrandt now hanging in her drawing- 
 room in London, after it had come into my hands in so sin- 
 gular a way. 
 
 I took the road I had gone on foot six years before, and 
 paused under the walnut tree. From thence I saw Madame 
 de Mortsauf, in a white dress, on the terrace. I flew toward 
 her with the swiftness of lightning, and in a few minutes was 
 below the wall, traversing the distance in a direct line, as if I 
 was riding a steeplechase. She heard the prodigious leaps 
 of the Swallow of the Desert ; and when I pulled up sharp at 
 the corner of the terrace, she said, " Ah ! Here you are ! " 
 
 These four words struck me dumb. Then'she knew of my
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 211 
 
 adventure ! Who had told her of it ? Her mother, whose 
 odious letter she subsequently showed me. The indifference 
 of that weak voice, formerly so full of vitality the dead, 
 colorless tone confessed a mature sorrow and breathed, as it 
 were, a perfume of flowers cut off beyond all recovery. The 
 tempest of my infidelity, like the floods of the Loire that bury 
 the land past redemption in sand, had passed over her soul 
 and made a desert where rich meadows had been green. I 
 led my horse in by the side-gate ; he knelt down on the grass 
 at my command ; and the Countess, who had come forward 
 with a slow step, exclaimed, " What a beautiful creature ! " 
 
 She stood with her arms crossed that I might not take her 
 hand, and I understood her intention. 
 
 "I will go and tell Monsieur de Mortsauf," said she, and 
 turned away. 
 
 I remained standing, quite confounded, letting her go, 
 watching her noble, deliberate, and proud as ever ; whiter 
 than I had ever seen her, her brow stamped with the yellow 
 seal of the bitterest melancholy, and hanging her head like a 
 lily weighed down by too much rain. 
 
 " Henriette ! " I cried, with the passion of a man who feels 
 himself dying. 
 
 She did not turn round, she did not pause ; she scorned to 
 tell me that she had taken back that name, that she would no 
 longer answer to it ; she walked on. In that terrible valley 
 where millions of men must be lying turned to dust, while 
 their souls now animate the surface of the globe, I may find 
 myself very small in the midst of the crowd closely packed 
 under the luminous dignities who shall light it up with their 
 glory; but even there I shall be less utterly crushed than I 
 was as I gazed at that white figure going up, up as an un- 
 deviating flood mounts the streets of a town up to Cloche- 
 gourde, her home, the glory and the martyrdom of this Chris- 
 tian Dido ! 
 
 I cursed Arabella in one word that would have killed her
 
 212 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 had she heard it and she had given up everything for me, as 
 we leave all for God ! I stood lost in an ocean of thought, 
 seeing endless pain on every side of me. 
 
 Then I saw them all coming down ; Jacques running with 
 the impetuosity of his age ; Madeleine, a gazelle with pathetic 
 eyes, followed with her mother. Monsieur de Mortsauf came 
 toward me with open arms, clasped me to him, and kissed me 
 on both cheeks, saying, " Felix, I have heard I owed my 
 life to you ! " 
 
 Madame de Mortsauf stood with her back to us, under pre- 
 tense of showing the horse to Madeleine, who was amazed. 
 
 " The devil ! " cried the Count in a fury, " that is a woman 
 all over ! They are looking at your horse." 
 
 Madeleine turned and came to me. I kissed her hand, 
 looking at the Countess, who reddened. 
 
 " Madeleine seems much better," said I. 
 
 " Poor little girl ! " replied the Countess, kissing her fore- 
 head. 
 
 " Yes, for the moment they are all well," said the Count. 
 " I alone, my dear Felix, am a wreck, like an old tower about 
 to fall." 
 
 " The general still suffers from his black dragons, it would 
 seem," said I, looking at Madame de Mortsauf. 
 
 "We all have our blue devils," she replied. "That, I 
 think, is the English word ! ' ' 
 
 We went up to the house, all walking together, all feeling 
 that something serious had happened. She had no wish to be 
 alone with me ; in short, I was a visitor. 
 
 "By the way, what about your horse?" said the Count, 
 when we went out. 
 
 *' You see," retorted the Countess, " I was wrong to think 
 about it, and equally wrong not to think about it." 
 
 " Why, yes," said he; " there is a time for everything." 
 
 " I will go to him," said I, finding this cold reception un- 
 endurable. " I alone can unsaddle him and put him up
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 213 
 
 properly. My groom is coming from Chinon by coach, and 
 he will rub him down." 
 
 " Is the groom from England too? " said she. 
 
 " They are only made there," replied the Count, becoming 
 cheerful as he saw his wife depressed. 
 
 His wife's coolness was an opportunity for tacit opposition ; 
 he loaded me with kindness. I learned what a burden a hus- 
 band's friendship can be. Do not suppose that it is when the 
 wife lavishes an affection of which he seems to be robbed, 
 that her husband's attentions are overpowering to a noble 
 soul ! No. It is when that love has fled that they are odious 
 and unendurable. A friendly understanding, which is the 
 indispensable condition of such attachments, is then seen as 
 a mere means ; it then is a burden, and as horrible as all 
 means are when no longer justified by the ends. 
 
 " My dear Felix," said the Count, taking my hands, and 
 pressing them affectionately, " you must forgive Madame de 
 Mortsauf. Women must be fractious, their weakness is their 
 excuse ; they cannot possibly have the equable temper which 
 gives us strength of character. She has the greatest regard 
 for you. I know it ; but " 
 
 While the Count was speaking, Madame de Mortsauf moved 
 gradually away from us so as to leave us together. 
 
 " Felix," said he in an undertone, as he looked at his wife 
 returning to the house with her two children, " I cannot 
 think what has been going on in Madame de Mortsauf s 
 mind, but within the last six weeks her temper has com- 
 pletely altered. She who used to be so gentle, so devoted, 
 has become incredibly sulky." 
 
 Manette afterward told me that the Countess had fallen 
 into a state of dejection which left her insensible to the 
 Count's aggravations. Finding no tender spot into which to 
 thrust his darts, the man had become as fidgety as a boy when 
 the insect he is torturing ceases to wriggle. At this moment 
 he needed a confidant, as an executioner needs a mate,
 
 214 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 "Try to question Madame de Mortsauf," he went on after 
 a pause. "A woman always has secrets from her husband, 
 but to you she will perhaps confide the secret of her trouble. 
 If it should cost me half my remaining days of life and half 
 my fortune, I would sacrifice everything to make her happy. 
 She is so indispensable to my existence. If in my old age I 
 should miss that angel from my side, I should be the most 
 miserable of men ! I would hope to die easy. Tell her she 
 will not have to put up with me for long. I, Felix, my poor 
 friend I am going fast ; I know it. I hide the dreadful 
 truth from all the world ; why distress them before the time ? 
 Still the pylorus, my good friend. I have at last mastered 
 the causes of the malady: my sensitive feelings are surely 
 killing me. In fact, all our emotions converge on the gastric 
 centre " 
 
 "So that people of strong feeling die of indigestion," said 
 I with a smile. 
 
 " Do not laugh, Felix ; nothing is truer. Too great a grief 
 overexcites the great sympathetic nerve. This excessive 
 sensibility keeps up a constant irritation of the mucous mem- 
 brane of the stomach. If this condition continues it leads 
 to disturbance of the digestive functions, at first impercepti- 
 ble; the secretions are vitiated, the appetite is morbid, and 
 digestion becomes uncertain ; ere long acute suffering super- 
 venes, worse and more frequent every day. Finally the 
 organic mischief reaches a climax; it is as though some 
 poison were lurking in every bowl. The mucous membrane 
 thickens, the valve of the pylorus hardens, and a scirrhus 
 forms there of which the patient must die. Well, that is my 
 case, my dear boy. The induration is progressing ; nothing 
 can stop it. Look at my straw-colored skin, my dry, bright 
 eye, my excessive emaciation? I am withering up. What 
 can you expect ? I brought the germ of the complaint in me 
 from exile : I went through so much at that time. 
 
 "And my marriage, which might have repaired the mis-
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 215 
 
 chief done during the emigration, far from soothing my ulcer- 
 ated soul, only reopened the wound. What have I found 
 here ? Eternal alarms on account of my children, domestic 
 trials, a fortune to be patched up, economy which entailed a 
 thousand privations I had to inflict on my wife, while I was 
 the first to suffer from them. 
 
 "And, above all, to you alone can I confide the secret 
 this is my greatest trouble. Though Blanche is an angel, she 
 does not understand me j she knows nothing of my sufferings, 
 she only frets them. I forgive her. It is a terrible thing to 
 say, my friend, but a less virtuous woman would have made 
 me happier by little soothing ways which never occur to 
 Blanche, for she is as great a simpleton as a baby ! Add to 
 this that the servants do nothing but plague me. They are 
 perfect owls ! I speak French, and they hear Greek. 
 
 "When our fortune was somewhat amended by hook and 
 by crook, when I began to be less worried, the mischief was 
 done ; I had reached the stage of morbid appetite. Then I 
 had that bad illness which Origet so entirely misunderstood. 
 In short, at this moment I have not six months to live." 
 
 I listened to the Count in terror. On seeing the Countess, 
 the glitter of her hard eyes and the straw-colored complexion 
 of her brow had struck me. I now dragged the Count back 
 to the house as I pretended to listen to his complaining, in- 
 terspersed with medical dissertations, but I was thinking only 
 of Henriette, and was bent on studying her. 
 
 I found the Countess in the drawing-room ; she was listen- 
 ing to a lesson in mathematics that the Abbe de Dominis was 
 giving to Jacques, while she showed Madeleine a stitch in 
 tapestry. Formerly she would have found means, on the day 
 of my arrival, to put off such occupations and devote herself 
 to me ; but my love was so deep and true that I buried in the 
 depths of my heart the sorrow I felt at the contrast between 
 the past and present ; for I could see that terrible yellow 
 tinge on her heavenly face, like the reflection of a divine
 
 216 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 light which Italian painters have given to the faces of their 
 female saints. I felt in my soul the cold blast of death. 
 When the blaze of her eyes fell on me, bereft now of the 
 liquid moisture in which her looks had floated, I shuddered ; 
 and I then observed certain changes due to grief which I had 
 not noticed out of doors. The fine lines which, when I had 
 last seen her, were but faintly traced on her forehead, were 
 now deep furrows ; her temples, bluely veined, were dry and 
 hollow ; her eyes were sunk under reddened brows and had 
 dark circles round them ; she had the look of fruit on which 
 bruises are beginning to show, and which has turned prema- 
 turely yellow from the ravages of a worm within. 
 
 And was it not I, whose sole ambition it had been to pour 
 happiness in a full tide into her soul, who had shed bitterness 
 into the spring whence her life derived strength and her cour- 
 age refreshment ? 
 
 I sat down by her, and said in a voice tearful with repent- 
 ance 
 
 " Is your health satisfactory? " 
 
 "Yes," she replied, looking straight into my eyes. " Here 
 is my health," and she pointed lovingly to Madeleine and 
 Jacques. 
 
 Madeleine, who had come out victorious from her struggle 
 with nature, at fifteen was a woman ; she had grown, the tint 
 of a China rose bloomed in her dark cheeks ; she had lost the 
 light heedlessness of a child that looks everything in the face, 
 and had begun to cast down her eyes. Her movements, like 
 her mother's, were rare and sober; her figure slight, and the 
 charms of her bust already filling out. A woman's vanity 
 had smoothed her fine black hair, parted into bands on her 
 Spanish-looking brow. She had a look of the pretty mediaeval 
 busts, so refined in outline, so slender in mould, that the eye 
 that lingers on them fears lest it should break them; but 
 health, the fruit that had ripened after so much care, had 
 given her cheek the velvety texture of the peach, and a silky
 
 THE LILY OF THE I'ALLEY. 217 
 
 down on her neck which caught the light as it did in her 
 mother. 
 
 She would live ! God had written it, sweet bud of the 
 loveliest of human blossoms, on the long lashes of your eye- 
 lids, on the slope of your shoulders, which promised to be as 
 beautiful as your mother's had been ! 
 
 This nut-brown maiden, with the growth of a poplar, was a 
 contrast indeed to Jacques, a fragile youth of seventeen, whose 
 head looked too large, for his brow had expanded so rapidly 
 as to give rise to alarms, whose fevered, weary eyes were in 
 keeping with a deep sonorous voice. The throat gave out too 
 great a volume of sound, just as the eye betrayed too much 
 thought. Here Henriette's intellect, soul, and heart were 
 consuming with eager fires a too frail body ; for Jacques had 
 the milk-white complexion touched with the burning flush 
 that is seen in young English girls marked by that awful 
 scourge, consumption, to be felled within a limited time 
 delusive health ! 
 
 Following a gesture by which Henriette, after pointing to 
 Madeleine, made me look at Jacques, tracing geometrical 
 figures and algebraical sums on a blackboard before the abb6, 
 I was startled at this glimpse of death hidden under roses and 
 respected the unhappy mother's mistake. 
 
 "When I see them so well, joy silences all my griefs, as, 
 indeed, they are silent and vanish when I see those two ill. 
 My friend," said she, her eyes beaming with motherly pleas- 
 ure, " if other affections desert us, those that find their reward 
 here duties fulfilled and crowned with success make up for 
 defeat endured elsewhere. Jacques, like you, will be a highly 
 cultivated man, full of virtuous learning ; like you, he will be 
 an honor to his country which he may help to govern per- 
 haps, guided by you, who will hold so high a place but I 
 will try to make him faithful to his first affections. Madeleine, 
 dear creature, has already an exquisite heart. She is as pure 
 as the snow on the highest Alpine summit ; she will have the.
 
 218 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY 
 
 devotedness and the sweet intelligence of woman ; she is 
 proud, she will be worthy of the Lenoncourts ! 
 
 " The mother, once so distraught, is now very happy 
 happy in an infinite and unmixed happiness; yes, my life is 
 full, my life is rich. As you see, God has given me joys that 
 unfold from permitted affection, has infused bitterness into 
 those to which I was being tempted by a dangerous attach- 
 ment." 
 
 "Well done!" cried the abbe gleefully. "Monsieur le 
 Vicomte knows as much as I do " 
 
 Jacques, as he finished the demonstration, coughed a little. 
 
 "That is enough for to-day, my dear abbe," said the 
 Countess in some agitation. "Above all, no chemistry 
 lesson ! Go out riding, Jacques," she added, kissing her son 
 with the justifiable rapture of a mother's caress, her eyes fixed 
 on me as if to insult my remembrances. " Go, dear, and be 
 prudent." 
 
 "But you have not answered my question," said I, as she 
 followed Jacques with a long look. " Do you suffer any 
 pain?" 
 
 " Yes, sometimes in my chest. If I was only in Paris I 
 could rise to the honors of gastritis, the fashionable com- 
 plaint." 
 
 "My mother suffers a great deal and often," replied 
 Madeleine. 
 
 " So my health really interests you? " said she to me. 
 
 Madeleine, astonished at the deep irony with which the 
 words were spoken, looked at us by turns; my eyes were 
 counting the pink flowers on the cushions of the gray and 
 green furniture in the room. 
 
 "The situation is intolerable ! " I said in her ear. 
 
 " Is it of my making ? " she asked. " My dear boy," she 
 said aloud, affecting the cruel cheerfulness with which women 
 give lightness to revenge, "do you know nothing of modern 
 history? Are not France and England always foes? Why,
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 219 
 
 Madeleine knows that ; she knows that they are divided by a 
 vast sea, a cold sea, a stormy sea. ' ' 
 
 The vases on the mantel had been replaced by candelabra, 
 no doubt to deprive me of the pleasure of filling them with 
 flowers ; I found them at a later day in her room. When my 
 servant arrived, I went out to give my orders ; he had brought 
 me a few things that I wished to carry up to my room. 
 
 "Felix," said the Countess, "make no mistake! My 
 aunt's old room is Madeleine's now. Yours is over the 
 Count's." 
 
 Guilty as I was, I had a heart, and all the speeches were 
 poniard thrusts coldly directed to the tenderest spots, which 
 they seemed chosen to hit. Mental suffering is not a fixed 
 quantity ; it is in proportion to the sensitiveness of the soul, 
 and the Countess had bitterly gone through the whole scale 
 of anguish ; but for this very reason the best woman will 
 always be cruel in proportion to what her kindness has been. 
 I looked at her, but she kept her head down. 
 
 I went up to my new room, which was pretty white and 
 green. There I melted into tears. Henriette heard me ; she 
 came in, bringing me a bunch of flowers. 
 
 " Henriette," said I, " have you come to such a point that 
 you cannot forgive the most excusable fault? " 
 
 "Never call me Henriette," she said. "She has ceased 
 to exist, poor woman ; but you will always find Madame de 
 Mortsauf an attached friend who will listen to you and care 
 for you. Felix, we will talk later. If you still have an affec- 
 tion for me let me get accustomed to see you, and as soon as 
 words are a less heart-rending effort, as soon as I have recov- 
 ered a little courage then, and not till then. You see the 
 valley? " and she pointed to the river. " It hurts me but I 
 love it still." 
 
 " Oh, perish England and all its women ! I shall send 
 in my resignation to the King. I will die here, for- 
 given ! "
 
 220 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 "No, no; love her love that woman! Henriette is no 
 more ; this is no jest, as you will see ! ' ' 
 
 She left the room ; the tone of her last speech showed how 
 deeply she was wounded. 
 
 I hurried after her ; I stopped her, saying 
 
 " Then you no longer love me?" 
 
 " You have pained me more than all the others put to- 
 gether. To-day I am suffering less, and I love you less : but 
 it is only in England that they say, ' Neither never nor for 
 ever.' Here we only say, 'for ever.' Be good; do not 
 add to my pain ; and if you, too, are hurt, remember that I 
 can still live on." 
 
 She withdrew her hand which I had taken ; it was cold, 
 inert, but clammy, and she was off like an arrow along the 
 passage where this really tragical scene had taken place. 
 
 In the course of dinner the Count had a torture in store 
 for me of which I had not dreamed. 
 
 "Then the Marchioness of Dudley is not in Paris?" he 
 said. 
 
 I colored crimson and replied, " No." 
 
 " She is not at Tours," he went on. 
 
 " She is not divorced ; she may go to England. Her hus- 
 band would be delighted if she would return to him," I said 
 excitedly. 
 
 " Has she any children ? " asked Madame de Mortsauf in a 
 husky voice. 
 
 "Two sons," said I. 
 
 "Where are they?" 
 
 " In England with their father." 
 
 " Now, Felix, be candid. Is she as lovely as people say ? " 
 
 "Can you ask him such a question," cried the Countess. 
 "Is not the woman a man loves always the most beautiful of 
 her sex?" 
 
 "Yes, always," I replied with emphasis, and a flashing look 
 that she could not meet,
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 221 
 
 "You are in luck," the Count went on. " Yes, you are a 
 lucky rascal ! Ah ! when I was young my head would have 
 been turned by such a conquest " 
 
 "That is enough! " said Madame de Mortsauf, glancing 
 from Madeleine to her father. 
 
 "I am not a boy," said the Count, who loved to think 
 himself young again. 
 
 After dinner the Countess led the way down to the terrace, 
 and when we there she exclaimed 
 
 " What, there are women who can sacrifice their children 
 for a man ! Fortune and the world, yes I understand that; 
 eternity perhaps ? But her children ! To give up her chil- 
 dren !" 
 
 ' ' Yes, and such women would be glad to have more to sac- 
 rifice; they give everything " 
 
 To the Countess the world seemed to be upside down ; her 
 ideas were in confusion. Startled by the magnitude of this 
 idea, suspecting that happiness might justify this immolation, 
 hearing within her the outcries of the rebellious flesh, she 
 stood aghast, gazing at her spoilt life. Yes, she went through 
 a minute of agonizing doubts. But she came out great and 
 saintly, holding her head high. 
 
 "Love her truly, Felix; love that woman," she said with 
 tears in her eyes. " She will be my happier sister. I forgive 
 her the ill she has done me if she can give you what you could 
 never have found here, what you could never find in me. 
 You are right ; I never told you that I could love you as you 
 of the world love and I never did love you so. Still, if she 
 is not a true mother, how can she love? " 
 
 "Dear saint," said I, "I should have to be much less 
 agitated than I now am to explain to you how victoriously you 
 soar above her head ; that she is a creature of earth, the 
 daughter of a fallen race, while you are the daughter of 
 heaven, the angel of my adoration ; that you have my heart and 
 she has only my body. She knows it ; she is in despair over
 
 222 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 it, and she would change places with you even if the crudest 
 martrydom were the price of the exchange. 
 
 " But all this is past remedy. Yours are my soul, my 
 thoughts, my purest love, yours are my youth and my old age ; 
 hers are the desires and raptures of transient passion. You 
 will fill my memory in all its extent ; she will be utterly for- 
 gotten." 
 
 "Tell me, tell me oh, tell me this, my dear! " She sat 
 down on a bench and melted into tears. "Then virtue, 
 Felix, a saintly life, motherly love, are not a mere blunder. 
 Oh, pour that balm on my sorrows ! Repeat those words 
 which restore me to the bliss for which I hoped to strive in 
 equal flight with you ! Bless me with a sacred word, a look, 
 and I can forgive you the misery I have endured these two 
 months past." 
 
 "Henriette, there are mysteries in a man's life of which 
 you know nothing. When I met you, I was at an age when 
 sentiment can smother the cravings of our nature; still several 
 scenes, of which the memory will warm me in the hour of 
 death, must have shown you that I had almost outlived that 
 stage, and it was your unfailing triumph that you could prolong 
 its mute delights. Love without possession is upheld by the 
 very exasperation of hope ; but a moment comes when every 
 feeling is pure suffering to us who are not in any respect like 
 you. A power is ours which we cannot abdicate, or we are 
 not men. The heart, bereft of the nourishment it needs, 
 feeds on itself and sinks into exhaustion, which is not death 
 but which leads to it. Nature cannot be persistently cheated, 
 at the least accident it asserts itself with a vehemence akin to 
 madness. 
 
 " No, I did not love, I thirsted in the desert ! '* 
 
 " In the desert ! " she bitterly echoed, pointing to the 
 valley. " And how he argues," she went on; " what subtle 
 distinctions. Believers have not so much wit ! " 
 
 " Henriette," said I, "do not let us quarrel for the sake
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 223 
 
 of a few overbold expressions. My soul has never wavered, 
 but I was no longer master of my senses. That woman 
 knows that you are the only one I love. She plays a secondary- 
 part in my life ; she knows it, and is resigned. I have a 
 right to desert her as we desert a courtesan." 
 
 "What then?" 
 
 " She says she shall kill herself," said I, thinking that this 
 resolution would startle Henriette. 
 
 But as she heard me, she gave one of those scornful smiles 
 that are even more expressive than the ideas they represent. 
 " My dearest conscience," I went on, " if you gave me credit 
 for my resistance and for the temptations that led to my ruin, 
 you would understand this fated " 
 
 " Yes, fated ! " she exclaimed ; " I believed in you too com- 
 pletely. I fancied you would never lack the virtue a priest 
 can practice, and Monsieur de Mortsauf ! " she added, with 
 satirical emphasis. 
 
 "It is all over," she went on, after a pause. " I owe much 
 to you, my friend ; you have extinguished the light of earthly 
 life in me. The hardest part of the road is past ; I am grow- 
 ing old, I am often ailing, almost invalided. I could never 
 be the glittering fairy, showering favors on you. Be faithful 
 to Lady Arabella. And Madeleine, whom I was bringing up 
 so well for you, whose will she be ? Poor Madeleine, poor 
 Madeleine!" she repeated, like a sorrowful burthen. "If 
 you could have heard her say, ' Mother, you are not nice to 
 Felix.' Sweet creature ! " 
 
 She looked at me in the mild rays of the setting sun that 
 slanted through the foliage ; and, filled with some mysterious 
 pity for the ruin of us both, she looked back on our chastened 
 past, giving herself up to reminiscences that were mutual. 
 We took up the thread of our memories, our eyes went from 
 the valley to the vineyard, from the windows of Clochegourde 
 to Frapesle, filling our day-dream with the perfumes of our 
 nosegays, the romance of our hopes. It was her last piece
 
 224 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 of self-indulgence, enjoyed with the guilelessness of a Christian 
 soul. The scene, to us so full of meaning, had plunged us 
 both into melancholy. She believed my words, and felt her- 
 self in the heaven where I had placed her. 
 
 "My friend," exclaimed she, "I submit to God, for His 
 hand is in all this." 
 
 It was not till later that I understood all the deep meaning 
 of this speech. 
 
 We slowly went back by the terraces. She took my arm 
 and leaned on me, resigned, bleeding, but having bound up 
 her wounds. 
 
 " This is human life," she said. " What had Monsieur de 
 Mortsauf done to deserve his fate ? All this proves the exist- 
 ence of another world. Woe to those who complain of walk- 
 ing in the narrow way." 
 
 She went on to estimate the value of life, to contemplate it 
 so profoundly in its various aspects, that her calm balance 
 showed me what disgust had come over her of everything here 
 below. As we reached the top steps she took her hand from 
 my arm, and said these last words 
 
 " Since God has given us the faculty and love of happiness, 
 must He not take care of those innocent souls that have not 
 known anything but affliction on earth ? Either this is so, or 
 there is no God, and our life is but a cruel jest." 
 
 With these words she hastily went indoors, and I found her 
 presently lying on the sofa, stricken as though she had heard 
 the Voice which confounded Saint Paul. 
 
 " What is the matter? " I asked. 
 
 "I no longer know what virtue means," said she. "I 
 have ceased to be conscious of my own." 
 
 We both remained petrified, listening to the echo of these 
 words as to a stone flung into a chasm. 
 
 " If I have been mistaken in my life, it is she who is right 
 she ! " added Madame de Mortsauf. 
 
 Thus her last indulgence had led to this last struggle.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 225 
 
 When the Count came in, she, who never complained, said 
 she felt ill ; I implored her to define her pain, but she refused 
 to say more and went to bed, leaving me a victim to remorse, 
 one regret leadirig to another. 
 
 Madeleine went with her mother, and oa the following day 
 I heard from her that the Countess had had an attack of sick- 
 ness, brought on, as she said, by the violent agitation she had 
 gone through. And so I, who would have given my life for 
 her, was killing her. 
 
 "My dear Count," said I to Monsieur de Mortsauf, who 
 insisted on my playing backgammon, " I think the Countess 
 is very seriously ill ; there is yet time to save her. Send for 
 Origet, and entreat her to follow his orders " 
 
 " Origet ! Who killed me ! " cried he, interrupting me. 
 "No, no. I will consult Charbonneau." 
 
 All through that week, especially during the first day or 
 two, everything was torture to me, an incipient paralysis of 
 the heart, wounded vanity, a wounded soul. Until one has 
 been the centre of everything, of every look and sigh, the 
 vital principle, the focus from which others derived their light, 
 one cannot know how horrible a void can be. The same 
 things were there, but the spirit that animated them was 
 extinct, like a flame that is blown out. I understood now 
 the frightful necessity lovers feel never to meet again when 
 love is dead. Think what it is to be nobody where one has 
 reigned supreme, to find the cold silence of death where the 
 glad days of life had glowed. Such comparisons are crushing. 
 I soon began even to regret the miserable ignorance of every 
 joy that had blighted my youth. My despair was so over- 
 powering, indeed, that the Countess was touched, I certainly 
 believe. 
 
 One day, after dinner, when we were all walking by the 
 river, I made a final effort to gain forgiveness. I begged 
 Jacques to take his sister a little way in front ; I left the 
 15
 
 226 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 Count to himself, and taking Madame Mortsauf down to the 
 punt: 
 
 " Henriette," I said, " one word of mercy, or I will throw 
 myself into the Indre ! I fell, it is true ; but am I not like a 
 dog in my devoted attachment ? I come back as he does, 
 like him full of shame ; if he does wrong he is punished, but 
 he adores the hand that strikes him ; scourge me, but give me 
 back your heart." 
 
 "Poor boy," said she. "Are you not as much as ever 
 my son?" 
 
 She took my arm and slowly rejoined Jacques and Madeleine 
 with whom she went homeward, leaving me to the Count, 
 who began to talk politics apropos to his neighbors. 
 
 "Let us go in," I said, "you are bareheaded, and the 
 evening dew may do you some harm." 
 
 "You can pity me you, my dear Felix!" replied he, 
 misapprehending my intentions. "My wife never will com- 
 fort me on principle perhaps." 
 
 Never of old would she have left me alone with her hus- 
 band ; now I had to find excuses for being with her. She 
 was with the children explaining the rules of backgammon to 
 Jacques. 
 
 "There," said the Count, always jealous of the affection 
 she gave to her two children ; "there, it is for them that I 
 am persistently neglected. Husbands, my dear Felix, go to 
 the wall ; the most virtuous woman on earth finds a way of 
 satisfying her craving to steal the affection due to her hus- 
 band." 
 
 She still caressed the children, making no reply. 
 
 "Jacques," said he, " come here." 
 
 Jacques made some difficulty. 
 
 "Your father wants you go, my boy," said his mother, 
 pushing him. 
 
 "They love me by order," said the old man, who some- 
 times perceived the position.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 227 
 
 " Monsieur," said she, stroking Madeleine's smooth bands 
 of hair again and again, "do not be unjust to us hapless 
 wives ; life is not always easy to bear, and perhaps a mother's 
 children are her virtues ! " 
 
 " My dear," said the Count, who was pleased to be logical, 
 " what you say amounts to this : that, but for their children, 
 women would have no virtue, but would leave their husbands 
 in the lurch." 
 
 The Countess arose hastily and went out on to the steps 
 with Madeleine. 
 
 " Such is marriage, my dear boy," said the Count. " Do 
 you mean to imply by walking out of the room that I am talk- 
 ing nonsense?" he cried, taking Jacques' hand and follow- 
 ing his wife, to whom he spoke with flashing looks of rage and 
 fury. 
 
 " Not at all, monsieur, but you frightened me. Your re- 
 mark wounded me terribly," she went on in a hollow voice, 
 with the glance of a criminal at me. " If virtue does not 
 consist in self-sacrifice for one's children and one's husband, 
 what is virtue?" 
 
 " Self-sa-cri-fice ! " echoed the Count, rapping out each 
 syllable like a blow on his victim's heart. " What is it that 
 you sacrifice to your children? What do you sacrifice to me? 
 Whom ? What ? Answer will you answer ? What is going 
 on then? What do you mean ?" 
 
 " Monsieur," said she, " would you be content to be loved 
 for God's sake, or to know that your wife was virtuous for 
 virtue's sake?" 
 
 "Madame is right," said I, speaking in a tone of emotion 
 that rang in the two hearts into which I cast my hopes for 
 ever ruined, and which I stilled by the expression of the 
 greatest grief of all, its hollow cry extinguishing the quarrel, 
 as all is silence when a lion roars. " Yes, the noblest privi- 
 lege conferred on us by reason is that we may dedicate our 
 virtues to those beings whose happiness is of our making, and
 
 228 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 whom we make happy not out of self-interest or sense of 
 duty, but from involuntary and inexhaustible affection." 
 
 A tear glistened in Henriette's eye. 
 
 " And, my dear Count, if by chance a woman were in- 
 voluntarily subjugated by some feeling alien to those imposed 
 on her by society, you must confess that the more irresistible 
 that feeling the more virtuous would she be in stifling it in 
 sacrificing herself to her children and her husband. 
 
 " This theory, however, is not applicable to me, since I un- 
 fortunately am an example to the contrary; nor to you, whom 
 it can never concern." 
 
 A burning but clammy hand was laid on mine, and rested 
 there, in silence. 
 
 " You have a noble soul, Felix," said the Count, putting 
 his arm not ungraciously round his wife's waist, and drawing 
 her to him, as he said : " Forgive me, my dear a poor in- 
 valid who longs to be loved more, no doubt, than he de- 
 serves." 
 
 "Some hearts are all generosity," said she, leaning her 
 head on the Count's shoulder, and he took the speech for 
 himself. 
 
 The mistake caused some strange revulsion in the Countess. 
 She shuddered, her comb fell out, her hair fell down, and she 
 turned pale ; her husband, who was supporting her, gave a 
 deep groan as he saw her faint away. He took her up as he 
 might have taken his daughter, and carried her on to the sofa 
 in the drawing-room, where we stood beside her. Henriette 
 kept my hand in hers as if to say that we alone knew the 
 secret of this scene, apparently so simple, but so terribly 
 heart-rending for her. 
 
 " I was wrong," she said in a low voice, at a moment when 
 the Count had gone to fetch a glass of orange-flower water. 
 "A thousand times wrong in treating you so as to drive you 
 to despair when I ought to have admitted you to mercy. My 
 dear, you are adorably kind ; I alone can know how kiad.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 229 
 
 Yes, I know, some forms of kindness are inspired by passion. 
 Men have many ways of being kind from disdain, from im- 
 pulse, from self-interest, from indolence of temper ; but you, 
 my friend, have been simply, absolutely kind." 
 
 "If so," I said, "remember that all that is great in me 
 comes from you. Do you not know that I am wholly what 
 you have made me ? " 
 
 " Such a speech is enough for a woman's happiness," she 
 answered, just as the Count came in. " I am better," said 
 she, rising. " I want some fresh air." 
 
 We all went down to the terrace, now scented by the acacias 
 still in bloom. She had taken my right arm and pressed it 
 to her heart, thus expressing her painful thoughts ; but, to 
 use her own words, it was a pain she loved. She wished, no 
 doubt, to be alone with me ; but her imagination, unpracticed 
 in woman's wiles, suggested no reason for dismissing the chil- 
 dren and her husband ; so we talked of indifferent matters 
 while she racked her brain trying to find a moment when she 
 could at last pour out her heart into mine. 
 
 " It is a very long time since I took a drive," said she at 
 length, seeing the evening so fine. " Will you give the orders, 
 monsieur, that I may make a little round ? " 
 
 She knew no explanation was possible before prayer-time, 
 and feared that the Count would want a game of backgammon. 
 She might indeed come out here again, on this sheltered ter- 
 race, after the Count was gone to bed ; but perhaps she was 
 afraid to linger under these boughs through which the light 
 fell with such a voluptuous play, or to walk by the parapet 
 whence our eyes could trace the course of the Indre through 
 the meadows. Just as a cathedral, with its gloomy and silent 
 vault suggests prayer, so does foliage spangled by moonlight, 
 perfumed with piercing scents, and alive with the mysterious 
 sounds of spring, stir every fibre and relax the will. The 
 country, which calms an old man's passions, fires those of 
 youthful hearts and we knew it.
 
 230 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 Two peals of a bell called us to prayers. The Countess 
 started. 
 
 " My dear Henriette, what ails you ? " 
 " Henriette is no more," said she. " Do not call her back 
 to life again ; she was exacting and capricious. Now you 
 have a friend whose virtue is confirmed by the words which 
 heaven must have dictated to you. We will speak of this 
 later. Let us be punctual for prayers. It is my turn to read 
 them to-day." 
 
 When the Countess used the words in which she besought 
 God to preserve us against all the adversities of life, she gave 
 them an emphasis which I was not alone in noticing; she 
 seemed to have used her gift of second-sight to discern the 
 dreadful agitation she was fated to go through in consequence 
 of my clumsiness in forgetting my agreement with Arabella. 
 
 " We have time to play three hits while the horses are put 
 in," said the Count, leading me off to the drawing-room. 
 " Then you will drive with my wife. I shall go to bed." 
 
 Like all our games, this one was stormy. From her own 
 room or Madeleine's the Countess could hear her husband's 
 voice. 
 
 " You make a strange misuse of hospitality," she said to 
 her husband when she came back to the room. 
 
 I looked at her in bewilderment ; I could not get used to 
 her sternness ; in former times she would never have tried to 
 shield me from the Count's tyranny ; she had liked to see me 
 sharing her penalties and enduring them patiently for love of 
 her. 
 
 " I would give my life," said I in her ear, "to hear you 
 murmur once more Poor dear, poor dear ! ' ' 
 
 She looked down, recalling the occasion to which I alluded ; 
 her eyes turned on me with a sidelong glance, and expressed 
 the joy of a woman who sees the most fugitive accents of 
 her heart more highly prized than the deepest delights of 
 any other love.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 231 
 
 Then, as ever when she had done me such an injustice, I 
 forgave her, feeling that she understood me. The Count was 
 losing ; he said he was tired, to break off the game, and we 
 went to walk around the lawn while waiting for the carriage. 
 No sooner had he left us than my face beamed so vividly with 
 gladness that the Countess questioned me by a look of sur- 
 prise and inquiry. 
 
 " Henriette still lives," I said; "I still am loved! You 
 wound me with too evident intention to break my heart ; I 
 may yet be happy." 
 
 "There was but a shred of the woman left," she said, in 
 terror, " and you at this moment have it in your grasp. 
 God be praised ! He gives me the strength to endure the 
 martyrdom I have deserved. Yes, I still love ; I was near 
 falling; the Englishwoman throws a light into the gulf." 
 
 We got into the carriage, and the coachman waited for 
 orders. 
 
 "Go by the avenue to the Chinon road, and come home 
 by the Landes de Charlemagne and the Sache road." 
 " What is to-day ? " I asked too eagerly. 
 "Saturday." 
 
 " Then do not drive that way, madame ; on Saturday even- 
 ings the road is crowded with noisy bumpkins going to Tours, 
 and we shall meet their carts." 
 
 "Do as I say," said the Countess to the coachman, with 
 emphasis. 
 
 We knew each other too well, and every inflection of tone, 
 endless as they were, to disguise the most trifling feeling. 
 Henriette had understood everything. 
 
 " You did not think of the country bumpkins when you 
 chose this evening," she remarked, with a faint tinge of irony. 
 " Lady Dudley is at Tours. Tell no falsehoods ; she is wait- 
 ing for you near here. What day is it bumpkins carts ! " 
 she went on. " Did you ever make such remarks when we 
 used to go out together? "
 
 232 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 " They prove that I have forgotten all about Clochegourde," 
 I replied, simply. 
 
 " She is waiting for you? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "At what hour?" 
 
 "Between eleven and midnight." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "On the Landes." 
 
 " Do not deceive me. Not under the walnut tree? " 
 
 "On the Landes." 
 
 " We will be there," she said. " I shall see her." 
 
 On hearing these words I regarded my fate as definitely 
 settled. I determined to marry Lady Dudley and so put an 
 end to the dreadful conflict which really threatened to exhaust 
 my nerves, and to destroy by such constant friction the deli- 
 cate pleasures which are like the bloom on a fruit. My savage 
 silence wounded the Countess, whose magnanimity was not 
 yet fully known to me. 
 
 "Do not be provoked with me, dear," she said in her 
 golden tones. "This is my penance. You will never find 
 such love as lies here," and she placed her hand on her heart. 
 " Did I not confess to you that the Marchioness of Dudley 
 has saved me ? The stain is hers ; I do not envy her. Mine 
 is the glorious love of the angels ! Since you came I have 
 traveled over a vast extent of country ; I have pronounced 
 judgment on life. Uplift the soul and you rend it ; the higher 
 you rise the less sympathy you find ; instead of suffering in 
 the valley you suffer in the air, like an eagle soaring up and 
 bearing in his heart an arrow shot by some clumsy shepherd. 
 I know now that heaven and earth are incompatible. Yes, 
 and for those who can dwell in the celestial zone God alone 
 is possible. Then our soul must be detached from all things 
 earthly. 
 
 " We must love our friends as we love our children for 
 their sake, not for our own. We are ourselves the source of
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 233 
 
 our woes and griefs. My heart will rise higher than the eagle 
 soars ; there is a love which will never fail me. 
 
 " As to living the life of this earth, it hinders us too much 
 by making the selfishness of the senses predominate over the 
 spirituality of the angel that is in us. The joys we get from 
 passion are horribly stormy, and paid for by enervating fears 
 that break the springs of the soul. 
 
 " I have stood on the shore of the sea where these tempests 
 roar, I have seen them too near ; they have caught me in 
 their clouds ; the wave did not always break at my feet, I have 
 felt its rough embrace freezing my heart ; I must retire to the 
 heights, I should perish on the strand of that vast ocean. In 
 you, as in all who have brought me sorrow, I see a guardian 
 of my virtue. My life has been mingled with anguish, hap- 
 pily in proportion to my strength, and has been there pre- 
 served pure from evil passions, finding no beguiling repose, 
 but always ready for God. 
 
 "Our attachment was the insane attempt, the hopeless 
 effort, of two guileless children who tried to satisfy at once 
 their own hearts, man, and God. Folly, Felix ! Ah ! " she 
 asked, after a pause, "what does that woman call you?" 
 
 "Amedee," said I. "Felix is another creature, who can 
 never be known to any one but you." 
 
 " Henriette dies hard," she replied, with a faint, pious 
 smile. " But she will die," she went on, "in the first effort 
 of the humble Christian, the proud mother, the woman whose 
 virtues, tottering yesterday, are confirmed to-day. 
 
 " What can I say? Yes, yes, my life has been uniform in 
 its greatest as in its least circumstances. The heart to which 
 the first rootlets of affection ought to have attached them- 
 selves my mother's heart was closed to me, in spite of my 
 persistently seeking a cranny into which I could steal. I was 
 a girl, the last child after the death of three boys, and I vainly 
 strove to fill their place in my parents' affections ; I could not 
 heal the wound inflicted on the family pride. When having
 
 234 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 gotten through that melancholy childhood I knew my ador- 
 able aunt, death soon snatched her from me. Monsieur de 
 Mortsauf, to whom I devoted my life, struck me persistently 
 without respite without knowing it, poor man ! His love is 
 full of the artless selfishness of our children's love. He 
 knows nothing of the pangs he causes me; he is always for- 
 given. 
 
 " My children, my darling children, flesh of my flesh in all 
 their sufferings, soul of my soul in their characters, like me in 
 nature, in their innocent joys were not those children given 
 to me to show how much strength and patience there is in 
 mothers ? Oh, yes, my children are my virtues ! You know 
 whether I have been scourged by them, through them, in 
 spite of them. To be a mother was to me to purchase the 
 right of perpetual suffering. 
 
 " When Hagar cried in the desert an angel made a font of 
 pure water spring for that too well-beloved slave. But when 
 the limpid brook to which you desired to lead me, do you 
 remember? flowed round Clochegourde, for me it ran with 
 bitter waters. Yes, you have brought incredible suffering on 
 me. God will no doubt forgive one who has known affection 
 only through suffering. 
 
 "Still, though the acutest anguish I have known has been 
 brought upon me by you, perhaps I deserved it. God is not 
 unjust. Yes, Felix, a kiss given by stealth is perhaps a crime; 
 and perhaps I have paid thus dearly for the steps I have taken 
 to get ahead of my husband and children when walking out in 
 the evening, so as to be alone with memories and thoughts 
 which were not given to them, since, while walking on in 
 front, my soul was wedded to another ! When the inmost 
 self shrinks and shrivels, to fill only the spot offered to an 
 embrace, that is perhaps a heinous crime ! When a wife 
 stoops that her husband's kiss may fall on her hair, so as to be 
 entirely neutral, it is a crime ! It is a crime to count on a 
 future built up on death, a crime to dream of a future of
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 235 
 
 motherhood without terrors, of beautiful children playing in 
 the evening with a father worshiped by all, under the softened 
 gaze of a happy mother. Ah, I have sinned, I have sinned 
 greatly ! I have even found pleasure in the penance inflicted 
 by the church, which insufficiently atoned for these faults to 
 which the priest was surely too indulgent. But God, no 
 doubt, has set retribution in the very heart of the sin itself, 
 by making him for whom it was committed the instrument of 
 His vengeance ! Giving you my hair was not that a prom- 
 ise ? Why did I love to wear white ? I fancied myself more 
 like your lily ; did you not see me for the first time in a 
 white dress ? Alas ! And I have loved my children the less, 
 for every ardent affection is stolen from those that are due. 
 So you see, Felix, all suffering has a meaning. Strike me, 
 strike me harder than Monsieur de Mortsauf and my children 
 could. 
 
 " That woman is an instrument of God's wrath ; I can 
 meet her without hatred. I will smile on her ; I must love 
 her or I am neither a Christian, a wife, nor a mother. If, as 
 you say, I have helped to preserve your heart from the contact 
 of what might have soiled it, the Englishwoman cannot hate 
 me. A woman must love the mother of the man she loves ; 
 and I am your mother. 
 
 "What did I look for in your heart? The place left 
 empty by Madame de Vandenesse. Oh, yes ; for you have 
 always complained of my coldness ! Yes, I am indeed no 
 more than your mother. Forgive me for all I said to you 
 when you arrived, for a mother ought to rejoice to know that 
 her son is so much loved." 
 
 She leaned her head on my bosom and repeated 
 
 " Forgive, forgive ! " 
 
 The accent of her voice was new to me. It was not her 
 girlish voice with its gleeful intonation ; nor her wifely voice 
 with its imperative fall; nor the sighing of a grieving mother. 
 It was a heart-rending voice, a new tone for new sorrows.
 
 236 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 "As for you, Felix," she went on, with more animation, 
 " you are the friend who can do no wrong. You have lost 
 nothing in my heart ; do not blame yourself, feel not the 
 slightest remorse. Was it not the height of selfishness to ask 
 you to sacrifice to an impossible future the most stupendous 
 pleasure, since a woman can abandon her children for its sake, 
 abdicate her rank, and renounce eternity ! How often have 
 I seen you my superior ! You were lofty and noble, I was 
 mean and sinful ! 
 
 "Well, well, all is said. I can never be anything to you 
 but a far-away light, high up, sparkling, cold, but unchanging. 
 Only, Felix, do not let me be alone in loving the brother I 
 have chosen. Love me too. A sister's love has no bitter 
 morrow, no perverse moods. You need never be untrue to 
 the indulgent soul that will live in your beautiful life, will 
 never fail to weep over your sorrows, and be glad over your 
 joys, that will love the women who make you happy, and be 
 indignant if you are betrayed. I have never had a brother 
 to love so. Be magnanimous enough to cast off all pride 
 and solve all the difficulties of our attachment, hitherto so 
 ill-defined and stormy, by this sweet and holy affection. I 
 can still live on those terms. I will be the first to shake 
 hands with Lady Dudley." 
 
 She shed no tears, alas, as she spoke these words full of 
 bitter experience, while, by snatching away the last veil that 
 hid her soul and her sufferings from me, they showed me by 
 how many links she was bound to me and what strong chains 
 I had broken through. 
 
 We were in such a delirium of agitation that we did not 
 observe that it was raining in torrents. 
 
 " Will Madame la Comtesse take shelter here for a few min- 
 utes?" said the coachman, pointing to the principal inn of 
 Ballan. 
 
 She nodded consent and we sat for about half an hour
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 237 
 
 under the archway of the entrance, to the great astonishment 
 of the people of the inn, who wondered why Madame de 
 Mortsauf was driving about the country at eleven o'clock at 
 night. 
 
 Was she going to Tours ? Or on her way back ? 
 
 When the storm was over, and the rain had settled into 
 what is called in Touraine a brouee, a heavy mist which did not 
 hinder the moon from silvering the upper strata as they were 
 swept swiftly past by the higher currents of wind, the coach- 
 man went out and turned homeward, to my great joy. 
 
 " Go the way I told you," said the Countess gently. 
 
 So we took the road to the Landes de Charlemagne, and 
 there the rain began again. Half-way across the sandy com- 
 mon I heard Lady Arabella's pet dog barking. A horse sud- 
 denly dashed out from under a clump of oaks, crossed the 
 road at a bound, leaped the ditch made by the owners to show 
 the boundary of each plot where the soil was considered worth 
 cultivating, and Lady Dudley pulled up on the common to see 
 the carriage pass. 
 
 " What joy thus to wait for one's child when it is not a 
 sin ! " said Henriette. 
 
 The dog's barking had told Lady Dudley that I was in the 
 carriage ; she thought, no doubt, that I had come to fetch her 
 in it, in consequence of the bad weather. When we reached 
 the spot where the Marchioness was waiting, she flew along 
 the road with the skill in horsemanship for which she is noted 
 and which Henriette admired as a marvel. Arabella, by way 
 of a pet name, called me only by the last syllable of Amedee, 
 pronouncing it in the English fashion, and on her lips the cry 
 had a charm worthy of a fairy. She knew that I alone should 
 understand her when she called " My Dee." 
 
 "It is he, madame," answered the Countess, looking, in 
 the clear moonlight, at the whimsical personage whose eager 
 face was strangely framed in long locks out of curl. 
 
 You know how swiftly women take stock of each other.
 
 238 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 The Englishwoman recognized her rival, and was arrogantly 
 English ; she comprehended us in one flash of English scorn, 
 and vanished on the heath with the rapidity of an arrow. 
 
 "Back to Clochegourde fast," cried the Countess, to 
 whom this ruthless glance was like an axe at her heart. 
 
 The coachman went back by the Chinon road, which was 
 better than that by Sach6. When the carriage was on the 
 skirts of the common again we heard the mad gallop of Ara- 
 bella's horse and her dog's footsteps. They were all three 
 hurrying round the woods on the other side of the heath. 
 
 "She is going away; you have lost her forever! " said 
 Henriette. 
 
 "Well," replied I, " let her go. She will not cost me a 
 regret." 
 
 "Oh, poor woman!" cried the Countess, with compas- 
 sionate horror. " But where is she going ? " 
 
 "To La Grenadiere, a little house near Saint-Cyr," said I. 
 
 "And she is going alone," said Henriette, in a tone which 
 told me that all women make common cause in love and 
 never desert each other. 
 
 As we turned into the Clochegourde avenue, Arabella's dog 
 barked gleefully and ran on in front of the carriage. 
 
 " She is here before us ! " cried the Countess. Then, after 
 a pause, she added : "I never saw a finer woman. What a 
 hand ! What a figure ! Her complexion shames the lily and 
 her eyes flash like diamonds. But she rides too well ; she 
 must love to exert her strength ; I fancy she is energetic and 
 violent ; then, too, she seems to me too defiant of convention- 
 ality, a woman who recognizes no law is apt to listen only to 
 her own caprice. Those who are so anxious to shine, to be 
 always moving, have not the gift of constancy. To my notions 
 love needs greater quietude ; I picture it to myself as an im- 
 mense lake where the sounding-line finds no bottom, where 
 the tempests may indeed be wild, but rare, and restricted 
 within impassable bounds where two beings dwell on an
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 239 
 
 island of flowers, far from the world whose luxury and display 
 would repel them. 
 
 " But love must take the stamp of character. I am perhaps 
 mistaken. If the elements of nature yield to the mould im- 
 pressed by climate, why should it not be so with the feelings 
 of individuals ? Feelings, which as a whole obey a general 
 law, no doubt differ in expression only. Each soul has its 
 own modes. The Marchioness is a powerful woman who 
 traverses distances and acts with the vigor of a man ; jailers, 
 wardens, and executioner must be killed to deliver her lover. 
 Whereas certain women know no better than to love with all 
 their soul ; in danger they kneel down, pray, and die. 
 
 "Which of the two do you prefer? That is the whole 
 question. Yes, the Marchioness loves you ; she sacrifices so 
 much for you ! It is she, perhaps, who will love on when 
 you have ceased to love her." 
 
 " Permit me, dear angel, to echo the question you asked 
 the other day : How do you know these things ? " 
 
 " Each form of suffering brings its lesson, and I have suf- 
 fered in so many ways that my knowledge is vast." 
 
 My servant had heard the order given, and, expecting that 
 we should return by the terraces, he held my horse in readi- 
 ness, in the avenue. Arabella's dog had scented the horse, 
 and his mistress, led by very legitimate curiosity, had followed 
 it through the wood where she, no doubt, had been lurking. 
 
 " Go and make your peace," said Henriette, smiling, with 
 no trace of melancholy. " Tell her how much she is mis- 
 taken as to my intentions. I wanted to show her all the value 
 of the prize that has fallen to her ; my heart has none but 
 kindly feelings toward her above all, neither anger nor scorn. 
 Explain to her that I am her sister, and not her rival." 
 
 "I will not go ! " cried I. 
 
 " Have you never experienced," said she, with the flashing 
 pride of a martyr, " that certain forms of consideration may 
 be an insult. Go go ! "
 
 240 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 I went to join Lady Dudley and find out what humor she 
 was in. " If only she might be angry and throw me over," 
 thought I, "I would return to Clochegourde. " 
 
 The dog led me to an oak tree from whence the Mar- 
 chioness flew off, shouting to me, " Away, away ! " 
 
 I had no choice but to follow her to Saint-Cyr, which we 
 reached at midnight. 
 
 "The lady is in excellent health," said Arabella, as she 
 dismounted. 
 
 Only those who have known her can conceive of the sarcasm 
 implied in this observation drily flung at me in a tone that 
 was meant to convey : "I should have died." 
 
 " I forbid you to cast any of your three-barbed witticisms 
 at Madame de Mortsauf," I replied. 
 
 *' And does it offend your grace when I remark on the per- 
 fect health enjoyed by one so dear to your precious heart ? 
 Frenchwomen, it is said, hate even their lovers' dogs ; but 
 in England we love everything that is dear to our sovereign 
 lord, we hate what they hate, for we live in their very skin. 
 Allow 'me then to be as fond of that lady as you are. Only, 
 dear boy," said she, throwing her arms around me, all wet 
 from the rain, " if you were faithless to me, I should neither 
 stand up, nor lie down, nor ride in a carriage with men- 
 servants ; neither drive through the Landes de Charlemagne, 
 nor over the heaths of any country in the world, nor be in my 
 bed, nor under the roof of my fathers, /should be no more. 
 
 "I was born in Lancashire, where women can die of love. 
 To have owned you, and give you up? I will give you up to 
 no power in the world, not even to death, for I would go 
 with you ! " 
 
 She took me into her room, where comfort already made 
 its presence felt. 
 
 "Love her, my dear," said I warmly, " for she loves you, 
 and not ironically but sincerely." 
 
 " Sincerely, child ? " she said, unfastening her riding-habit.
 
 THE LILY OP THE VALLEY. 241 
 
 With a lover's vanity, I tried to make this arrogant creature 
 understand the sublimity of Henriette's character. While the 
 maid, who did not know a word of French, was dressing her 
 hair, I tried to describe Madame de Mortsauf, sketching her 
 life, and repeating the generous thoughts suggested to her by 
 a crisis in which all women are petty and spiteful. Though 
 Arabella affected to pay not the slightest attention, she did 
 not lose a word. 
 
 " I am delighted," said she when we were alone, " to know 
 of your taste for this style of Christian conversation ; there is 
 on my estate a curate who has not his match in composing 
 sermons, our laborers can understand them, so well is his 
 prose adapted to his audience. I will write to-morrow to my 
 father to dispatch this worthy by steamer, and you shall find 
 him in Paris. When once you have heard him you will never 
 want to listen to any one else, all the more so because he, too, 
 enjoys perfect health. His moralizing will give you none of 
 those shocks that end in tears ; it flows without turmoil, like 
 a limpid brook, and secures delightful slumbers. Every even- 
 ing, if you like, you can satisfy your craving for sermons while 
 digesting your dinner. 
 
 " English moralizing, my dear boy, is as superior to that of 
 Tours as our cutlery, our plate, and our horses are superior to 
 your knives and your animals. Do me the favor of hearing 
 my curate promise me. I am but a woman, my dearest ; I 
 know how to love, how to die for you, if you like ; but I have 
 not studied at Eton, nor at Oxford, nor at Edinburgh ; I am 
 neither doctor nor reverend ; I cannot moralize for you, I am 
 quite unfit for it and should be to the last degree clumsy if I 
 attempted it. 
 
 "I do not complain of your taste; you might have far 
 more degraded tastes than this, and I would try to accommo- 
 date myself to them ; for I intend that you should find with 
 me everything you like best the pleasures of love, the pleas- 
 ures of the table, the pleasures of church-going good claret 
 16
 
 242 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 and the Christian virtues. Would you like to see me in a 
 hair-shirt this evening ? That woman is happy indeed to be 
 able to supply you with moralities ! In what university do 
 Frenchwomen take their degree ? Poor me ! I have nothing 
 to give you but myself, I am only a slave " 
 
 " Then why did you fly when I wanted to bring you two 
 together?" 
 
 "Are you mad, my Dee? I would travel from Paris to 
 Rome disguised as your footman, I would do the most pre- 
 posterous things for you ; but how could I stop to talk on 
 the highroad to a woman who has not been introduced to me, 
 and who was ready with a sermon under three heads ? I can 
 talk to peasants. I would ask a workman to share his loaf 
 with me if I were hungry, I would give him a few guineas, 
 and it would be all in order ; but as to stopping a chaise as 
 highwaymen do in England that is not included in my code 
 of honor. 
 
 " My poor boy, all you know is how to love ; and you do 
 not know how to live ? Beside, my angel, I am not yet made 
 exactly in your image. I have no taste for moralities. How- 
 ever, to please you, I am capable of the greatest efforts. 
 Come, say no more, I will set to work, I will try to preach. 
 I will never allow myself to caress you without throwing in a 
 text from the Bible." 
 
 She exerted all her power used it, abused it, till she saw 
 in my eyes the ardent look that always came into them when 
 she began her enchantments. She triumphed completely, and 
 I submissively agreed to set above the vain subtleties of the 
 Catholic Church the magnanimity of the woman who wrecks 
 herself, renounces all future hope and makes love her sole 
 virtue. 
 
 "Does she love herself better than she loves you?" she 
 asked. " Does she prefer to you something which is not you? 
 How can a woman attach any importance to anything in her- 
 self beyond that with which you honor it ? No woman, how-
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 343 
 
 ever great a moralist she may be, can be the equal of a man. 
 Walk over us, kill us, never let us encumber your life. Our 
 part is to die, yours to live great and supreme. In your hand 
 is the poniard ; we have only to love and forgive. Does the 
 sun care about the midges that live in his beams, by his 
 glow ? They exist as long as they can, and when he disap- 
 pears they die " 
 
 " Or fly away," I put in. 
 
 " Or fly away," she replied, with an indifference that would 
 have spurred any man determined to use the strange power 
 she attributed to us. " Do you think it worthy of a woman 
 to stuff a man with bread buttered with virtue to convince 
 him that love and religion are incompatible ? Am I then an 
 infidel ? A woman may yield or refuse ; but to refuse and 
 preach is to inflict a double penalty, which is against the law 
 of every land. Now here you will have nothing but delicious 
 sandwiches prepared by the hand of your humble servant 
 Arabella, whose whole morality consists in inventing caresses 
 such as no man has ever known, and which are suggested by 
 the angels." 
 
 I know nothing so undoing as such banter in the hands of 
 an Englishwoman ; she throws into it the eloquent gravity, 
 the pompous air of conviction under which the English cover 
 the lofty imbecilities of their prejudiced views. French irony 
 is like lace with which women dress out the pleasure they give 
 and the disputes they invent ; it is a trimming, and- as graceful 
 as their dress. But English " fun " is an acid so corrosive to 
 those on whom it falls that it leaves them skeletons, picked 
 and cleaned. A witty Englishwoman's tongue is like a 
 tiger's, which strips off the flesh to the very bone, and all in 
 play ; mockery, that all-powerful weapon of the devil's, leaves 
 a deadly poison in the wounds it reopens at will. 
 
 That night Arabella chose to exert her power like the 
 Grand Turk, who, to show his skill, amuses himself with 
 decapitating innocent persons.
 
 244 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 " My angel," said she, when she had soothed me to the 
 dozing condition in which everything is forgotten but a sense 
 of happiness, " I have been moralizing too I myself ! I was 
 wondering whether I am committing a crime in loving you, 
 whether I was violating divine laws, and I decided that noth- 
 ing could be more pious or more natural. Why should God 
 create some beings more beautiful than others unless to show 
 us that they are to be adored ? The crime would not be to 
 love you, for are you not an angel ? That lady insults you by 
 classing you with other men ; the rules of morality do not 
 apply to you ; God has set you above them. Is not loving 
 you rising to be nearer to Him ? Can He be wroth with a 
 poor woman for longing for things divine ? Your large and 
 radiant heart is so like the sky that I mistake it, as midges 
 come to burn themselves in the lights at a festival ! Are they 
 to be punished for their mistake ? Indeed, is it a mistake ? 
 Is it not too fervent a worship of light ? They perish from 
 too much piety if, indeed, flinging one's self into the arms 
 we love can be called perishing ? 
 
 " I am weak enough to love you while that woman is strong 
 enough to remain in her chapel ! Do not frown on me. You 
 think I condemn her? Nay, child ! I delight in her moral- 
 ity, since it has led her to leave you free and so allowed me 
 to win you and to keep you for ever for you are mine for 
 ever, are you not ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " For ever and ever? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Then grant me a favor, my sultan. I alone have dis- 
 cerned all your value. She, you say, cultivates the land ? I 
 leave that to the farmers; I would rather cultivate your 
 heart." 
 
 I have tried to recall all this chatter to give you a clear idea 
 of this woman, to justify all I have said about her and to give 
 you a clue to the catastrophe. But how am I to describe the
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 245 
 
 accompaniment to the sweet words you know so well con- 
 ceits only to be compared to the most extravagant fictions of 
 our dreams; inventions sometimes reminding me of my nose- 
 gays : grace united to strength, tenderness and languid softness 
 contrasting with volcanic eruptions of passions ; the most 
 elaborate modulations of music applied to the harmony of 
 our delight, the most insinuating words graced with charming 
 ideas, everything most poetical that wit can add to the 
 pleasures of sense. She aimed at destroying the impression 
 left on my heart by Henriette's chaste reserve, by the flashes 
 of her own impetuous passion. The Marchioness had seen 
 the Countess quite as well as Madame de Mortsauf had seen 
 her. They had judged each other clearly. The elaborate 
 attack planned by Arabella showed how great her fears had 
 been and her secret admiration for her rival. 
 
 In the morning I found her with eyes full of tears ; she 
 had not slept. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " I asked. 
 
 " I am afraid my excess of love may militate against me/' 
 said she. "I give you all; she, cleverer than I, still has 
 something for you to desire. If you prefer her, think no 
 more of me ; I will not bore you with my sufferings, my re- 
 morse, my sorrows no, I will go to die far away from you, 
 like a plant far from the life-giving sun." 
 
 She extracted from me such protestations as filled her with 
 joy. What is to be said of a woman who weeps in the morn- 
 ing? A hard word then seems brutal. If she has not been 
 denied over night, we must need tell lies in the morning, for 
 the code of man makes such falsehood a duty. 
 
 "Well, then, I am happy," she said, wiping away her tears. 
 " Go back to her ; I do not wish to owe you to the vehemence 
 of my love, but to your own free will. If you come back 
 again I shall believe that you love me as much as I love you, 
 which I had always thought impossible." 
 
 She managed to persuade me to return to Clochegourde.
 
 246 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 How false the situation in which I should then find myself 
 was not to be imagined by a man gorged with raptures. If I 
 had refused to go to Clochegourde, Lady Arabella would have 
 won the day at Heririette's expense. Arabella would then 
 carry me off to Paris. Still, to go thither was to insult 
 Madame de Mortsauf. In that case I should come back more 
 certainly than ever to Arabella. 
 
 Has any woman forgiveness for such crimes of treason? 
 Short of being an angel come down from heaven rather than 
 a purified spirit about to attain to it, a loving woman would 
 see her lover suffer any agony sooner than see him made 
 happy by another. The more she loves, the more she will be 
 hurt. 
 
 Thus regarded from both sides, my position, when I had 
 once left Clochegourde to go to La Grenadiere, was as fatal to 
 my first true love as it was profitable to my chance passion. 
 The Marchioness had foreseen it all with deep calculation. 
 She confessed later that if Madame de Mortsauf had not met 
 her on the heath she had intended to commit me by hanging 
 about Clochegourde. 
 
 The instant I saw the Countess, whom I found pale and 
 stricken, like a person who has endured intolerable insomnia, 
 I exercised not the tact but the instinct which enables a 
 still young and generous heart to appreciate the full bearing 
 of actions that are criminal in the jurisprudence of noble 
 souls though indifferent in the eyes of the vulgar. Suddenly, 
 as a child that has gone down a steep while playing and pluck- 
 ing flowers sees, in terror, that he cannot go up it again, dis- 
 cerns no human ground but at an immeasurable distance, feels 
 himself alone in the dark and hears savage howls, I perceived 
 that a whole world lay between us. A loud cry went up in 
 our souls, an echo, as it were, of the funereal Consummatum 
 est which is pronounced in church on Good Friday, at the 
 hour when the Saviour died a dreadful scene which freezes
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 247 
 
 those young souls in which religion is their first love. Every 
 illusion Henriette had known had died under one blow ; her 
 heart had gone through its passion. She whom pleasure had 
 never involved in its deadening coils could she suspect the 
 joys of happy lovers that she refused to look at me ? for she 
 would not shed on my gaze the light which for six years had 
 irradiated my life. She knew, then, that the source of the 
 beams that shone from our eyes lay in our souls, for which 
 they were as a pathway, leading from one to the other, so that 
 they might visit, become one, separate, and play like two 
 confiding girls who have no secrets from each other. I was 
 bitterly conscious of the sin of bringing under this roof, 
 where caresses were unknown, a face on which the wings of 
 enjoyment had shed their sparkling dust. 
 
 If, the day before, I had left Lady Dudley to go home 
 alone ; if I had come back to Clochegourde, where Henriette 
 perhaps expected me ; perhaps well, perhaps, Madame de 
 Mortsauf would not have behaved so strictly as my sister. 
 She gave all her civilities the solemnity of exaggerated em- 
 phasis ; she played her part to excess so as not to forget it. 
 During breakfast she paid me a thousand little attentions, 
 humiliating attentions ; she made much of me like a sick man 
 to be pitied. 
 
 "You were out betime," said the Count; " you must have 
 a fine appetite, you whose digestion is not ruined." 
 
 This speech, which failed to bring the smile of a wily sister 
 to the Countess' lips, put the crowning touch to the impossi- 
 bility of my position. I could not be at Clochegourde by 
 day and at Saint-Cyr by night. Arabella had counted on my 
 sense of delicacy and Madame de Mortsauf s magnanimity. 
 
 All through that long day I felt the difficulty of becoming 
 the friend of a woman one has long desired. This transition, 
 simple enough when years have led up to it, in youth is a dis- 
 temper. I was ashamed, I cursed all pleasure, I wished that 
 Madame de Mortsauf would demand my blood ! I could not
 
 248 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 tear her rival to pieces before her eyes; she avoided mention- 
 ing her, and to speak ill of Arabella was a baseness which 
 would have incurred the contempt of Henriette, herself noble 
 and lofty to the inmost core. After five years of exquisite 
 intimacy we did not know what to talk about ; bur words did 
 not express our thoughts ; we hid gnawing pangs, we to whom 
 suffering had hitherto been a faithful interpreter. Henriette 
 affected a cheerful air on my behalf and her own ; but she 
 was sad. Though she called herself my sister on every oppor- 
 tunity, and though she was a woman, she could find no sub- 
 ject to keep up the conversation and we sat for the most part 
 in awkward silence. She added to my mental torment by 
 affecting to think herself Lady Arabella's only victim. 
 
 "I am suffering more than you are," I said, at a moment 
 when the sister spoke in a tone of very feminine irony. 
 
 "How can that be?" she returned, in the haughty voice 
 a woman can put on when her feelings are underestimated. 
 
 "I have done all the wrong." 
 
 Then there was a moment when the Countess assumed a 
 cold indifference that was too much for me. I determined 
 
 to go- 
 That evening, on the terrace, I took leave of all the family 
 together. They followed me to the lawn where my horse 
 waited, pawing the ground. They stood out of the way. 
 When I had taken the bridle, the Countess came up to me. 
 " Come, we will walk down the avenue alone," she said. 
 I gave her my arm, and we went out through the court- 
 yards, walking slowly as if lingering over the sensation of mov- 
 ing together ; we thus reached a clump of trees that screened a 
 corner of the outer enclosure. 
 
 " Good-by, my friend," she exclaimed, stopping and throw- 
 ing her arms around my neck with her head on my heart. 
 " Good-by, we shall see each other no more. God has given 
 me the melancholy power of looking into the future. Do 
 you remember the panic that came over me that day when you
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 249 
 
 came back so handsome, so youthful ; and when I saw you 
 turn to quit me, just as to-day you are leaving Clochegourde 
 for La Grenadiere? Well, last night I was once more enabled 
 to look forward to our destinies. My friend, we are speaking 
 to each other for the last time. I can hardly say a few words 
 to you even now, for not all of me speaks ; death has already 
 stricken something within me. You will have robbed my 
 children of their mother take her place ! You can ! Jacques 
 and Madeleine love you already as though you had made them 
 suffer! " 
 
 "Die?" cried I in alarm, as I looked at the dry flame in 
 her glittering eyes, of which I can only give an idea to those 
 whose dear ones have never been attacked by 'the dreadful 
 malady by comparing her eyes with balls of tarnished silver. 
 " Die ! Henriette, I command you to live. You often used to 
 require vows of me now I, to-day, require one of you : swear 
 to me that you will consult Origet and do exactly what he 
 tells you." 
 
 " Then would you contend against the loving mercy of 
 God?" she asked, interrupting me with a cry of despair, in- 
 dignant at being misunderstood. 
 
 " Then you do not love me enough to obey me blindly in 
 everything, as that miserable lady does?" 
 
 "Yes, yes; whatever you wish," she replied, urged by a 
 jealousy which made her overleap in that instant the distance 
 she had till now preserved. 
 
 " I stay here," I said, kissing her eyes. 
 
 Startled by this capitulation she escaped from my embrace 
 and went to lean against a tree. Then she turned homeward, 
 walking very fast without turning her head ; I followed her, 
 she was praying and weeping. When we reached the lawn I 
 took her hand and kissed it respectfully. This unlooked-for 
 surrender touched her heart. 
 
 "Yours, come what may," I ejaculated. "I love you as 
 your aunt loved you."
 
 250 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 She started and wrung my hand with the most fervent af- 
 fection. 
 
 " One look," said I, "only one of your old looks ! " And 
 feeling my whole soul enlightened by the flashing glance she 
 gave me, I cried, " The woman who gives herself wholly 
 gives me less of life and spirit than I have now received ! 
 Henriette, you are the best beloved the only love." 
 
 " I will live," she returned, " but you, too, must get well." 
 
 That gaze had effaced the impression of Arabella's sarcasms. 
 Thus was I the plaything of the two irreconcilable passions 
 I have described to you, and of which I felt the alternating 
 influence. I loved an angel and a demon : two women equally 
 lovely; one graced with all the virtues we torture out of 
 hatred of our own defects, the other with all the vices we 
 deify out of selfishness. As I rode down the avenue, turning 
 around again and again to see Madame de Mortsauf leaning 
 against a tree, her children standing by her and waving their 
 handkerchiefs, I detected in my soul an impulse of pride at 
 knowing myself to be the arbiter of two such noble destinies, 
 the glory, on such different grounds, of two superior women, 
 and at having inspired such passions that either of them would 
 die if I failed her. 
 
 This brief but fatuous dream was severely punished, believe 
 me. Some demon prompted me to wait with Arabella till a 
 fit of despair or the Count's death should throw Henriette 
 into my arms, since Henriette still loved me ; her severity, 
 her tears, her remorse, and her Christian resignation were the 
 eloquent symptoms of a feeling which could no more be ef- 
 faced from her heart than from my own. As I slowly walked 
 my horse along the pretty avenue, making these reflections, I 
 was not five-and-twenty, I was fifty. Does not a young man, 
 even more than a woman, leap in a moment from thirty to sixty ? 
 
 Though I could drive away these evil thoughts with a breath 
 they haunted me, I must confess. Their source, perhaps, was 
 at the Tuileries behind the panels of the royal cabinet. Who
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 251 
 
 could come unharmed under the tainting influence of Louis 
 XVIII., who was wont to say that a man knows nothing of 
 true passion till he is past maturity, since passion is never 
 splendid and frenzied till there is some loss of power and 
 each pleasure is like the gambler's last stake. 
 
 When I reached the end of the avenue I looked round once 
 more, and in the twinkling of an eye I was back again, on 
 seeing Henriette still standing there alone. I flew to bid her 
 a last adieu, bathed in tears of expiation of which she knew 
 not the secret. Sincere tears, shed, though I knew it not, on 
 the sweet love that was for ever past, on the virgin emotions, 
 the flowers of life that can never bloom again. Later in life 
 a man can no longer give, he only receives ; what he loves in 
 his mistress is himself; whereas in youth he loves her in him- 
 self. Later, he inoculates the woman who loves him with 
 his tastes, perhaps with his vices ; whereas, in the early days, 
 the woman he loves imparts her virtues, her refinement, in- 
 vites him to what is beautiful by her smile and shows him 
 what devotion means by her example. 
 
 Alas for the man who has not had his Henriette ! Alas for 
 him who has not met a Lady Dudley ! If he marries, the 
 second will fail to retain his wife, the first may perhaps be 
 deserted by his mistress ; happy is he who finds both in one 
 woman ; happy, Natalie, is the man you love ! 
 
 On our return to Paris Arabella and I became more inti- 
 mate ; by small degrees we insensibly abrogated the laws of 
 propriety to which I had subjected myself laws whose observ- 
 ance often leads the world to overlook the false position to 
 which Lady Dudley had committed herself. The world, 
 which dearly loves to get behind the curtain of things, ac- 
 cepts them as soon as it knows the hidden secret. Lovers 
 who are obliged to live in the world of fashion are always 
 wrong to break down the barriers insisted on by the common 
 law of drawing-rooms, wrong not to obey implicitly all the
 
 252 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 conventions demanded by good manners ; more for their own 
 sake than for that of others. Distances to be traversed, super- 
 ficial respect to be maintained, comedies to be played out, 
 mystery to be kept up all the strategy of a happy love-affair 
 fills up life, revives desire and preserves the heart from the 
 lassitude of habit. But a first passion, like a young man, is 
 by nature profligate and cuts down its timber recklessly, in- 
 stead of economizing its resources. 
 
 Arabella scorned such commonplace ideas and submitted to 
 them only to please me. Like the destroyer who marks his 
 prey beforehand to secure it, she hoped to compromise me in 
 tie eyes of all Paris so as to attach me to her permanently. 
 She displayed every coquettish art to keep me at the house, 
 for she was not satisfied with the elegant scandal which, for 
 lack of evidence, countenanced nothing more than whisper- 
 ings behind a fan. Seeing her so anxious to commit an im- 
 prudence which must definitely certify her position, how could 
 I do otherwise than believe in her love ? 
 
 Once involved in the beguilements of an illicit union I fell 
 a prey to despair, for I saw my life cut out in antagonism to 
 received ideas and to Henriette's injunctions. I lived, then, 
 in the sort of frenzy which comes over a consumptive man, 
 when, conscious of his approaching end, he will not allow his 
 breathing to be sounded. There was one corner of my heart 
 I could not look into without anguish ; a spirit of vengeance 
 was constantly suggesting ideas on which I dared not dwell. 
 
 My letters to Henriette painted this mental disorder, and 
 caused her infinite pain. 
 
 "At the cost of so much lost treasure she had hoped I 
 should at least be happy," she wrote, in the only reply I ever 
 received. 
 
 And I was not happy ! Dear Natalie, happiness can only 
 be positive; it cannot endure comparisons. My first ardor 
 expended, I could not help comparing these two women, a 
 contrast I had not yet been capable of studying. In fact, any
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 253 
 
 great passion lies so heavily on our whole nature that, in the 
 first instance, it levels all angles and fills up the ruts of habit 
 which represent our good or evil qualities. But later, in 
 lovers who are thoroughly accustomed to each other, the 
 features of their moral physiognomy reappear; they judge 
 each other calmly, and not unfrequently, in the course of this 
 reaction of character on passion, antipathies are discovered 
 which lead to the separations regarded by superficial minds as 
 evidence of the inconstancy of the human heart. 
 
 This stage had begun for us. Less dazzled by her fascina- 
 tions, and taking my pleasures retail, so to speak, I, half 
 involuntarily perhaps, took stock of Lady Dudley to her 
 disadvantage. 
 
 In the first place, I found her lacking in the mother-wit 
 which distinguishes the Frenchwoman from all others and 
 makes her the most delightful to love, as men have owned 
 who have had opportunities for judging of the women of 
 many lands. When a Frenchwoman loves she is metamor- 
 phosed ; her much talked-of vanity is devoted to beautifying 
 her love; she sacrifices her dangerous conceit and throws all 
 her pretentiousness into the art of loving. She weds her 
 lover's interests, his hatreds, his friendships; in one day she 
 masters the experienced shrewdness of a man of business; she 
 studies the law; she understands the machinery of credit and 
 can seduce a banker's counting-hous'e ; reckless and prodigal, 
 she will not make a single blunder or waste a single louis. 
 She is at once mother, housekeeper, and physician ; and to 
 every fresh phase she gives a grace of delight that betrays 
 infinite love in the most trifling details. She combines the 
 special qualities which charm us in the women of various 
 countries, giving unity to the compound by wit, the growth 
 of France, which vivifies, sanctions, and justifies everything, 
 lends variety, and redeems the monotony of a sentiment based 
 on the present tense of a single verb. 
 
 The Frenchwoman loves once for all; without pause or
 
 254 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 fatigue, at all hours, in public or alone ; in public she finds a 
 tone that argues to qne ear only, her very silence speaks, and 
 her eyes appeal to you without looking up ; if speech and 
 looks are alike prohibited she can use the sand under her feet 
 to trace a thought in ; alone she expresses her passion even in 
 her sleep ; in short, she bends the world to her love. 
 
 The Englishwoman, on the contrary, bends her love to the 
 world. Accustomed by education to preserve the icy man- 
 ners, the egotistic British mien of which I have told you, she 
 opens and shuts her heart with the readiness of English-made 
 machinery. She has an impenetrable mask which she takes 
 on and off with phlegmatic coolness ; as impassioned as an 
 Italian when no eye can see, she turns coldly dignified as soon 
 as the world looks on. Then the man she loves best on earth 
 doubts his power as he meets the utterly passive counte- 
 nance, the calm intonation, the perfect freedom of expression 
 that an Englishwoman assumes as she comes out of her 
 boudoir. At such a moment dissimulation becomes indiffer- 
 ence ; the Englishwoman has forgotten everything. Certainly, 
 a woman who can throw off her love like a garment makes 
 one think that she may change. 
 
 What storms toss the surges of the heart when they are 
 stirred by wounded self-love, as we see a woman taking up 
 her love, laying it down and returning to it, like a piece of 
 needlework ! Such women are too thoroughly mistresses of 
 themselves to be wholly yours ; they allow the world too 
 much influence for your sovereignty to be undivided. In 
 cases when a Frenchwoman comforts the sufferer by a look 
 or betrays her annoyance at intrusion by some lively jest, the 
 Englishwoman's silence is complete : it frets the soul and irri- 
 tates the brain. These women are so accustomed to reign 
 wherever they may be, that, to most of them, the omnipotence 
 of fashion dominates even their pleasures. 
 
 Those who are excessive in prudery should be excessive in 
 love ; Englishwomen are so ; they throw everything into form,
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 255 
 
 but the love of form does not, in them, produce a feeling for 
 art ; they may say what they will, Protestantism and Cathol- 
 icism account for the differences which give to a Frenchwom- 
 an's spirit so great a superiority over the reasoned, calculating 
 love of Englishwomen. Protestantism is skeptical, it examines 
 and kills belief; it is the death of art and of love. Where 
 the world rules the people of the world must obey ; but those 
 who know what passion means flee away ; to them it is intol- 
 erable. 
 
 You may understand, then, how much my self-respect was 
 wounded by discovering that Lady Dudley would not live 
 without the world, and that these British transitions were 
 habitual with her. They were not a necessity imposed on her 
 by the world; no, she naturally showed herself under two 
 aspects adverse to each other ; when she loved it was with 
 intoxication ; no woman of any nationality could be com- 
 pared with her, she was as good as a whole seraglio ; but then 
 a curtain fell on this fairy display and shut out even the remem- 
 brance of it. She would respond neither to a look nor a 
 smile ; she was neither mistress nor slave ; she behaved like 
 an ambassadress compelled to be precise in her phrases and 
 demeanor ; she put me out of patience with her calmness, out- 
 raged my heart by her primness ; she thus stored up her love 
 till it was required, instead of raising it to the ideal by enthu- 
 siasm. In which of the two women was I to believe? 
 
 I felt by a myriad pin-pricks the infinite difference that 
 divided Henriette from Arabella. When Madame de Mort- 
 sauf left me for a few minutes she seemed to charge the air 
 with the care of speaking of her; as she went away the sweep 
 of her gown appealed to my eyes, as its rippling rustle came 
 to my ear when she came back ; there was infinite tenderness 
 in the way her eyelids unfolded when she looked down ; her 
 voice, her musical voice, was a continual caress ; her speech 
 bore witness to an ever-present thought; she was always the 
 same. She did not divide her soul between two atmospheres,
 
 256 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 one burning and the other icy ; in short, Madame de Mort- 
 sauf kept her wit and the bloom of her intelligence to express 
 her feelings, she made herself fascinating to her children and 
 to me by the ideas she uttered. Arabella's wit did not serve 
 her to make life pleasant, she did not exert it for my benefit, 
 it existed only by and for the world ; it was purely satirical, 
 she loved to rend and bite, not for the fun of it, but to 
 gratify a craving. Madame de Mortsauf would have hidden 
 her happiness from every eye ; Lady Arabella wanted to show 
 hers to all Paris, and yet with horrible dissimulation she main- 
 tained the proprieties even while riding with me in the Bois 
 de Boulogne. 
 
 This mixture of ostentation and dignity, of love and cold- 
 ness, was constantly chafing my soul that was at once virgin 
 and impassioned, and as I was incapable of thus rushing from 
 one mood to another my temper suffered ; I was throbbing 
 with love when she relapsed into conventional prudery. 
 When I ventured to complain, not without the greatest defer- 
 ence, she turned her three-barbed tongue on me, mingling 
 the rhodomontade of adoration with the English wit I have 
 tried to describe. As soon as she found herself in antagonism 
 to me she made a sport of wounding my heart and humili- 
 ating my mind, and moulded me like dough. To my remarks 
 as to a medium to be observed in all things, she retorted by 
 caricaturing my ideas and carrying them to extremes. If I 
 reproached her for her conduct, she would ask me if I wanted 
 her to embrace me under the eyes of all Paris at the Italian 
 opera and she took the matter so seriously that I, knowing 
 her mania for making herself talked about, quaked lest she 
 should fulfill her words. 
 
 In spite of her real passion, I never felt in her anything 
 sacred, reserved, and deep, as in Henriette ; she was as insa- 
 tiable as a sandy soil. Madame de Mortsauf was always 
 composed ; she felt my soul in an accent or a glance, while 
 the Marchioness was never overpowered by a look, by a pres-
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 257 
 
 sure of the hand, or a murmured word. Nay, more, the 
 happiness of yesterday was as nothing on the morrow. No 
 proof of love ever surprised her; she had such a craving for 
 excitement, turmoil, and show that nothing, I imagine, came 
 up to her ideal in these points ; hence her frenzied excesses 
 of passion ; it was for her own sake, not for mine, that she 
 indulged her extravagant fancies. 
 
 Madame de Mortsauf's letter, the beacon that still shone on 
 my path, and showed how the most virtuous wife can obey 
 her genius as a Frenchwoman by proving her perpetual vigi- 
 lance, her unfailing comprehension of all my vicissitudes 
 that letter must have enlightened you as to the care with 
 which Henriette kept watch over my material interests, my 
 political connections, my moral conquests and her intimate 
 interest in my life in all permitted ways. 
 
 On all these points Lady Dudley affected the reserve of a 
 mere acquaintance. She never inquired as to my doings, nor 
 my aversions or friendships with men. Lavish for herself, 
 without being generous, she decidedly made too little distinc- 
 tion between interest and love ; whereas, without having 
 tested her, I knew that, to spare me a regret, Henriette would 
 have found for me what she would never have sought for her- 
 self. In one of those catastrophes which may befall the 
 highest and the wealthiest history has many instances I 
 should have taken counsel of Henriette, but I would have 
 been dragged to prison rather than say a word to Lady 
 Dudley. 
 
 So far the contrast is based on feelings, but it was equally 
 great with regard to externals. In France luxury is the ex- 
 pression of the man, the reproduction of his ideas, of his 
 personal poetry ; it represents the character, and, between 
 lovers, gives value to the most trifling attentions by drawing 
 out the ruling idea of the one we love ; but English luxury, 
 which had bewitched me by its selectness and refinement, was 
 as mechanical as the rest. Lady Dudley infused nothing of 
 17
 
 268 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 herself into it ; it was the work of her servants bought, paid 
 for. The thousand comforting attentions at Clochegourde 
 were in Arabella's eyes the concern of the servants; each had 
 his duty and special function. The choice of good footmen 
 was her steward's business, just as if they were horses. This 
 woman felt no attachment to those about her; the death of 
 the best of them would not have affected her ; another, equally 
 well trained, was to be had for money. As to her fellows, I 
 never saw a tear in her eye for the woes of others ; indeed, 
 there was a frank selfishness about her which it was impossible 
 not to laugh at. 
 
 The crimson robe of a great lady covered this iron soul. 
 The exquisite almec who, in the evening, lounged on her rugs 
 and rang all the tinkling bells of amorous folly, could quickly 
 reconcile a young man to the hard and unfeeling English- 
 woman ; indeed, it was only step by step that I discerned the 
 volcanic rock on which I was wasting my labors, since it could 
 never yield a harvest. 
 
 Madame de Mortsauf had read this nature at a glance in 
 their brief meeting; I remembered her prophetic words. 
 Henriette was right throughout : Arabella's love was becoming 
 intolerable. I have since noticed that women who ride well 
 are never tender ; like the Amazons they have lost a breast, 
 and their hearts are petrified in one spot, I know not which. 
 
 Just when I was beginning to feel the weight of this yoke, 
 when weariness was stealing over me, body and soul, when I 
 understood how great a sanctity true feeling can give to love, 
 and when the memories of Clochegourde were too much for 
 me as, in spite of the distance, I smelt the perfume of its 
 roses, heard the song of its nightingales at the moment when 
 I first perceived the stony bed of the torrent under its dimin- 
 ished flood I had a blow which still echoes in my life, for it 
 is repeated every hour. 
 
 I was writing in the King's private room ; he was to go out
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 259 
 
 / 
 
 at four o'clock ; the Due de Lenoncourt was in waiting. As 
 he came into the room the King asked for news of the Coun- 
 tess. I looked up hastily with a too significant gesture, and 
 the King, startled by my eagerness, gave me the look which 
 commonly introduced the stern words he could speak on occa- 
 sion. 
 
 " Sire, my poor daughter is dying," replied the Duke. 
 
 " Will your majesty condescend to grant me leave of ab- 
 sence?" said I, with tears in my eyes, and risking an outburst 
 of wrath. 
 
 "Fly, my lord!" replied he, smiling at the irony he had 
 infused into the words, and letting me off a reprimand in 
 honor of his own wit. 
 
 The Duke, more a courtier than a father, asked for no leave, 
 but got into the carriage with the King. I went off, without 
 saying good-by to Lady Dudley, who by good luck was not at 
 home, and for whom I left a note saying that I was called 
 away on the King's service. At La Croix de Berny I met his 
 majesty returning from Verrieres. As he accepted a bouquet 
 which he dropped at his feet, the King gave me a look full of 
 the royal irony that is so crushingly piercing, and which was 
 as much as to say: "If you mean to become a somebody in 
 political life, come back. Do not amuse yourself with inter- 
 viewing the dead ! " 
 
 The Duke, from his carriage, waved me a melancholy signal 
 with his hand. 
 
 The two gorgeous coaches, drawn by eight horses, the 
 colonels in gold lace, the mounted escort, and the clouds of 
 dust whirled swiftly past to cries of "Vive le roi ! " (Long 
 live the King ! ) And to me it was as though the court had 
 trampled the body of Madame de Mortsauf under foot, with 
 the indifference of nature herself to human disaster. Though 
 he was an excellent good fellow, the Duke, I make no doubt, 
 went off to play whist with MONSIEUR (the Dauphin) after 
 the King had retired. As to the Duchess, it was she, and she
 
 260 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 alone, who long since had dealt her daughter the first death- 
 blow by telling her about Lady Dudley. 
 
 My hasty journey was like a dream, but it was the dream 
 of the ruined gambler ; I was in despair at having had no 
 news. Had her confessor carried severity to the point of for- 
 bidding my entering Clochegourde ? I accused Madeleine, 
 Jacques, the Abb6 de Dominis, everybody, even to Monsieur 
 de Mortsauf. 
 
 After passing Tours, as I turned off to the bridges of Saint- 
 Sauveur, to go down the road that leads to Poncher between 
 poplars those poplars I had admired when I set out in search 
 of my unknown fair I met Monsieur Origet. He guessed 
 that I was going to Clochegourde, I guessed that he was com- 
 ing from it ; we stopped our chaises and got out, I to ask 
 news and he to give it. 
 
 " Well," I asked, " how is Madame de Mortsauf? " 
 
 "I doubt if you will find her alive," said he. "She is 
 enduring a terrible death from inanition. When she sent for 
 me, in the month of June last, no medical power could con- 
 trol the malady ; she had all the symptoms which Monsieur 
 de Mortsauf must have described to you, since he fancied he 
 was suffering from them. The Countess was no longer at the 
 stage of a transient attack due to an internal disorder which 
 medicine can deal with, and which may had to an improved 
 condition, nor was she suffering from a beginning of acute 
 illness which may be cured in time ; her disease had already 
 reached a point at which our art is useless ; it is the incurable 
 result of some sorrow, as a mortal wound is the result of a 
 poniard thrust. The malady is produced by the torpor of an 
 organ as indispensable to life as the action of the heart. Grief 
 had done the work of the dagger. Be under no mistake. 
 What Madame de Mortsauf is dying of is some unconfessed 
 sorrow." 
 
 "Unconfessed?" said I. "Her children have not been 
 ill?"
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 261 
 
 " No," said he, looking at me with meaning. " And since 
 she has been so seriously ill, Monsieur de Mortsauf has left 
 her in peace. I can be of no further use; Monsieur Deslandes 
 from Azay can do everything. There is no remedy, and her 
 sufferings are terrible. Rich, young, handsome and she is 
 dying aged and pinched by hunger, for she will die of starva- 
 tion. For the last forty days the stomach is closed, as it were, 
 and rejects every kind of food in whatever form it is given." 
 
 Monsieur Origet pressed the hand I offered him ; he had 
 almost asked for it by a respectful movement. 
 
 "Courage, monsieur," said he, raising his eyes to heaven. 
 
 The words expressed compassion for the sorrow he sup- 
 posed me to share equally with him ; he had no suspicion of 
 the poisoned dart they bore, like an arrow piercing my heart. 
 I hastily got into my carriage again, promising the postillion 
 a handsome reward if he made good haste. 
 
 In spite of my impatience, I fancied I had made the jour- 
 ney in only a few minutes, so much was I absorbed by the 
 bitter reflections that crowded on my soul. " She is dying 
 of grief and yet her children are well ! then I am the cause 
 of her death ! " My threatening conscience underwent one 
 of those examinations which echo through life, and sometimes 
 beyond it. How feeble, now impotent is human justice ! It 
 punishes none but visible crimes. Why death and disgrace to 
 the assassin who kills with a single blow, who generally 
 comes upon you in your sleep and leaves you to sleep for ever, 
 or who strikes you unexpectedly and spares you the agony of 
 death ? Why a happy life and the world's respect for the 
 murderer who pours venom drop by drop into the soul and 
 undermines the body to destroy it ? How many assassins go 
 unpunished ! What deference for superior lives ! What an 
 acquittal for the homicide caused by moral persecution ! 
 
 Some unknown and avenging hand suddenly lifted the 
 painted curtain that veils society. I saw a number of such 
 victims, as well known to you as to me. Madame de Beau-
 
 262 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 scant, who had set out, dying, for Normandy a few days 
 before my departure ; the Duchesse de Langeais compromised ! 
 Lady Brandon gone to Touraine to die in the humble dwell- 
 ing where Lady Dudley had just spent a fortnight killed 
 by what terrible disaster you know. Our age is full of events 
 of the kind. Who does not know the story of the poor young 
 wife who poisoned herself, overcome by such jealousy as 
 perhaps was killing Madame de Mortsauf? Who has not 
 shuddered at the fate of the charming girl dying, like a flower 
 Cankered by a gad-fly, after two years of married life, the 
 victim of her guileless ignorance, the victim of a wretch with 
 whom Ronquerolles, Montriveau, and de Marsay shake hands 
 because he helps them in their political schemes? Has not 
 Madame d'Aiglemont been on the very verge of the grave ? 
 Would she be alive now but for my brother's care ? 
 
 Science is the world's accomplice in these crimes, for which 
 there is no tribunal. No one, it would seem, ever dies of 
 grief, or despair, or love, or hidden poverty, or hopes fruit- 
 lessly cherished, perpetually uprooted and replanted ! The 
 new nomenclature has ingenious words that account for every- 
 thing: gastritis, pericarditis, the thousand feminine ailments 
 of which the names are spoken in a whisper, are mere pass- 
 ports to the coffin on which hypocritical tears are shed, to be 
 soon wiped away by the lawyer. 
 
 Is there behind all this woe some law of which we know 
 nothing? Must the man who lives to a hundred ruthlessly 
 strew the ground with the dead and see everything destroyed 
 that he may live, just as the millionaire absorbs the efforts of 
 a thousand minor industries ? Is there a strong and venomous 
 type of life which is fed on these sweet and gentle creatures ? 
 Good God ! Was I then one of that race of tigers ? Remorse 
 clawed at my heart with burning fingers and tears ran down 
 my cheeks as I turned into the avenue to Clochegourde, on 
 a damp October morning that brought the dead leaves down 
 from the poplars planted under Henriette's directions that
 
 MADELEINE, JACQUES, AND THE ABBE DE DOMINIS 
 KNEELING AT THE FOOT OF A WOODEN CROSS.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 263 
 
 avenue where I had seen her wave her handkerchief as though 
 to call me back. 
 
 Was she still alive ? Might I yet feel her two white hands 
 laid on my prostrate head ? In that moment I paid the price 
 of every pleasure Arabella had given me, and I thought them 
 dearly bought ! I swore never to see her again and took an 
 aversion for England. Though Lady Dudley is a distinct 
 variety of the species, I involved every Englishwoman in the 
 black cerecloth of my condemnation. 
 
 On entering the grounds I had another shock. I found 
 Madeleine, Jacques, and the Abbe de Dominis all kneeling at 
 the foot of a wooden cross that stood on the corner of a plot 
 of ground which had been included in the park at the time 
 when the gate was erected. Neither the Count nor the 
 Countess had wished to remove it. I sprang out of the chaise, 
 went up to them bathed in tears, my heart wrung at the sight 
 of these two young things and the solemn priest beseeching 
 God. The old huntsman was there, too, standing bareheaded 
 a few paces away. 
 
 "Well, monsieur?" said I to the abbe as I kissed Made- 
 leine and Jacques on the brow ; but they gave me a cold 
 glance and did not interrupt their prayers. 
 
 The abbe arose ; I took his arm to lean on him, pleadingly 
 asking him : "Is she still living ? " He bent his head mildly 
 and sadly. 
 
 " Speak, I entreat you, in the name of our Saviour's Pas- 
 sion ! Why are you praying at the foot of this cross ? Why 
 are you here and not with her ? Why are the children out 
 in this cold morning ? Tell me everything, that I may not 
 blunder fatally in my ignorance." 
 
 " For some days past Madame la Comtesse will only see 
 her children at fixed hours. Monsieur," he went on after a 
 pause, " you may perhaps have to wait some hours before you 
 can see Madame de Mortsauf : she is terribly altered ! But 
 it will be well to prepare her for the interview ; you might
 
 264 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 cause her some increase of suffering as to death, it would be 
 a mercy ! " 
 
 I pressed the holy man's hand ; his look and voice touched 
 a wound without reopening it. 
 
 " We are all praying for her here," he went on, " for she, 
 so saintly, so resigned, so fit to die, has for the last few days 
 had a secret horror of death ; she looks at us who are full of 
 life with eyes in which, for the first time, there is an expres- 
 sion of gloom and envy. Her delusions are, I think, not so 
 much the result of a fear of dying as of a sort of inward in- 
 toxication the faded flowers of her youth rotting as they 
 wither. Yes, the angel of evil is struggling with heaven for 
 that beautiful soul. Madame is going through her agony in 
 the garden ; her tears mingle with the white roses that crowned 
 her head as a daughter of Jephtha, though married, and that 
 have fallen one by one. 
 
 " Wait a little while ; do not let her see you yet ; you will 
 bring in the glitter of the court, she will see in your face a 
 reflection of worldly enjoyments, and you will add to her 
 regrets. Have pity on a weakness which God Himself for- 
 gave to His Son made man. Though what merit indeed 
 should we have in triumphing where there was no adversary ? 
 Allow us, her director and myself, two old men whose ruins 
 cannot offend her sight, to prepare her for this unlooked-for 
 interview and emotions which the Abbe Birotteau had desired 
 her to forego. But there is in the things of this world an 
 invisible warp of celestial causation which a religious eye can 
 discern, and, since you have come here, you have perhaps 
 been guided by one of the stars which shine in the moral 
 sphere and lead to the tomb as they did to the manger." 
 
 And then he told me, with the unctuous eloquence that 
 falls on the spirit like dew, that for the last six months the 
 Countess' sufferings had increased every day, in spite of all 
 Origet could do for her. The doctor had come to Cloche- 
 gourde every evening for two months, striving to snatch this
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 265 
 
 prey from death, for the Countess had said to him : " Save 
 me!" 
 
 " But to cure the body the heart must be cured ! " the old 
 physician had one day exclaimed. 
 
 "As the malady increased the gentle creature's words be- 
 came bitter," the Abbe de Dominis went on. " She cries 
 out to earth to keep her, rather than to God to take her; 
 then she repents of murmuring against the decrees of the 
 Most High. These alternations rend her heart, and make 
 the conflict terrible between body and soul. Often it is the 
 body that conquers. 
 
 "'You have cost me dear! ' she said one day to Made- 
 leine and Jacques, sending them away from her bedside. 
 But in the next breath, called back to God by seeing me, she 
 spoke these angelic words to Mademoiselle Madeleine : ' The 
 happiness of others becomes the joy of those who can no 
 longer be happy.' And her accent was so pathetic that I felt 
 my own eyes moisten. She falls, indeed, but each time she 
 rises again nearer to heaven." 
 
 Struck by the successive messages sent to me by fate, all 
 leading up, in this vast concert of woe, through mournful 
 modulations, to the funereal theme, the great cry of dying 
 love, I exclaimed 
 
 " Then you do believe that this beautiful lily, cut off in its 
 prime, will bloom again in heaven?" 
 
 " You left her as a flower," he replied, " but you will find 
 her burnt, purified in the fire of sorrow, as pure as a diamond 
 still lying hidden in rubbish. Yes, that brilliant spirit, that 
 angelical star, will emerge glorified from the clouds about it, 
 to pass into the realms of light." 
 
 Just as I pressed the hand of this apostolic man, my heart 
 overpowered with gratitude, the Count's perfectly white head 
 was seen outside the house, and he flew to meet me with a 
 gesture of great surprise. 
 
 "She was right! Here he is. 'Felix, Felix, Felix!
 
 266 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 F6lix is come ! ' Madame de Mortsauf cried out. My dear 
 fellow," he added, with looks distraught by terror, " death is 
 here. Why did it not take an old lunatic like me, whom it 
 had already laid hands on ? " 
 
 I walked on to the house, summoning all my courage ; but 
 on the threshold of the long corridor through the house, 
 from the lawn to the terrace steps, I was met by the Abbe 
 Birotteau. 
 
 " Madame la Comtesse begs you will not go to her yet," 
 said he. 
 
 Looking around me I saw the servants coming and going, 
 all very busy, dizzy with grief, and evidently startled by the 
 orders delivered to them through Manette. 
 
 "What is the matter?" said the Count, irritated by this 
 bustle, not only from a dread of the terrible end, but as a 
 consequence of his naturally petulant temper, which seemed 
 to be worse than before. 
 
 " A sick woman's caprice," replied the abbe. "Madame 
 la Comtesse does not choose to receive Monsieur le Vicomte 
 in the state she is in. She talks of dressing. Why con- 
 tradict her? " 
 
 Manette went to call Madeleine, and a few minutes later 
 we saw her come out again from her mother's room. As we 
 walked, all five of us Jacques and his father, the two abbes 
 and I in perfect silence along the front to the lawn, we 
 went beyond the house. I looked by turns at Montvazon and 
 at Azay, contemplating the yellowing valley, in mourning as 
 it seemed, and responding, as it ever did, to the feelings that 
 agitated me. 
 
 I suddenly saw the dear " Mignonne " running to seek 
 autumn flowers, gathering them to compose a nosegay, no 
 doubt ; and thinking of all that was conveyed by this reflec- 
 tion of my loving attentions, a strange, indescribable sensa- 
 tion came over me, I tottered, my eyes grew dim, and the 
 two priests between whom I was walking carried me to the
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY, 267 
 
 low parapet of a terrace where I sat for some time, broken, as 
 it were, but without entirely losing consciousness. 
 
 " Poor Felix ! " said the Count. " She said you were not 
 to be written to ; she knows how much you love her ! " 
 
 Though prepared to suffer, I had found myself too weak to 
 bear a contemplation which summed up all my happy mem- 
 ories. " There," thought I to myself, " there lies the heath, 
 as dry as a skeleton, in the gray daylight, and in the midst of 
 it there used to be one lonely flowering shrub which, in my 
 walks of old, I could never admire without a shudder of ill- 
 omen, for it was the emblem of this dreadful day ! " 
 
 Everything was dejected about the little mansion, formerly 
 so lively, so busy. Everything mourned, everything spoke 
 of despair and neglect. The paths were but half-raked, 
 work begun had been left unfinished, the laborers stood idle, 
 gazing at the house. Though the vintage was being gathered, 
 there was no noise, no chatter of tongues. The vineyards 
 seemed deserted, so profound was the silence. 
 
 We walked on, grief repressing commonplace words, but 
 listening to the Count, the only one of us who could talk. 
 Having said the things which his mechanical affection for his 
 wife dictated, from sheer habit and tendency of mind, he 
 began finding fault with the Countess. His wife had never 
 chosen to take any care of herself nor to listen when he gave 
 her good counsel ; he had discerned the first symptoms of her 
 illness, for he had studied them in himself, he had physicked 
 and cured himself with no aid but that of a strictly regulated 
 diet and the avoidance of any strong emotion. He could per- 
 fectly well have cured the Countess, but a husband cannot 
 take on himself such a responsibility, especially when he is so 
 unhappy as to find his experience treated with contempt. In 
 spite of all he could say, the Countess had called in Origet 
 for her adviser Origet, who had so mismanaged him and 
 was killing his wife ! If the cause of this disease was excess 
 of troubles, he certainly had been in a condition to develop
 
 268 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 it, but what troubles could his wife have had ? The Countess 
 was quite happy, she had nothing to grieve or annoy her. 
 Their fortune was assured, thanks to his care and his good 
 management ; he allowed Madame de Mortsauf to reign 
 supreme at Clochegourde ; their children well brought up 
 and in good health caused them no further anxiety; what 
 then could have brought on the malady? 
 
 And he mixed up the expression of his despair with the 
 silliest accusations. Then, presently, recalled by some remi- 
 niscence to the admiration the noble creature deserved, tears 
 started to his eyes so long since dried up. 
 
 Madeleine came to tell me that her mother was ready to see 
 me. The Abbe Birotteau came with me. The grave little 
 girl remained with her father, saying that her mother wished 
 to see me alone, making it her excuse that the presence of 
 several persons was too fatiguing. The solemnity of the mo- 
 ment gave me that strange sense of being hot within and cold 
 on the surface that is so overwhelming on some great occa- 
 sions in life. The Abbe Birotteau, one of the men whom 
 God has marked for His own by clothing them in gentleness 
 and simplicity and endowing them with patience and mercy, 
 drew me aside. 
 
 "Monsieur," he said, "you must know that I have done 
 all that was humanly possible to hinder this meeting between 
 you. The salvation of that saint required it. I thought only 
 of her, not of you. Now that you are going once more to 
 see her, whose door ought to be held against you by angels, I 
 must inform you that I intend to be present to protect her 
 against you and perhaps against herself! Respect her feeble 
 state. I ask you to be merciful, not as a priest, but as a 
 humble friend of whom you knew not and who would fain 
 save you from remorse. 
 
 " Our poor invalid is dying literally of hunger and thirst. 
 Since the morning she has been suffering from the feverish
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 269 
 
 irritability that precedes that dreadful end, and I cannot tell 
 you how sorely she regrets leaving life. The outcries of her 
 rebellious flesh are buried in my heart where they wound still 
 tender echoes ; but Monsieur de Dominis and I have assumed 
 this religious duty so as to conceal the spectacle of her mental 
 agony from the noble family which has lost its morning and 
 its evening star. For her husband, her children, her servants, 
 all ask, ' Where is she ? ' so greatly is she changed. 
 
 " When she sees you her laments will begin afresh. Put 
 from you the thoughts of the man of the world, forget all the 
 vanities of the heart, be to her the advocate of heaven and 
 not of the world. Do not suffer that saint to die in a mo- 
 ment of doubt, her last accents words of despair ! " 
 
 I made no reply. My silence filled the poor priest with 
 consternation. I saw, I heard, I walked, and yet I was no 
 longer on the earth. The one thought, "What can have hap- 
 pened ? In what state shall I find her that everybody takes 
 such elaborate precautions?" gave rise to apprehensions all 
 the more torturing because they were undefined. That thought 
 summed up every possible sorrow. 
 
 We reached the door of her room, and the anxious priest 
 opened it. I then saw Henriette, dressed in white, reclining 
 on her little sofa in front of the fireplace ; on the mantel 
 were two vases filled with flowers ; there were more flowers on 
 a table in front of the window. The abbe's face, amazed at 
 this unexpectedly festal sight and at the change in the room 
 so suddenly restored to its original order, showed me that the 
 dying woman had banished all the odious apparatus that sur- 
 rounds a bed of sickness. She had exerted the last strength 
 of a dying fever to dress her disordered room for the worthy 
 reception of him whom she loved at this moment above all 
 else. 
 
 Her haggard face, under a voluminous lace wrapper, had 
 the greenish pallor of magnolia flowers when they first open, 
 and looked like the first outline for a portrait of a head we
 
 270 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 love sketched in chalk on yellow-white canvas ; but, to under- 
 stand how deeply the vulture's talons clutched at my heart, 
 picture this sketch with the eyes finished and full of life 
 hollow eyes, glittering with unwonted light in a colorless 
 face. She no longer had the calm supremacy which she had 
 derived from constant victory over her griefs. Her brow, the 
 only part of her face that had preserved its fine proportions, 
 expressed the aggressive audacity of suppressed craving and 
 threats. In spite of the waxen hues of her drawn face, inter- 
 nal fires flashed forth with an effluence that resembled the 
 quivering atmosphere over the fields on a hot day. Her 
 hollow temples, her sunken cheeks, showed the bony structure 
 of the face, and her white lips wore a smile that vaguely re- 
 sembled the grin of a skull. Her gown, crossed over her 
 bosom, betrayed how thin she had grown. The expression 
 of her face plainly showed that she knew how much she was 
 changed, and that it had brought her to despair. She was no 
 longer the sportive Henriette, nor the sublime and saintly 
 Madame de Mortsauf; but the nameless thing that Bossuet 
 speaks of, struggling against annihilation, urged by hunger 
 and cheated appetites, to a self-centred battle of life and 
 death. 
 
 I sat down by her side and took her hand to kiss it ; it was 
 burning and dry. She read my pained surprise in the very 
 effort I made to conceal it. Her discolored lips were stretched 
 over her ravenous teeth in an attempt at one of those forced 
 smiles under which we disguise alike irony and vengeance, the 
 anticipation of pleasure, ecstasy of soul, or the fury of disap- 
 pointment. 
 
 "It is death, my poor Felix," she said ; "and death does 
 not charm you ! Hideous death death which every creature, 
 even the boldest lover, holds in horror. Love ceases here ! 
 I knew it full well. Lady Dudley will never see you shocked 
 by such a change. Oh ! why have I so longed for you, 
 Flix? And at last you are here and I reward your devo-
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 271 
 
 tion by the horrible spectacle which made the Comte de 
 Ranee turn Trappist ; I, who hoped to dwell in your remem- 
 brance beautiful, noble, like an immortal lily, I destroy all 
 your illusions. True love makes no calculations. 
 
 " But do not fly : stay. Monsieur Origet thought me much 
 better this morning ; I shall live again be renewed under your 
 eyes. And then, when I shall have recovered my strength a 
 little, when I can take some food, I shall grow handsome 
 again. I am but five-and-thirty ; I may have some years of 
 beauty yet. Happiness renews youth, and I mean to be 
 happy. I have made the most delightful plans. We will 
 leave them all at Clochegourde and go to Italy together." 
 
 Tears rose to my eyes; I turned away to the table, as if to 
 admire the flowers ; the abbe hastily came up to me and 
 leaned over the nosegay: "No tears," said he in a whisper. 
 
 " What, Henriette, have you ceased to love our dear 
 valley? " said I, as an excuse for my sudden movement. 
 
 "No," she said, touching my forehead with her lips with 
 coaxing softness ; " but without you it is fatal to me without 
 thee (sans toi}" she corrected herself, touching my ear with 
 her hot lips to breathe the two words like a sigh. 
 
 I was dismayed by this crazy caress, which gave weight to 
 the terrible hints of the two priests. My first surprise passed 
 off; but though I could now exercise my reason, my will was 
 not strong enough to restrain the nervous excitement that 
 tormented me during this scene. I listened without replying, 
 or rather I replied by a fixed smile and nods of assent, merely 
 not to contradict her, as a mother treats her child. After 
 being startled by the change in her person, I perceived that 
 the woman who had once been so dignified in her lofti- 
 ness had now, in her attitude, her voice, her manners, her 
 looks, and her ideas, the artless simplicity of a child, the 
 ingenuous grace, the restless movements, the absolute indiffer- 
 ence to everything that is not itself or the object of its desire, 
 which, in a child, cry out for protection.
 
 272 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 Is it always thus with the dying? Do they cast off every 
 social disguise, as a child has not yet assumed them ? Or was 
 it that the Countess, on the brink of eternity, while rejecting 
 every human emotion but love, expressed its sweet innocence 
 after the manner of Chloe ? 
 
 " You will bring me health as you used to do, Flix? " said 
 she, " and my valley will be good to rrie again. How can I 
 help eating anything you give me ? You are such a good 
 nurse ! And, beside, you are so rich in health and strength 
 that life is contagious from you. 
 
 "My dear, prove to me that I am not to die, and to die 
 disappointed. They think that I suffer most from thirst. Oh, 
 yes, I am very thirsty, my dear. It hurts me dreadfully to see 
 the waters of the Indre ; but my heart suffers a more burning 
 thirst. I thirsted for you," she said in a smothered voice, 
 taking my hands in her burning hands and drawing me 
 toward her to speak the words in my ear. " My agony was 
 that I could not see you. Did you not bid me live? I will 
 live ! I will ride I, too, I will know everything Paris, fes- 
 tivities, pleasures ! " 
 
 Oh, Natalie ! this dreadful outcry, which the materialism of 
 the senses makes so cold at a distance, made our ears tingle 
 the old priest's and mine ; the tones of that beautiful voice 
 represented the struggles of a whole life, the anguish of a true 
 love always balked. It was indescribable torture to me and 
 grewsome to the abbe. 
 
 The Countess stood up with an impatient effort, like a child 
 that wants a toy. When the confessor saw his penitent in 
 this mood, the poor man fell on his knees, clasped his hands, 
 and began to pray. 
 
 "Yes, I will live ! " she cried, making me stand, too, and 
 leaning on me ; " live on realities and not on lies. My 
 whole life has been one of lies ; I have been counting them 
 over these last days. Is it possible that I should die, I who 
 have not lived ! I who have never been to meet any one on
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 273 
 
 a heath?" She paused, seemed to listen, and smelt some- 
 thing through the very walls. 
 
 " Felix, the vintagers are going to dinner, and I, the mis- 
 tress, am starving," she said in a childish tone. " It is the 
 same with love ; they are happy ! ' ' 
 
 "Kyrie eleison.'" said the poor abbe, who, with clasped 
 hands and eyes raised to heaven, was repeating litanies. 
 
 She threw her arms around my neck, clasping me with 
 vehemence as she said 
 
 " You shall escape me no more ! I mean to be loved, I 
 will be as mad as Lady Dudley, I will learn English to say 
 My Dee very prettily." She gave me a little nod, as she had 
 been wont to do when leaving me, to assure me that she would 
 return immediately. " We will dine together," said she. 
 " I will go and tell Manette " But she stopped, over- 
 come by weakness, and I laid her, dressed as she was, on her 
 bed. 
 
 " Once before you carried me just so," she said, opening 
 her eyes. 
 
 She was very light, but very hot ; as I held her I felt her 
 whole body burning. Monsieur Deslandes came in, and was 
 astonished to find the room dressed out ; on seeing me he un- 
 derstood everything. 
 
 " We suffer much before we die, monsieur," said she in a 
 husky voice. 
 
 He sat down, felt her pulse, rose hastily, spoke a few words 
 to the priest in an undertone, and left the room; I followed 
 him. 
 
 " What are you going to do? " I asked him. 
 
 "To spare her intolerable torments," said he. "Who 
 could have conceived of so much vitality ? We cannot 
 understand how she is still living. This is the forty-second 
 day that the Countess has neither eaten, drunk, nor slept." 
 
 Monsieur Deslandes sent for Manette. The abbe led me 
 into the gardens. 
 18
 
 274 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 "Let us leave the doctor free," said he. "With Ma- 
 nette's help he will wrap her in opium. Well, you have 
 heard her," he said, " if indeed it is she who yields to these 
 mad impulses 
 
 " No," said I, "it is she no more." 
 
 I was stupefied with grief. As I walked on, every detail of 
 this brief scene gained importance. I hastily went out of the 
 little gate of the lower terrace and seated myself in the punt, 
 where I ensconced myself to be left alone with my thoughts. 
 I tried to tear myself away from the power by which I 
 lived ; a torture like that by which the Tartars were wont to 
 punish adultery by wedging a limb of the guilty person into 
 a cleft rock, and giving him a knife wherewith to free himself 
 if he did not wish to starve ; a fearful penance through which 
 my soul was passing, since I had to amputate its nobler half. 
 My life, too, was a failure ! 
 
 Despair suggested strange ideas. Now, I would die with 
 her ; again, I would cloister myself at La Meilleraye where 
 the Trappists had just established a retreat. My clouded eyes 
 no longer saw external objects. I gazed at the windows of 
 the room where Henriette lay suffering, fancying I saw the 
 light that burned there that night when I had dedicated my- 
 self to her. Ought I not to have obeyed the simple rule of 
 life she had laid down for me, preserving myself hers in the toil 
 of business? Had she not enjoined on me to become a great 
 man, so as to preserve myself from the base and degrading 
 passions to which I had given way like every other man? j 
 Was not chastity a sublime distinction which I had failed to \ 
 keep. Love, as Arabella conceived of it, suddenly filled me 
 with disgust. 
 
 Just as I raised my stricken head, wondering whence hence- 
 forth I was to derive light and hope, a slight rustle disturbed 
 the air ; I looked toward the terrace and saw Madeleine 
 slowly walking there, alone. While I made my way up to the 
 terrace, intending to ask the dear child the reason of the cold
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 275 
 
 look she had given me at the foot of the cross, she had seated 
 herself on the bench ; as she saw me coming she arose, affect- 
 ing not to have perceived me, so as not to be alone with me ; 
 her step was rapid and significant. She hated me. She was 
 flying from her mother's murderer. Returning to the house 
 up the flight of steps I saw Madeleine standing motionless, 
 listening to my approach. Jacques was sitting on a step, and 
 his attitude was expressive of the same insensibility as had 
 struck me when we were walking together, leaving me pos- 
 sessed by such ideas as we bury in a corner of the soul to 
 return to and examine later, at leisure. I have observed that 
 all those who are doomed to die young are calmly indifferent 
 to burials. 
 
 I wanted to question this melancholy soul. Had Madeleine 
 kept her thoughts to herself, or had she communicated her 
 hatred to Jacques ? 
 
 "You know," said I, to open a conversation, "that you 
 have in me a most devoted brother." 
 
 "Your friendship is worthless to me," said he. " I shall 
 follow my mother," and he gave me a fierce look of suffering. 
 
 " Jacques ! " I cried, " you too ? " 
 
 He coughed and turned away; then when he came back 
 he hastily showed me his bloodstained handkerchief. 
 
 " You understand ? " he said. 
 
 Thus each had a secret. As I afterward saw, the brother 
 and sister avoided each other. Henriette gone, everything at 
 Clochegourde was falling into ruin. 
 
 "Madame is asleep," Manette came to tell us, happy to 
 see the Countess reprieved from pain. 
 
 In such fearful moments, though everybody knows the in- 
 evitable end, true affection goes crazy and clings to the smallest 
 joys. The minutes are ages which we would gladly make 
 ages of ease. We wish that the sufferer might sleep in roses ; 
 we would take their pain if we could ; we long that the last 
 sigh should be unconsciously breathed.
 
 276 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 " Monsieur Deslandes had the flowers removed ; they were 
 too much for madame's nerves," said Manette. 
 
 So it was the flowers that had made her delirious ; she was 
 not guilty. The loves of earthly creatures, the joys of fruitful- 
 ness, the yearnings of plants had intoxicated her with their 
 fragrance, and had no doubt revived the thoughts of happy 
 love that had slumbered within her from her youth. 
 
 " Come, Monsieur Felix," said Manette, "come and look 
 at madame; she is as lovely as an angel." 
 
 I went back to the dying woman's room just as the setting 
 sun was gilding the gabled roofs of the Chateau of Azay. 
 All was still and clear. A softened light fell upon the bed 
 where Henriette lay lapped in opium. At this moment the 
 body was, so to speak, annihilated ; the soul alone was seen 
 in the face, as serene as a bright sky after a storm. Blanche 
 and Henriette the two beautiful aspects of the same woman 
 appeared before me, all the more beautiful because my 
 memory, my mind, my imagination, helping nature, restored 
 the perfection of each feature, to which the spirit triumphant 
 lent fitful lights, coming and going and as she breathed. 
 
 The two priests sat at the foot of the bed. The Count 
 stood thunderstruck, recognizing the banners of death float- 
 ing above that adored head. I took a seat on the sofa she 
 had been occupying. Then we four exchanged glances in 
 which our admiration of her heavenly beauty mingled with 
 tears of regret. 
 
 The gleam of intelligence announced the return of God to 
 one of His loveliest tabernacles. The Abbe de Dominis and 
 I communicated our mutual feelings by signs. Yes, the 
 angels kept guard over Henriette ! Yes, their swords flashed 
 above that noble brow, where we now saw the august stamp 
 of virtue which of old had made the soul visible, as it were, 
 holding communion with the spirits of its own sphere. The 
 lines of her face were purified, every feature grew grander and 
 more majestic under the invisible censers of the seraphim that
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 277 
 
 watched over her. The green hues of physical torment gave 
 way to the perfect whiteness, the dead, cold pallor of ap- 
 proaching death. 
 
 Jacques and Madeleine came in ; Madeleine gave us all a 
 thrill by the adoring impulse which made her fall on her 
 knees by the bed, clasp her hands and utter the inspired 
 exclamation : "At last ! This is my mother ! " Jacques was 
 smiling : he knew that he was following his mother whither 
 she was going. 
 
 " She is reaching the haven ! " said the Abbe Birotteau. 
 
 The Abbe de Dominis looked at me, as much as to say : 
 " Did I not tell you that the star would rise effulgent? " 
 
 Madeleine kept her eyes riveted on her mother, breathing 
 with her breath, echoing her faint sighs, the last thread that 
 held her to life, we counting them with dread lest it should 
 break at each effort. Like an angel at the gates of the sanc- 
 tuary the young girl was at once eager and calm, strong and 
 prostrate. 
 
 At this moment the Angelus rang out from the village 
 belfry ; the waves of mellowed air brought up the sound in 
 gusts, announcing that at this hour all Christendom was re- 
 peating the words spoken by the angel to the woman who 
 made reparation for the sins of her sex. This evening the Ave 
 Maria came to us as a greeting from heaven. The prophecy 
 was so sure, the event so near, that we melted into tears. 
 
 The murmurous sounds of the evening a melodious 
 breeze in the leaves, the last twitter of the birds, the buzz 
 and hum of insects, the voice of waters, the plaintive cry of 
 the tree-frog all the land was taking leave of the loveliest 
 lily of this valley and her simple, rural life. The religious 
 poetry of the scene, added to all this natural poetry, so well 
 expressed a chant of departure that our sobs began again. 
 
 Though the bedroom door was open, we were so lost in 
 this terrible contemplation, trying to stamp on our minds the 
 memory of it for ever, that we did not observe all the ser-
 
 278 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 vants of the house kneeling in a group outside and putting up 
 fervent prayers. All these poor souls, accustomed to hope, 
 had thought they should still keep their mistress, and these 
 unmistakable signs overwhelmed them. At a sign from the 
 Abb6 Birotteau the old huntsman went to fetch the cure of 
 Sachet The doctor, standing by the bed, as calm as science, 
 holding his patient's torpid hand, had signed to the confessor 
 to express that this sleep was the last hour of ease that was 
 given to the recalled angel. The moment had come for 
 administering the last sacraments of the church. 
 
 At nine o'clock she gently awoke and looked at us in mild 
 surprise ; we saw our idol in all the beauty of her best days. 
 
 " Mother, you are too beautiful to die ; life and health are 
 coming back to you ! " cried Madeleine. 
 
 "My dear daughter, I shall live but in you," said she, 
 with a smile. 
 
 Then came heart-rending farewells from the mother to the 
 children and from the children to the mother. Monsieur de 
 Mortsauf kissed his wife piously on the brow. The Countess 
 flushed as she saw me. 
 
 " Dear Felix," said she, " this is, I believe, the only grief 
 I shall ever have given you ! But forget all I may have said 
 to you, poor crazed thing as I was!" She held out her 
 hand ; I took it to kiss, and she said with a smile of virtue 
 "As of old, Felix!" 
 
 We all left the room, and remained in the drawing-room 
 while the sick woman made her last confession. I sat down 
 next to Madeleine. In the presence of them all she could 
 not avoid me without being rude ; but, as her mother used, 
 she looked at no one and kept silence, without once raising 
 her eyes to mine. 
 
 " Dear Madeleine," said I in a low voice, "what grievance 
 have you against me? Why such coldness when, in the pres- 
 ence of death, we ought to be friends ? " 
 
 " I fancy I can hear what my mother is saying at this
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 279 
 
 moment," replied she, putting on the expression that Ingres 
 had given to his "Mother of God," the mourning Virgin 
 preparing to protect the world in which her Son is about to 
 perish. 
 
 "Then you condemn me at the moment when your mother 
 is absolving me, supposing me to be guilty." 
 
 " You, and always you ! " She spoke with unreasoning 
 hatred, like that of a Corsican, as implacable as all judgments 
 are that are pronounced by those who, not knowing life, 
 admit no extenuation of the sins committed against the laws 
 of the heart. 
 
 An hour passed in utter silence. The Abbe Birotteau came 
 in after hearing the Comtesse de Mortsauf 's general confes- 
 sion, and we all went into her room again. Henriette, in 
 obedience to one of the ideas that occur to noble souls, all 
 sisters in purpose, had been robed in a long garment that 
 was to serve as her winding-sheet. We found her sitting up 
 in bed, beautiful with expiation and hope. I saw in the fire- 
 place the black ashes of my letters which had just been burnt ; 
 a sacrifice she would not make, the confessor told me, till she 
 was at the point of death. She smiled at us all her old 
 smile. Her eyes, moist with tears, were, we saw, finally 
 unsealed ; she already saw the celestial joys of the promised 
 land. 
 
 " Dear Felix," she said, holding out her hand and pressing 
 mine. " Stay. You must be present at one of the closing 
 scenes of my life, which will not be one of the least painful 
 of all, but in which you are intimately concerned." 
 
 She made a sign, and the door was shut. By her desire 
 the Count sat down ; the Abbe Birotteau and I remained 
 standing. With Manette's assistance the Countess got up and 
 knelt down before the astonished Count, insisting on remain- 
 ing there. Then, when Manette had left the room, she raised 
 her head, which she had bent, resting it on his knees. 
 
 "Though I have always been a faithful wife to you," said
 
 280 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 she in a broken voice, "I have, perhaps, monsieur, failed in 
 my duties. I have prayed to God to give me strength to ask 
 your forgiveness of my faults. I have perhaps devoted to the 
 cares of a friendship outside my home attentions more affec- 
 tionate than I owed even to you. Perhaps I have annoyed 
 you by the comparisons you may have drawn between those 
 cares, those thoughts, and such as I have given to you. I 
 have known," she said in a very low voice, "a great friend- 
 ship, which no one, not even he who was its object, ever 
 wholly knew. Though I have been virtuous by all human 
 law, a blameless wife to you, thoughts voluntary or invol- 
 untary have found their way into my mind and I fear I may 
 have cherished them too gladly. But as I have always loved 
 you truly, and have been your obedient wife, as the clouds 
 passing across the sky have never darkened its clearness, you 
 behold me craving your blessing with an unsullied brow. I 
 can die without a bitter pang if I may hear from your lips 
 one loving word for your Blanche, the mother of your chil- 
 dren, and if you will forgive all these things, which she did 
 not forgive herself till she had received the absolution of the 
 tribunal to which we all bow." 
 
 "Blanche, Blanche," cried the old man, suddenly burst- 
 ing into tears over his wife's head, " do you want to kill 
 me?" 
 
 He raised her in his arms with unwonted strength, and 
 clasping her to him, "Have I no forgiveness to ask ?" he 
 went on. " Have I not often been harsh? Are you not mag- 
 nifying a child's scruples?" 
 
 "Perhaps," she answered. "But be tender, my dear, to 
 the weakness of the dying ; soothe my soul. When you are 
 in the hour of death you will remember that I blessed you as 
 we parted. 
 
 " Will you allow me to leave to our friend here this pledge 
 of deep regard ? " said she, pointing to a letter on the chim- 
 ney-shelf. " He is now my adopted son, nothing more. The
 
 I 
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 281 
 
 heart, my dear Count, has its bequests to make ; my last 
 words are to impress on our dear Felix certain duties to be 
 carried out ; I do not think I have expected too much of him 
 grant that I may not have expected too much of you in 
 allowing myself to bequeath to him a few thoughts. I am 
 still a woman," she said, bowing her head with sweet melan- 
 choly ; " after being forgiven, I ask a favor. Read it, but not 
 until after my death," she added, handing me the mysterious 
 manuscript. 
 
 The Count saw his wife turn paler ; he lifted her, and him- 
 self carried her to the bed, where we gathered round her. 
 
 " Felix," said she, '' I may have done you some wrong. I 
 may often have given you pain by leading you to hope for 
 joys I dared not give ; but is it not to my courage as a wife 
 and as a mother that I owe the comfort of dying reconciled 
 to you all ? So you, too, will forgive me, you who have so 
 often accused me, and whose injustice was a pleasure to me." 
 
 The Abbe Birotteau put his finger to his lips. At this hint 
 the dying woman bowed her head ; weakness was too much 
 for her ; she waved her hands to express that the priest, the 
 children, and the servants were to be admitted ; then, with a 
 commanding gesture to me, she pointed to the Count, quite 
 crushed, and her children as they entered. The sight of that 
 father, whose insanity none knew save herself and me, the 
 guardian now of these delicate creatures, inspired her with 
 mute entreaties which fell on my soul like sacred fire. Before 
 receiving extreme unction she begged pardon of her servants 
 for being sometimes rough with them, she asked their prayers, 
 and commended each separately to the Count. 'She nobly 
 confessed that, during the past few months, she had uttered 
 complaints little worthy of a Christian, which might have 
 scandalized her dependents. She had been cold to her chil- 
 dren, and had given way to unseemly sentiments ; but she 
 ascribed to her intolerable sufferings this want of submission 
 to the will of God.
 
 282 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 Finally, she publicly thanked the Abbe Birotteau, with 
 touching and heartfelt effusiveness, for having shown her the 
 vanity of all earthly things. 
 
 When she ceased speaking all began to pray, and the cure 
 of Sache administered the viaticum. A few minutes later her 
 breathing became difficult, a cloud dimmed her eyes, though 
 she presently opened them again to give me a last look, and 
 she died in the presence of us all, hearing perhaps the chorus 
 of our sobs. 
 
 At the moment when she breathed her last sigh the last 
 pang of a life that was one long pain, I felt myself struck by 
 a blow which paralyzed all my faculties. 
 
 The Count and I remained by the bed of death all night, 
 with the two abbes and the cure, watching the dead by the 
 light of the tapers, as fhe lay on the mattress, calm now, 
 where she had suffered so much. 
 
 This was my first personal knowledge of death. I sat the 
 whole night through, my eyes fixed on Henriette, fascinated 
 by the pure expression given by the stilling of every tempest, 
 by the pallor of the face in which I still read numberless affec- 
 tions, which could no longer respond to my love. 
 
 What majesty there is in that silence and coldness ! How 
 many reflections do they utter ! What beauty in that perfect 
 repose, what command in that motionless sleep ! All the past 
 is there, and the future has begun. Ah ! I loved her as well 
 in death as I had in life. 
 
 In the morning the Count went to bed, the three weary 
 priests fell asleep at that hour of exhaustion, so well known 
 to all who have watched through a night. And then, alone 
 with her, I could, unseen, kiss her brow with all the love she 
 had never allowed me to express. 
 
 On the next day but one, in a cool autumn morning, we 
 followed the Countess to her last home. She was borne to 
 the grave by the old huntsman, the two Martineaus, and Ma-
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 283 
 
 nette's husband. We went down the road I had so gleefully 
 come up on the day when I returned to her. We crossed the 
 valley of the Indre to reach the little graveyard of Sache a 
 humble village cemetery, lying at the back of the church on 
 the brow of a hill, where she had desired to be buried, out of 
 Christian humility, with a plain cross of black wood, like a 
 poor laboring woman, as she had said. 
 
 When, from the middle of the valley, I caught sight of the 
 village church and the graveyard, I was seized with a con- 
 vulsive shudder. Alas ! we each have a Golgotha in our life, 
 where we leave our first three and thirty years, receiving then 
 a spear-thrust in our heart, and feeling on our head a crown 
 of thorns in the place of the crown of roses : this hill was to 
 me the Mount of Expiation. 
 
 We were followed by an immense crowd that had collected 
 to express the regrets of the whole valley where she had 
 silently buried endless acts of benevolence. We knew from 
 Manette, whom she trusted entirely, that she economized 
 in dress to help the poor when her savings were insuffi- 
 cient. Naked children had been clothed, baby-linen supplied, 
 mothers rescued, sacks of corn bought of the millers in winter 
 for helpless old men, a cow bestowed on a poverty-stricken 
 household ; in short, all the good works of a Christian, a 
 mother, a lady bountiful ; and sums of money given to help 
 loving couples to marry, or to provide substitutes for young 
 men drawn by the conscription, touching gifts from the loving 
 soul that had said: "The happiness of others becomes the 
 joy of those who can no longer be happy." 
 
 These facts, talked over every evening for the last three 
 days, had brought together a vast throng. I followed the 
 bier with Jacques and the two abbes. According to custom 
 neither Madeleine nor the Count were present; they remained 
 alone at Clochegourde. Manette insisted on coming. 
 
 "Poor madame ! poor madame ! she is happy now!" I 
 heard many times spoken through sobs.
 
 284 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 At the moment when the procession turned off from the 
 road to the hills there was a unanimous groan, mingled with 
 weeping, that was enough to make one think that the valley 
 had lost its soul. 
 
 The church was full of people. After the service we went 
 to the cemetery where she was to be buried close to the cross. 
 When I heard the stones and gravel rattle on the coffin my 
 strength failed me. I had to ask the Martineaus to support 
 me and they led me half-dead to the Chateau of Sache ; there 
 the owners politely offered me shelter, which I accepted. I 
 confess I could not endure to return to Clochegourde ; I would 
 not go to Frapesle whence I could see Henriette's home. 
 Here I was near her. 
 
 I spent some days in a room whose windows overlooked the 
 tranquil and solitary coombe of which I have spoken ; it is a 
 deep ravine in the hills, overgrown with ancient oaks,, and 
 down it a torrent rushes in heavy rains. The scene was suited 
 to the severe and solemn meditations to which I gave my- 
 self up. 
 
 In the course of the day following that fatal night, I had 
 seen how intrusive my presence at Clochegourde would be. 
 The Count had given way to violent feelings at Henriette's 
 death ; still, the dreadful event was expected, and in the 
 depths of his heart there was a prepared calmness verging on 
 indifference. I had more than once seen this, and when the 
 Countess had given me the letter I dared not open, when she 
 spoke of her affection for me, this man, suspicious as he was, 
 had not given me the fulminating glance I had expected. He 
 had ascribed his wife's words to the excessive delicacy of her 
 conscience, which he knew to be so pure. 
 
 This selfish insensibility was but natural. The souls of 
 these two beings had been no more wedded than their bodies, 
 they had never had that incessant intimacy which renews feel- 
 ing ; they had no communion of griefs or joys, those close 
 ties which, when they are broken, leave us sore at so many
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 285 
 
 points, because they are one with every fibre, because they 
 are rooted in every fold of the heart, while soothing the soul 
 which sanctions every such tie. 
 
 Madeleine's hostility closed Clochegourde to me. This 
 stern young thing was not inclined to come to terms with 
 her aversion over her mother's grave; and I should have 
 been dreadfully uncomfortable between the Count, who would 
 have talked of himself, and the mistress of the house, who 
 would have made no secret of her invincible dislike. And to 
 live on such terms there where of old the very flowers had 
 caressed me, where the terrace steps were eloquent, where all 
 my memories lent poetry to the balconies, the parapets, the 
 balustrades and terraces, to the trees, and to every point of 
 view ; to be hated where all had been love ! I could not 
 endure the thought. So my mind was made up from the first. 
 This then, alas ! was the end of the strongest love that ever 
 dwelt in the heart of man. In the eyes of strangers my con- 
 duct would seem blameworthy, but it had the sanction of my 
 conscience. 
 
 This is the outcome of the finest sentiments, the greatest 
 dramas of youth. We all set forth one fine morning, as I 
 had started from Tours for Clochegourde, annexing the world, 
 our hearts craving for love ; then, when our treasure has been 
 through the crucible, when we have mixed with men, and 
 known events, it all seems unaccountably small, we find no 
 little gold among the ashes. Such is life life in its reality ! 
 a great deal of aspiration, a small result. 
 
 I meditated on myself at great length, wondering what I 
 could do after a blow that had cut down all my flowers. I 
 determined to rush into politics and science, by the tortuous 
 paths of ambition, to cut women out of my life entirely, and 
 be a statesman cold, passionless, faithful to the saint I had 
 loved. My thoughts went far away, out of sight, while my 
 eyes were fixed on the glorious background of golden oaks 
 with their sombre heads and feet of bronze. I asked myself
 
 286 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 whether Henriette's virtue had not been mere ignorance, 
 whether I was really guilty of her death. I struggled against 
 the burden of remorse. At last, one limpid autumn day, 
 under one of heaven's latest smiles, so lovely in Touraine, I 
 read the letter which, by her instructions, I was not to open 
 before her death and I read as follows : 
 
 Madame de Mortsauf to the Vicomte Felix de Vandenessc. 
 
 " Felix, friend too much beloved, I must now open my 
 heart to you, less to tell you how well I love you than to show 
 you the extent of your obligations, by revealing the depth 
 and severity of the wounds you have made in it. At this 
 moment, when I am dropping, exhausted by the fatigues of 
 the journey, worn out by the strokes I have received in the 
 fight, the woman, happily, is dead, the mother alone survives. 
 You will see, my dear, how you were the first cause of my 
 woes. Though I afterward submitted, not unwillingly, to 
 your blows, I am now dying of a last wound inflicted by you ; 
 but there is exquisite delight in feeling one's self crushed by 
 the man one loves. 
 
 " Before long my sufferings will, no doubt, rob me of my 
 strength, so I take advantage of the last gleam of intelligence 
 to implore you, once more, to fill the place toward my chil- 
 dren of the heart you have robbed them of. If I loved you 
 less, I should lay this charge on you authoritatively, but I 
 would rather leave you to assume it out of saintly repentance, 
 and also as a perpetuation of your love for me. Has not our 
 love been always mingled with repentant reflections and ex- 
 piatory fears? And we love each other still, I know it. 
 
 " Your fault is fatal, not so much through your own act as 
 through the importance I have given it in my own heart. 
 Did I not tell you that I was jealous jealous unto death ? 
 Well, I am dying. Yet, be comforted. We have satisfied 
 human law. The church, through one of its purest speakers,
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 287 
 
 has assured me that God will show mercy to those who have 
 sacrificed their natural weakness to the commandments. So 
 let me, my beloved, tell you all, for I would not keep a single 
 thought from you. What I shall confess to God in my last 
 hour, you too must know who are the king of my heart, as 
 he is the King of Heaven. 
 
 " Until the ball given to the Due d'Angoulgme, the only 
 one I ever went to, marriage had left me in the perfect ignor- 
 ance which gives a maiden's soul its angelic beauty. I was, 
 indeed, a mother, but love had given me none of its permitted 
 pleasures. How was it that this happened ? I know not ; 
 nor do I know by what law everything in me was changed in 
 an instant. Do you still remember your kisses ? They mas- 
 tered my life, they burnt into my soul. The fire in your 
 blood awoke the fire in mine ; your youth became one with 
 my youth ; your longing entered into my heart. When I 
 stood up so proudly, I felt a sensation for which I know no 
 word in any language, for children have found no word to 
 express the marriage of their eyes to the light or the kiss of 
 life on their lips. Yes, it was indeed the sound that first 
 aroused the echo, the light flashing in darkness, the impulse 
 given to the universe at least, it was as instantaneous as all 
 these ; but far more beautiful, for it was life to a soul ! I 
 understood that there was in the world something I had never 
 known, a power more glorious than thought; that it was all 
 thought, all power, a whole future in a common emotion. I 
 was now no more than half a mother. This thunderbolt, 
 falling on my heart, fired the desires that slept there unknown 
 to me ; I suddenly understood what my aunt had meant when 
 she used to kiss my brow and say, ' Poor Henriette ! ' 
 
 " On my return to Clochegourde, the springtime, the first 
 leaves, the scent of flowers, the pretty fleecy clouds, the Indre, 
 the sky, all spoke to me in a tongue I had never yet under- 
 stood, and which restored to my soul some of the impetus 
 you had given to my senses. If you have forgotten those
 
 288 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 terrible kisses, I have never been able to efface them from my 
 memory ; I am dying of them ! 
 
 " Yes, every time I have seen you since, you have revived 
 the impression ; I have thrilled from head to foot when I saw 
 you, from the mere presentiment of your coming. Neither 
 time nor my firm determination has been able to quench this 
 insistent rapture. I involuntarily wondered, What then must 
 pleasure be ? Our exchange of glances, your respectful kisses 
 on my hands, my arm resting in yours, your voice in its 
 tender tones; in short, the veriest trifles disturbed me so 
 violently that a cloud almost always darkened my sight, and 
 the hum of my rebellious blood sang in my ears. Oh ! if in 
 those moments when I was colder to you than ever, you had 
 taken me in your arms, I should have died of happiness. 
 Sometimes I have longed that you might be overbold but 
 prayer soon drove out that evil thought. Your name spoken 
 by my children filled my heart with hotter blood which 
 mounted in a flush to my face, and I would lay snares for 
 poor little Madeleine, to make her mention it, so dearly did 
 I love the surge of that emotion. 
 
 " How can I tell you all? Your writing had its charms; 
 I gazed at your letters as we study a portrait. And if from 
 that first day you had such a fateful power over me, you may 
 imagine, my friend, that it must have become infinite when 
 you allowed me to read to the bottom of your soul. What 
 ecstasy was mine when I found you so pure, so perfectly true, 
 gifted with such great qualities, capable of such great things, 
 and already so sorely tried ! A man and a child, timid and 
 brave ! What joy it was to find that we had been dedicated 
 to a common suffering ! 
 
 " From that evening when we confided in each other, to lose 
 you was death to me ; I kept you near me out of selfishness. I 
 was deeply touched to find that Monsieur de la Berge was cer- 
 tain that I should die of your absence ; he then had read my 
 heart. He decided that I was indispensable to my children
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 289 
 
 and to the Count ; he desired me not to forbid you the house, 
 for I promised him to remain pure in deed and thought. 
 'Thought is involuntary,' he said, ' but it may be guarded in 
 the midst of torments.' * If I think,' said I, ' all will be lost ; 
 save me from myself ! He must stay near me, but I must 
 remain virtuous help me ! ' 
 
 " The good old man, though most severe, was indulgent to 
 my honest purpose : ' You can love him as a son, and look 
 forward to his marrying your daughter,' he replied. 
 
 " I bravely took up a life of endurance that I might not 
 lose you, and suffered gladly when I was sure that we were 
 called to bear the same burden. Ah, God ! I remained 
 neutral, faithful to my husband, and never allowing you, 
 Felix, to take a step in your dominion. The frenzy of my 
 passions reacted on my faculties. I regarded the trials in- 
 flicted on me by Monsieur de Mortsauf as expiations, and 
 endured them with pride to outrage my guilty wishes. Of old 
 I had been prone to discontent, but after you came to be near 
 us I recovered some spirit, which was a satisfaction to Mon- 
 sieur de Mortsauf. But for the strength you lent me I should 
 long ago have sunk under the inward life I have told you of. 
 Yes, you have counted for much in the doing of my duty. It 
 is the same with regard to the children ; I felt I had robbed 
 them of something, and I feared I could never do enough for 
 them. Henceforth my life was one continued anguish that 
 I cherished. Feeling myself less a mother, less a faithful 
 wife, remorse made its abode in my heart, and for fear of 
 failing in my duties I constantly overdid them. Hence, to 
 save myself, I set Madeleine between us, intending you for 
 each other, and thus raising a barrier between you and me. 
 An unavailing barrier ! Nothing could repress the stress of 
 feeling you gave me. Absent or present your power was the 
 same. I loved Madeleine more than Jacques, because Made- 
 leine was to be yours. 
 
 " Still, I could not yield to my daughter without a struggle ; 
 19
 
 290 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 I told myself that I was but twenty-eight when I first met you, 
 and that you were nearly twenty-two. I abridged distances, I 
 allowed myself to indulge false hopes. Oh, my dear Felix, 
 I make this confession to spare you some remorse; partly, 
 perhaps, to show you that I was not insensible, that our suffer- 
 ings in love were cruelly equalized, and that Arabella was in 
 nothing my superior. I, too, was one of those daughters of 
 the fallen race whom men love so well. 
 
 " There was a time when the conflict was so fearful that I 
 wept all the night, and night after night ; my hair fell out 
 you have that hair ! You remember Monsieur de Mortsauf s 
 illness. Your magnanimity at that time, far from raising me, 
 made me fall lower. Alas ! there was a time when I longed 
 to throw myself into your arms as the reward of so much 
 heroism ; but that madness was brief. I laid it at the foot- 
 stool of God during that mass which you refused to attend. 
 Then Jacques' illness and Madeleine's ill health seemed to me 
 as threats from God, who was trying thus to recall the erring 
 sheep. And your love for that Englishwoman, natural as it 
 was, revealed to me secrets of which I knew nothing ; I loved 
 you more than I knew I did. I lost sight of Madeleine. 
 
 " The constant agitations of this storm-tossed life, the 
 efforts I made to subdue myself with no help but that of re- 
 ligion, have laid the seeds of the disease I am dying of. 
 That dreadful blow brought on attacks of which I would say 
 nothing. I saw in death the only possible conclusion to this 
 unrevealed tragedy. 
 
 " I lived a whole life of passion, jealousy, fury, during the 
 two months between the news given me by my mother of your 
 connection with Lady Dudley and your arrival here. I 
 wanted to go to Paris, I thirsted for murder, I longed for 
 the death of that woman, I was insensible to the affection of 
 my children. Prayer, which until then had been a balm to 
 me, had no further effect on my spirit. It was jealousy that 
 made the breach through which death entered in. Still, I
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 291 
 
 maintained a placid front; yes, that time of conflict was a 
 secret between God and me. 
 
 " When I was quite sure that I was as much loved by you 
 as you were by me, and that it was nature only and not your 
 heart that had made you faithless, I longed to live but it 
 was too late. God had taken me under His protection, in 
 pity no doubt for a being true to herself, true to Him, whose 
 sufferings had so constantly brought her to the gates of the 
 sanctuary. My best-beloved, God has judged me, Monsieur 
 de Mortsauf will no doubt forgive me, but you will you be 
 merciful ? Will you listen to the voice which at this moment 
 reaches you from my tomb ? Will you make good the dis- 
 asters for which we both are responsible you, perhaps, less 
 than I ? You know what I would ask of you. Be to Mon- 
 sieur de Mortsauf what a sister of charity is to a sick man ; 
 listen to him, love him no one will love him. Stand be- 
 tween him and his children as I have always done. Fill that 
 vacant place. 
 
 "The task will not be a long one. Jacques will soon leave 
 home to live in Paris with his grandfather, and you have 
 promised to guide him among the rocks of the world. As to 
 Madeleine, she will marry; would that she might some day 
 accept you ! She is all myself, and she is also strong in the 
 will that I lack, in the energy needed in the companion of 
 a man whose career must carry him through the storms of 
 political life ; she is clever and clear-sighted. If your des- 
 tinies were united she would be happier than her mother has 
 been. By acquiring a right to carry on my work at Cloche- 
 gourde you would wipe out such errors as have been insuffi- 
 ciently atoned for, though forgiven in heaven and on earth, 
 for he is generous and will forgive. 
 
 " I am still egotistical, you see ; but is not that a proof of 
 overweening love ? I want you to love me in those that be- 
 long to me. Never having been yours by right, I bequeath 
 to you my cares and duties. If you will not marry Made-
 
 292 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 leine, at least you will secure the repose of my soul by making 
 Monsieur de Mortsauf as happy as it is possible for him to be. 
 
 " Farewell, dear son of my heart ; this is a perfectly ra- 
 tional leave-taking, still full of life ; the adieux of a soul on 
 which you have bestowed joys so great that you should feel 
 no remorse over the catastrophe they have led to. And I 
 say this as I remember that you love me ; for I am going to 
 the home of rest, a victim to duty, and which makes me 
 shudder I cannot go without a regret ! God knows better 
 than I can whether I have obeyed His holy laws in the spirit. 
 I have often stumbled, no doubt, but I never fell, and the 
 most pressing cause of my errors lay in the temptations that 
 surrounded me. The Lord will see me, quaking quite as 
 much as though I had yielded. 
 
 " Once more farewell such a farewell as I yesterday bade 
 our beloved valley, in whose lap I shall soon be lying, and to 
 which you will often come, will you not ? 
 
 " HENRI ETTE." 
 
 I sat, sunk in a gulf of meditations as I here saw the un- 
 known depths of her life lighted up by this last flash. The 
 clouds of my selfishness vanished. So she had suffered as 
 much as I more, since she was dead. She had believed that 
 everybody else must be kind to her friend ; her love had so 
 effectually blinded her that she had never suspected her daugh- 
 ter's animosity. This last proof of her affection was a painful 
 thing ; poor Henriette wanted to give me Clochegourde and 
 her daughter ! 
 
 Natalie, since the dreadful day when, for the first time I 
 entered a graveyard, following the remains of that noble crea- 
 ture, whom you now know, the sun has been less warm and 
 bright, the night has been blacker, action has been less prompt 
 with me, thought a greater burden. We lay many to rest 
 under the earth, but some of them, especially dear, have our 
 hearts for their winding-sheets, their memory is perpetually one
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 293 
 
 with its throbs ; we think of them as we breathe ; they dwell 
 in us by a beautiful law of metempsychosis peculiar to love. 
 There is a soul within my soul. When I do any good thing, 
 when I speak a noble word, it is that soul which speaks and 
 acts ; all that is good in me emanates from that tomb as from 
 a lily whose scent embalms the air. Mockery, evil speaking, 
 all you blame in me, is myself. 
 
 And now, when a cloud dims my eyes and they look up to 
 heaven after long resting on the earth, when my lips make no 
 response to your words or your kindness, do not henceforth 
 ask me, " What are you thinking about? " 
 
 Dear Natalie, I had ceased writing for some little time ; 
 these reminiscences had agitated me too painfully. I must 
 now relate the events that followed on this misfortune. They 
 can be told in a few words. When a life consists only of 
 action and stir it is soon recorded; but when it is spent in 
 the loftiest regions of the soul the story must be diffuse. 
 
 Henriette's letter showed me one bright star of hope. In 
 this tremendous shipwreck I saw an island I might reach. To 
 live at Clochegourde with Madeleine and devote my life to 
 her was a lot to satisfy all the ideas that tossed my soul ; but 
 I must first learn Madeleine's true opinions. I had to take 
 leave of the Count ; I went to Clochegourde to call on him, 
 and met him on the terrace. There we walked together for 
 some time. 
 
 At first he" spoke of his wife as a man who understood the 
 extent of his loss, and all the ruin it had wrought in his home 
 life. But after that first cry of sorrow, he was evidently more 
 anxious about the future than about the present. He was 
 afraid of his daughter, who was not, he said, so gentle as her 
 mother. Madeleine's firm temper and a tinge of something 
 heroical, mingling in her with her mother's gracious nature, 
 terrified the old man, accustomed as he was to Henriette's 
 tender kindness; he foresaw meeting a will which nothing 
 could bend. Still, what comforted him in his loss was the
 
 294 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 certainty of joining his wife ere long ; the agitations and 
 grief of the last few days had increased his malady and 
 brought on his old pains ; the conflict he foresaw between his 
 authority as the father and his daughter's as the mistress of 
 the house would fill his last days with bitterness, for in cases 
 where he could contend with his wife he would have to give 
 way to his child. And then his son would go away, his 
 daughter would marry what sort of son-in-law should he 
 have? 
 
 In the course of an hour, while he talked of nothing but 
 himself, claiming my friendship for his wife's sake, I clearly 
 saw before me the grandiose figure of the emigre, one of the 
 most impressive types of our century. In appearance he was 
 frail and broken, but life still clung to him by reason of his 
 simple habits and agricultural occupations. 
 
 At this moment, when I write, he still lives. 
 
 Though Madeleine could see us pacing the terrace, she did 
 not come down ; she came out to the steps and went in again 
 several times, to mark her disdain of me. I seized a moment 
 when she had come out to beg the Count to go up to the 
 house ; I wanted to speak to Madeleine, and I made a pretext 
 of a last request left by the Countess I had no other way of 
 seeing her ; the Count went to fetch her, and left us together 
 on the terrace. 
 
 "Dear Madeleine," said I, "I must speak a word with 
 you. Was it not here that your mother used to listen to me 
 when she had less to blame me for than the circumstances 
 of her life ? My life and happiness are, as you know, bound 
 up with this spot, and you banish me by the coldness you have 
 assumed instead of the brotherly regard which used to unite 
 us and which death has made closer by a common sorrow. 
 Dear Madeleine, for you I would this instant give my life 
 without any hope of reward, without your knowing it even, 
 for so truly do we love the children of the women who have 
 been good to us in their lifetime you know nothing of the
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 295 
 
 scheme which your adored mother had cherished for the last 
 seven years, and which may perhaps affect your views but I 
 will take no advantage of that ! All I beseech of you is that you 
 will not deprive me of the right of coming to breathe the air 
 on this terrace, and to wait until time has modified your ideas 
 of social life. At this moment I would not shock them for 
 the world. I respect the grief that misleads you, for it de- 
 prives me, too, of the power of judging fairly of the position 
 in which I find myself. The saint who is now watching over 
 us will approve of the reserve I maintain when I only ask you 
 to remain neutral as between your own feelings and myself. 
 
 "I love you too truly, in spite of the aversion you show 
 for me, to lay a proposal before the Count which he would hail 
 with eager satisfaction. Be free. But, by-and-by, consider 
 that you will never know anybody in the world so well as you 
 know me, that no man can bear in his heart feelings more 
 devoted " 
 
 So far Madeleine had listened with downcast eyes, but she 
 stopped me with a gesture. 
 
 "Monsieur," she said in a voice tremulous with agitation, 
 "I, too, know all your mind. But I can never change in 
 feeling toward you, and I would rather drown myself in the 
 Indre than unite myself with you. Of myself I will not 
 speak, but if my mother's name can still influence you, in her 
 name I beg you never to come to Clochegourde so long as I 
 am here. The mere sight of you occasions me such distress 
 as I cannot describe, and I shall never get over it." 
 
 She bowed to me with much dignity and went up to the 
 house, never looking back ; as rigid as her mother had been 
 once, and once only, and quite pitiless. The girl's clear sight 
 had, though only of late, seen to the bottom of her mother's 
 heart, and her hatred of the man who seemed to her so fatal 
 was increased, perhaps, by some regret at her own innocent 
 complicity. 
 
 Here was an impassable gulf. Madeleine hated me without
 
 296 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 choosing to ascertain whether I was the cause or the victim 
 of her griefs ; and she would, I dare say, have hated both her 
 mother and me if we had been happy. So this fair castle of 
 promised happiness was in ruins. 
 
 I alone was ever to know the whole life of this noble un- 
 known woman, I alone was in the secret of her feelings. I 
 alone had studied her soul in its complete grandeur. Neither 
 her mother, nor her father, nor her husband, nor her children 
 had understood her. 
 
 It is a sirange thing ! I can turn over that pile of ashes, 
 and take pleasure in spreading them before you ; we may all 
 find among them something of what has been dearest to us. 
 How many families have their Henriette ! How many noble 
 creatures depart from earth without having met with an intelli- 
 gent friend to tell their story, and to sound their hearts, and 
 measure their depth and height ! This is human life in its 
 stern reality; and often mothers know no more of their chil- 
 dren than the children know of them. And it is the same 
 with married couples, lovers, brothers and sisters. Could I 
 foresee that the day would come when, over my father's grave, 
 I should go to law with Charles de Vandenesse, the brother 
 to whose advancement I had so largely contributed ? Good 
 heavens ! How much may be learned from the simplest tale ! 
 
 When Madeleine had disappeared into the house I came 
 away heart-broken, took leave of my hospitable friends, and 
 set out for Paris along the right bank of the Indre the road 
 by which I had come down the valley for the first time. I 
 was sad^enough as I rode through the village of Pont du Ruan. 
 And yet I was now rich ; political life smiled upon me ; I was 
 no longer the weary wayfarer of eighteen hundred and four- 
 teen. Then my heart had been full of desires, now my eyes 
 were full of tears ; then I had to fill up my life, now I felt it a 
 desert. I was still quite young twenty-nine and my heart 
 was crushed. A few years had been enough to rob the land- 
 scape of its pristine glory and to disgust me with life. You
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 297 
 
 may conceive then of my emotion when, on looking back, I 
 discerned Madeleine on the terrace. 
 
 Wholly possessed by absorbing sorrow, I never thought of 
 the end of my journey. Lady Dudley was far from my mind 
 when I found that I had unconsciously entered her courtyard. 
 The blunder once made, I could but act it out. 
 
 My habits in the house were quite marital ; I went upstairs, 
 gloomy in anticipation of a vexatious rupture. If you have 
 ever understood the character of Lady Dudley you can imag- 
 ine how disconcerted I felt when her butler showed me, as I 
 was, in traveling dress, into a drawing-room where she sat 
 splendidly dressed with a party of five visitors. Lord Dudley, 
 one of the most noteworthy of English statesmen, was stand- 
 ing in front of the fire elderly, starch, arrogant, cold, with 
 the satirical expression he must wear in the House ; he 
 smiled on hearing my name. With their mother were Ara- 
 bella's two boys, astonishingly like de Marsay, one of the 
 nobleman's natural sons, who was sitting on the sofa by the 
 Marchioness. 
 
 Arabella, as soon as she saw me, assumed a lofty air, and 
 stared at my traveling cap as if she were on the point of in- 
 quiring what had brought me to see her. She looked at me 
 from head to foot, as she might have done at some country 
 'squire just introduced to her. As to our intimacy, our 
 eternal passion, her vows that she must die if ever I ceased to 
 love her all the phantasmagoria of Armida it had vanished 
 like a dream. I had never held her hand, I was a stranger, 
 she did not know me ! 
 
 I was startled, in spite of the diplomatic coolness I was 
 beginning to acquire ; and any man in my place would have 
 been no less so. De Marsay smiled as he looked at his boots, 
 examining them with obvious significance. 
 
 I made up my mind at once. From any other woman I 
 would have submissively accepted my discomfiture ; but en- 
 raged at finding this heroine, who was to die of love, alive
 
 298 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 and well, after laughing to scorn the woman who had died, I 
 determined to meet insolence with insolence. She knew of 
 Lady Brandon's wreck ; to remind her of it would be to stab 
 her to the heart, even if it should turn the edge of the dagger. 
 
 "Madame," said I, "you will forgive me for coming to 
 you in so cavalier a manner when I tell you that I have this in- 
 stant arrived from Touraine, and that Lady Brandon gave me 
 a message for you which allows of no delay. I feared I might 
 find that %you had started for Lancashire ; but since you are 
 not leaving Paris, I await your orders at the hour when you 
 will condescend to receive me." 
 
 She bowed and I left the room. 
 
 From that day I have never seen her excepting in company, 
 where we exchange friendly bows, with sometimes a repartee. 
 I rally her about the inconsolable women of Lancashire, and 
 she retorts about the Frenchwomen who do credit to their 
 broken hearts by attacks of dyspepsia. Thanks to her good 
 offices I have a mortal foe in de Marsay, whom she makes 
 much of; and I, in return, say she has married father and son. 
 
 Thus my disaster was complete. 
 
 I took up the plan of life I had decided on during my 
 retirement at Sache. I threw myself into hard work ; I took 
 up science, literature, and politics. On the accession of 
 Charles X., who abolished the post I had filled under the late 
 King, I made diplomacy my career. From that hour I vowed 
 never to pay any attention to a woman, however beautiful, 
 witty, or affectionate she might be. This conduct was a won- 
 derful success. I gained incredible peace of mind, great 
 powers of work, and I learned that women waste men's lives 
 and think they have indemnified them by a few gracious 
 words. 
 
 However, all my fine resolutions have come to nothing 
 you know how and why. 
 
 Dearest Natalie, in relating my whole life without reserve 
 or concealment, as I should to myself, in confessing to you
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 299 
 
 feelings in which you had no part, I may perhaps have vexed 
 some tender spot of your jealous and sensitive heart. But 
 what would infuriate a vulgar woman will be, to you, I am 
 sure, a fresh reason for loving me. The noblest women have 
 a sublime part to play toward suffering and aching souls, that 
 of a sister of mercy who dresses their wounds, of the mother 
 who forgives her children. Nor are artists and poets the only 
 sufferers. Men who live for their country, for the future of 
 nations, as they widen the circle of their passions and their 
 thoughts, often find themselves in cruel solitude. They long 
 to feel that by their side is some pure and devoted love. 
 Believe me, they will know its greatness and its value. 
 
 To-morrow I shall know whether I have made a mistake in 
 loving you. 
 
 To Monsieur le Comic Felix de Vandenesse. 
 
 " Dear Count, you received as you tell me, a letter from 
 poor Madame de Mortsauf which has been of some use in 
 guiding you through the world, a letter to which you owe 
 your high fortunes. Allow me to finish your education. 
 
 " I implore you to divest yourself of an odious habit. Do 
 not imitate certain widows who are always talking of their 
 first husband and throwing the virtues of the dear departed 
 in the teeth of the second. I, dear Count, am a French- 
 woman ; I should wish to marry the whole of the man I 
 loved ; now I really cannot marry Madame de Mortsauf. 
 
 " After reading your narrative with the attention it de- 
 serves and you know what interest I feel in you it strikes 
 me that you must have bored Lady Dudley very considerably 
 by holding up to her Madame de Mortsauf s perfections, while 
 deeply wounding the Countess by expatiating on the various 
 resources of English love-making. You have now failed in 
 tact toward me, a poor creature who can boast of no merit 
 but that of having attracted your liking ; you have implied
 
 300 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 that I do not love you as much as either Henriette or Arabella. 
 I confess my deficiencies. I know them ; but why make me 
 feel them so cruelly ? 
 
 "Shall I tell you whom I pity? The fourth woman you 
 may love. She will inevitably be required to hold her own 
 against three predecessors ; so, in your interest as much as in 
 hers, I must warn you against the perils of your memory. 
 
 " I renounce the laborious honor of loving you. I should 
 require too many catholic or anglican virtues, and I have no 
 taste for fighting ghosts. The virtues of the Virgin of Clo- 
 chegourde would reduce the most self-confident woman to 
 despair ; and your dashing horsewoman discourages the boldest 
 dreams of happiness. Do what she may, no woman can hope 
 to give you satisfaction in proportion to her ambition. 
 Neither heart nor senses can ever triumph over your reminis- 
 cences. You have forgotten that we often ride out together. 
 I have not succeeded in warming up the sun that was chilled 
 by your Henriette' s decease ; you would shiver by my side. 
 
 " My friend for you will always be my friend beware of 
 repeating these confidences which strip your disenchantment 
 bare, dishearten love, and compel a woman to doubt her 
 powers. Love, my dear friend, lives on mutual trustfulness. 
 The woman who, before she says a word or mounts her horse, 
 stops to ask herself whether a heavenly Henriette did not 
 speak better, or a horsewoman like Arabella did not display 
 more grace, that woman, take my word for it, will have a 
 trembling tongue and knees. 
 
 " You made me wish that I might receive some of your in- 
 toxicating nosegays but you say you will make no more. 
 Thus it is with a hundred things you no longer dare do, with 
 thoughts and enjoyments which can never again be yours. 
 No woman, be very sure, would choose to dwell in your heart 
 elbowing the corpse you cherish there. 
 
 "You beseech me to love you out of Christian charity. I 
 could, I own, do much out of charity everything but love.
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 301 
 
 " You are sometimes dull and tiresome ; you dignify your 
 gloom by the name of melancholy, well and good ; but it is 
 intolerable and fills the woman who loves you with cruel 
 anxieties. I have come across that saint's tomb too often 
 standing between us ; I have reflected, and I have concluded 
 that I have no wish to die like her. If you exasperated Lady 
 Dudley, a woman of the first distinction, I, who have not her 
 furious passions, fear I should even sooner grow cold. 
 
 " Put love out of the question as between you and me, 
 since you no longer find happiness but with the dead, and let 
 us be friends ; I am willing. 
 
 "Why, my dear Count, you began by loving an adorable 
 woman, a perfect mistress, who undertook to make your for- 
 tune, who procured you a peerage, who loved you to distrac- 
 tion and you made her die of grief ! Why, nothing can be 
 more monstrous. Among the most ardent and the most luck- 
 less youths who drag their ambitions over the pavements of 
 Paris, is there one who would not have behaved himself for 
 ten years to obtain half the favors which you failed to recog- 
 nize? When a man is so beloved, what more does he want? 
 
 " Poor woman ! she suffered much ; and you, when you 
 have made a few sentimental speeches, think you have paid 
 your debt over her bier. This, no doubt, is the prize that 
 awaits my affection for you. Thank you, dear Count, but I 
 desire no rival on either side of the grave. 
 
 "When a man has such a crime on his conscience, the 
 least he can do is not to tell ! 
 
 "I asked you a foolish question; it was in my part as a 
 woman, a daughter of Eve. It was your part to calculate the 
 results of the answer. You ought to have deceived me; I 
 should have thanked you for it later. Have you understood 
 wherein lies the merit of men who are liked by women ? Do 
 you not perceive how magnanimous they are when they swear 
 that they have never loved before, that this is their first love ? 
 Your programme is impossible. Lady Dudley and Madame
 
 302 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 de Mortsauf in one ! Why, my dear friend, you might as 
 well try to combine fire and water. Do you know nothing of 
 women ? They are as they are ; they must have the defects 
 of their qualities. 
 
 "You met Lady Dudley too soon to appreciate her, and 
 the evil you say of her seems to me the revenge of your 
 wounded vanity; you understood Madame de Mortsauf too 
 late*; you punished each for not being the other ; what then 
 would become of me, being neither one nor the other? 
 
 " I like you well enough to have reflected very seriously on 
 your future prospects. Your look, as of the Knight of the 
 Rueful Countenance, has always interested me (and I believe 
 in the constancy of melancholy men), but I did not know that 
 you had begun your career in the world by killing the loveliest 
 and most virtuous of women. Well, I have been considering 
 what remains for you to do ; I have thought it out. I think 
 you had better marry some Mrs. Shandy, who will know 
 nothing of love or passion, who will never trouble her head 
 about Lady Dudley or Madame de Mortsauf, nor about those 
 spells of dullness which you call melancholy when you are 
 as amusing as a rainy day and who will be the worthy sister 
 of charity you long for. 
 
 "As to love thrilling at a word, knowing how to wait for 
 happiness, how to give and take it, feeling the myriad storms 
 of passion, making common cause with the little vanities of 
 the woman you love my dear Count, give it up. You have 
 followed the advice of your good angel too exactly ; you have 
 avoided young women so effectually that you know nothing 
 about them. Madame de Mortsauf was wise in getting you 
 to a front place at once ; every woman would have been 
 against you and you would never have reached one. It is too 
 late now to begin your training, to learn to say the things we 
 like to hear, to be noble at appropriate moments, to worship 
 our triviality when we have a fancy to be trivial. We are not 
 such simpletons as you think us. When we love, we set the
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 303 
 
 man of our choice above all else. Anything that shakes our 
 faith in our own supremacy shakes our love. By flattering us, 
 you flatter yourselves. 
 
 " If you want to live in the world and mingle on equal 
 terms with women, conceal with care all you have told me ; 
 they do not care to strew the flowers of their affections on 
 stones or lavish their tender caresses to heal a wounded heart. 
 Every woman will at once discern the shallowness of your 
 heart and you will be constantly more unhappy. Very few 
 will be frank enough to tell you what I have told you, or 
 good-natured enough to dismiss you without rancor and offer 
 you their friendship, as she now does who still remains your 
 sincere friend. 
 
 " NATALIE DE MANERVILLE." 
 
 PARIS, October, 1835.
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 (L? Autre Etude de Femme.} 
 
 Translated by CLARA BELL. 
 \ 
 
 To Leon Gozlan as a Token of Literary Good-fellowship. 
 
 AT Paris there are almost always two separate parties going 
 on at every ball and rout. First, an official party, composed 
 of the persons invited, a fashionable and much-bored circle. 
 Each one grimaces for his neighbor's eye ; most of the 
 younger women are there for one person only ; when each 
 woman has assured herself that for that one she is the hand- 
 somest woman in the room, and that the opinion is perhaps 
 shared by a few others, a few insignificant phrases are ex- 
 changed, such as : " Do you think of going away soon to La 
 Crampade ? " " How well Madame de Portenduere sang ! " 
 " Who is the little woman with such a load of diamonds?" 
 Or, after firing off some smart epigrams, which give transient 
 pleasure and leave wounds that rankle long, the groups thin 
 out, the mere lookers-on go away, and the wax-lights burn 
 down to the sconces. 
 
 The mistress of the house then waylays a few artists, amus- 
 ing people or intimate friends, saying, " Do not go yet ; we 
 will have a snug little supper." These collect in some small, 
 cozy room. The second, the real party, now begins; a party 
 where, as of old, every one can hear what is said, conversation 
 is general, each one is bound to be witty, and to contribute 
 to the amusement of all. Everything is made to tell, honest 
 laughter takes the place of the gloom which in company 
 saddens the prettiest faces. In short, where the rout ends 
 pleasure begins. 
 (304)
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WO MAX. 305 
 
 The rout, a cold display of luxury, a review of self- 
 conceits in full dress, is one of those English inventions 
 which tend to mechanize other nations. England seems bent 
 on seeing the whole world as dull as itself and dull in the 
 same way. So this second party is, in some French houses, a 
 happy protest on the part of the old spirit of our light-hearted 
 people. Only, unfortunately, so few houses protest ; and the 
 reason is a simple one. If we no longer have many suppers 
 nowadays, it is because never, under any rule, have there been 
 fewer men placed, established, and successful than under the 
 reign of Louis Philippe, when the revolution began again, 
 lawfully. Everybody is on the march some whither, or trot- 
 ting at the heels of Fortune. Time has become the costliest 
 commodity, so no one can afford the lavish extravagance of 
 going home to-morrow morning and getting up late. Hence, 
 there is no second soiree now but at the houses of women rich 
 enough to entertain, and since July, 1830, such women may 
 be counted in Paris. 
 
 In spite of the covert opposition of the Faubourg Saint- 
 Germain, two or three women, among them Madame d'Espard 
 and Mademoiselle des Touches, have not chosen to give up 
 the share of influence they exercised in Paris and have not 
 closed their houses. 
 
 The salon of Mademoiselle des Touches is noted in Paris as 
 being the last refuge where the old French wit has found a 
 home, with its reserved depths, its myriad subtle byways, and 
 its exquisite politeness. You will there still find grace of 
 manner notwithstanding the conventionalities of courtesy, 
 perfect freedom of talk notwithstanding the reserve which is 
 natural to persons of breeding, and, above all, a liberal flow 
 of ideas. No one there thinks of keeping his thought for a 
 play ; and no one regards a story as material for a book. In 
 short, the hideous skeleton of literature at bay never stalks 
 there on the prowl for a clever sally or an interesting subject. 
 
 The memory of one of these evenings especially dwells 
 20
 
 306 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 with me, less by reason of a confidence in which the illus- 
 trious de Marsay opened up one of the deepest recesses of 
 woman's heart, than on account of the reflections to which 
 his narrative gave rise, as to the changes that have taken 
 place in the Frenchwoman since the fateful revolution of 
 July. 
 
 On that evening chance had brought together several per- 
 s'ons whose indisputable merits have won them European repu- 
 tations. This is not a piece of flattery addressed to France, 
 for there were a good many foreigners present. And, indeed, 
 the men who most shone were not the most famous. Ingeni- 
 ous repartee, acute remarks, admirable banter, pictures 
 sketched with brilliant precision, all sparkled and flowed 
 without elaboration, were poured out without disdain, but 
 without effort, and were exquisitely expressed and delicately 
 appreciated. The men of the world especially were conspicu- 
 ous for their really artistic grace and spirit. 
 
 Elsewhere in Europe you will find elegant manners, cordi- 
 ality, genial fellowship, and knowledge ; but only in Paris, in 
 this drawing-room, and those to which I have alluded, does 
 the particular wit abound which gives an agreeable and 
 changeful unity to all these social qualities, an indescribable 
 river-like flow which makes this profusion of ideas, of defi- 
 nitions, of anecdotes, of historical incidents, meander with 
 ease. Paris, the capital of taste, alone possesses the science 
 which makes conversation a tourney in which each type of 
 wit is condensed into a shaft, each speaker utters his phrase 
 and casts his experience in a word, in which every one finds 
 amusement, relaxation, and exercise. Here, then, alone, will 
 you exchange ideas ; here you need not, like the dolphin in 
 the fable, carry a monkey on your shoulders ; here you will 
 be understood, and will not risk staking your gold-pieces 
 against base metal. 
 
 Here, again, secrets neatly betrayed, and talk, light or 
 deep, play and eddy, changing their aspect and hue at every
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 307 
 
 phrase. Eager criticism and crisp anecdotes lead on from one 
 to the next. All eyes are listening, a gesture asks a question, 
 and an expressive look gives the answer. In short, and in a 
 word, everything is wit and mind. 
 
 The phenomenon of speech, which, when duly studied and 
 well handled, is the power of the actor and the story-teller, 
 had never so completely bewitched me. Nor was I alone 
 under the influence of its spell ; we all spent a delightful 
 evening. The conversation had drifted into anecdote, and 
 brought out in its rushing course some curious confessions, 
 several portraits, and a thousand follies, which make this 
 enchanting improvisation impossible to record ; still, by set- 
 ting these things down in all their natural freshness and 
 abruptness, their elusive divarications, you may perhaps feel 
 the charm of a real French evening, taken at the moment 
 when the most engaging familiarity makes each one forget his 
 own interests, his personal conceit, or, if you like, his pre- 
 tensions. 
 
 At about two in the morning, as supper ended, no one was 
 left sitting around the table but intimate friends, proved by 
 an intercourse of fifteen years, and some persons of great 
 taste and good breeding, who knew the world. By tacit 
 agreement, perfectly carried out, at supper every one renounced 
 his pretensions to importance. Perfect equality set the tone. 
 But indeed there was no one present who was not very proud 
 of being himself. 
 
 Mademoiselle des Touches always insists on her guests re- 
 maining at table until they leave, having frequently remarked 
 the change which a move produces in the spirit of a party. 
 Between the dining-room and the drawing-room the charm is 
 destroyed. According to Sterne, the ideas of an author after 
 shaving are different from those he had before. If Sterne is 
 right, may it not be boldly asserted that the frame of mind 
 of a party at table is not the same as that of the same persons 
 returned to the drawing-room ? The new atmosphere is not
 
 308 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 heady, the eye no longer contemplates the brilliant disorder 
 of the dessert, lost are the happy effects of that laxness. of 
 mood, that benevolence which comes over us while we remain 
 in the humor peculiar to the well-filled man, settled comfort- 
 ably on one of the springy chairs which are made in these 
 days. ^Perhaps we are more ready to talk face to face with 
 the dessert and in the society of good wine, during the de- 
 lightful interval when every one may sit with an elbow on 
 the table and his head resting on his hand. Not only does 
 every one like to talk then, but also to listen. Digestion, 
 which is almost always attent, is loquacious or silent, as 
 the various characters differ. Then every one finds his oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 Was not this preamble necessary to make you know the 
 charm of the narrative, by which a celebrated man, now 
 dead, depicted the innocent Jesuitry of woman, painting it 
 with the subtlety peculiar to persons who have seen much of 
 the world, and which makes statesmen such delightful story- 
 tellers when, like Prince Talleyrand and Prince Metternich, 
 they vouchsafe to tell a story ? 
 
 De Marsay, prime minister for some six months, had already 
 given proofs of superior capabilities. Those who had known 
 him long were not indeed surprised to see him display all the 
 talents and various aptitudes of a statesman ; still it might yet 
 be a question whether he would prove to be a solid politi- 
 cian, or had merely been moulded in the fire of circumstance. 
 This question had just been asked by a man whom he had 
 made preTet, a man of wit and observation, who had for a 
 long time been a journalist, and who admired de Marsay 
 without infusing into his admiration, that dash of acrid criti- 
 cism by which, in Paris, one superior man excuses himself 
 from admiring another. 
 
 " Was there ever," said he, " in your former life, any event, 
 any thought or wish which told you what your vocation was?" 
 asked Emile Blondet ; "for we all, like Newton, have our
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 309 
 
 apple, which falls and leads us to the spot where our faculties 
 develop " 
 
 " Yes," said de Marsay ; " I will tell you about it." 
 
 Pretty women, political dandies, artists, old men, de Mar- 
 say's intimate friends all settled themselves comfortably, 
 each in his favorite attitude, to look at the minister. Need 
 it be said that the servants had left, that the doors were shut, 
 and the curtains drawn over them ? The silence was so com- 
 plete that the murmurs of the coachmen's voices could be 
 heard from the courtyard, and the pawing and champing 
 made by horses when asking to be taken back to their stable. 
 
 "The statesman, my friends, exists by one single quality," 
 said the minister, playing with his gold and mother-of-pearl 
 dessert knife. "To wit: the power of always being master 
 of himself ; of profiting more or less, under all circumstances, 
 by every event, however fortuitous ; in short, of having within 
 himself a cold and disinterested other self, who looks on as a 
 spectator at all the chances of life, noting our passions and our 
 sentiments, and whispering to us in every case the judgment 
 of a sort of moral ready- reckoner." 
 
 " That explains why a statesman is so rare a thing in 
 France," said old Lord Dudley. 
 
 " From a sentimental point of view, this is horrible," the 
 minister went on. " Hence, when such a phenomenon is 
 seen in a young man Richelieu, who, when warned overnight 
 by a letter of Concini's peril, slept till midday, when his 
 benefactor was to be killed at ten o'clock or say Pitt, or 
 Napoleon he is a monster. I became such a monster at a 
 very early age, thanks to a woman." 
 
 "I fancied," said Madame de Montcornet with a smile, 
 " that more politicians were undone by us than we could 
 make." 
 
 "The monster of which I speak is a monster just because 
 he withstands you," replied de Marsay, with a little ironical 
 bow.
 
 310 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 " If this is a love story," the Baronne de Nucingen inter- 
 posed, " I request that it may not be interrupted by any re- 
 flections." 
 
 "Reflection is so antipathetic to it ! " cried Joseph Bridau. 
 
 " I was seventeen," de Marsay went on ; " the restoration 
 was being consolidated ; my old friends know how impetuous 
 and fervid I was then. I was in love for the first time, and I 
 was I may say so now one of the handsomest young fellows 
 in Paris. I had youth and good looks, two advantages due 
 to good fortune, but of which we are all as proud as of a 
 conquest. I must be silent as to the rest. Like all youths, I 
 was in love with a woman six years older than myself. No 
 one of you here," said he, looking carefully round the table, 
 " can suspect her name or recognize her. Ronquerolles alone, 
 at the time, ever guessed my secret. He has kept it well, but 
 I should have feared his smile. However, he is gone," said 
 the minister, looking around. 
 
 " He would not stay to supper," said Madame de Nucingen. 
 
 "For six months, possessed by my passion," de Marsay 
 went on, " but incapable of suspecting that it had overmas- 
 tered me, I had abandoned myself to that rapturous idolatry 
 which is at once the triumph and the frail joy of the young. 
 I treasured her old gloves ; I drank an infusion of the flowers 
 she had worn ; I got out of bed at night to go and gaze at 
 her window. All my blood rushed to my heart when I in- 
 haled the perfume she used. I was miles away from knowing 
 that woman is a stove with a marble casing." 
 
 " Oh ! spare us your terrible verdicts," cried Madame de 
 Montcornet with a smile. 
 
 "I believe I should have crushed with my scorn the phi- 
 losopher who first uttered this terrible but profoundly true 
 thought," said de Marsay. "You are all far too keen-sighted 
 for me to say any more on that point. These few words will 
 remind you of your own follies. 
 
 "A great lady, if ever there was one; a widow without
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 311 
 
 children oh ! all was perfect my idol would shut herself up 
 to mark my linen with her hair ; in short, she responded to 
 my madness by her own. And how can we fail to believe in 
 passion when it has the guarantee of madness? 
 
 "We each devoted all our minds to concealing a love so 
 perfect and so beautiful from the eyes of the world ; and we 
 succeeded. And what charm we found in our escapades ! 
 Of her I will say nothing. She was perfection then, and to 
 this day is considered one of the most beautiful women in 
 Paris ; but at that time a man would have endured death to 
 win one of her glances. She had been left with an amount 
 of fortune sufficient for a woman who loved and was adored ; 
 but the restoration, to which she owed renewed lustre, made 
 it seem inadequate in comparison with her name. In my 
 position I was so fatuous as never to dream of a suspicion. 
 Though my jealousy would have been of a hundred and 
 twenty Othello-power, that terrible passion slumbered in me 
 as gold in the nugget. I would have ordered my servant to 
 thrash me if I had been so base as ever to doubt the purity of 
 that angel so fragile and so strong, so fair, so artless, pure, 
 spotless, and whose blue eye allowed my gaze to sound it to the 
 very depths of her heart with adorable submissiveness. Never 
 was there the slightest hesitancy in her attitude, her look, or 
 word ; always white and fresh and ready for the Beloved like 
 the Oriental Lily of the ' Song of Songs ! ' Ah ! my friends !" 
 sadly exclaimed the minister, grown young again, "a. man 
 must hit his head very hard on the marble to dispel that 
 poem ! " 
 
 This cry of nature, finding an echo in the listeners, spurred 
 the curiosity he had excited in them with so much skill. 
 
 " Every morning, riding Sultan the fine horse you sent 
 me from England," de Marsay went on, addressing Lord 
 Dudley " I rode past her open carriage, the horses' pace 
 being intentionally reduced to a walk, and read the order of 
 the day signaled to me by the flowers of her bouquet in case
 
 312 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 we were unable to exchange a few words. Though we saw 
 each other almost every evening in society and she wrote to 
 me everyday, to deceive the curious and mislead the observant 
 we had adopted a scheme of conduct : never to look at each 
 other ; to avoid meeting ; to speak ill of each other. Self- 
 admiration, swagger, or playing the disdained swain all 
 these old manoeuvres are not to compare on either part with a 
 false passion professed for an indifferent person and an air of 
 indifference toward the true idol. If two lovers will only play 
 that game the world will always be deceived ; but then they 
 must be very secure of each other. 
 
 " Her stalking-horse was a man in high favor, a courtier, 
 cold and sanctimonious, whom she never received at her own 
 house. This little comedy was performed for the benefit of 
 simpletons and drawing-room circles, who laughed at it. 
 Marriage was never spoken of between us ; six years' differ- 
 ence of age might give her pause ; she knew nothing of my 
 fortune, of which, on principle, I have always kept the secret. 
 I, on my part, fascinated by her wit and manners, by the 
 extent of her knowledge and her experience of the world, 
 would have married her without a thought. At the same 
 time, her reserve charmed me. If she had been the first to 
 speak of marriage in a certain tone, I might perhaps have 
 noted it as vulgar in that accomplished soul. 
 
 " Six months, full and perfect a diamond of the purest 
 water ! That has been my portion of love in this base world. 
 
 " One morning, attacked by the feverish stiffness which 
 marks the beginning of a cold, I wrote her a line to put off 
 one of these secret festivals which are buried under the roofs 
 of Paris like pearls in the sea. No sooner was the letter sent 
 than remorse seized me : she will not believe that I am ill ! 
 thought I. She was wont to affect jealousy and suspicious- 
 ness. When jealousy is genuine," said de Marsay, interrupt- 
 ing himself, "it is the visible sign of a unique passion." 
 
 " Why?" asked the Princess de Cadignan eagerly.
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 313 
 
 " Unique and true love," said de Marsay, " produces a sort 
 of corporeal apathy attuned to the contemplation into which 
 one falls. Then the mind complicates everything ; it works 
 on itself, pictures its fancies, turns them into reality and 
 torment; and such jealousy is as delightful as it is dis- 
 tressing." 
 
 A foreign minister smiled as, by the light of memory, he 
 felt the truth of this remark. 
 
 "Beside," de Marsay went on, "I said to myself, why 
 miss a happy hour ? Was it not better to go, even though 
 feverish ? And then, if she learns that I am ill, I believe her 
 capable of hurrying here and compromising herself. I made 
 an effort ; I wrote a second letter and carried it myself, for 
 my confidential servant was now gone. The river lay between 
 us. I had to cross Paris ; but at last, within a suitable dis- 
 tance of her house, I caught sight of a messenger ; I charged 
 him to have the note sent up to her at once, and I had the 
 happy idea of driving past her door in a hackney cab to see 
 whether she might not by chance receive the two letters to- 
 gether. At the moment when I arrived it was two o'clock ; 
 the great gate opened to admit a carriage. Whose ? That 
 of the stalking-horse ! 
 
 "It is fifteen years since well, even while I tell the tale, 
 I, the exhausted orator, the minister dried up by the friction 
 of public business, I still feel a surging in my heart and the 
 hot blood about my diaphragm. At the end of an hour I 
 passed once more ; the carriage was still in the courtyard ! 
 My note no doubt was in the porter's hands. At last, at half- 
 past three, the carriage drove out. I could observe my 
 rival's expression ; he was grave, and did not smile ; but he 
 was in love, and no doubt there was business in hand. 
 
 " I went to keep my appointment ; the queen of my heart 
 met me. I saw her calm, pure, serene. And here I must 
 confess that I have always thought that Othello was not only 
 stupid, but showed very bad taste. Only a man who is half
 
 314 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 a negro could behave so : indeed Shakespeare felt this when 
 he called his play 'The Moor of Venice.' The sight of 
 the woman we love is such a balm to the heart that it must 
 dispel anguish, doubt, and sorrow. All my rage vanished. 
 I could smile again. Hence this cheerfulness, which at my 
 age now would be the most atrocious dissimulation, was the re- 
 sult of my youth and my love. My jealousy once buried, I had 
 the power of observation. My ailing condition was evident ; 
 the horrible doubts that had fermented in me increased it. 
 At last I found an opening for putting in these words : ' You 
 have had no one with you this morning ? ' making a pretext 
 of the uneasiness I had felt in the fear lest she should have 
 disposed of her time after receiving my first note. ' Ah ! ' 
 she exclaimed, ' only a man could have such ideas ! As if I 
 could think of anything but your suffering. Till the moment 
 when I received your second note I could think only of how 
 I could really contrive to go to see you. ' ' And you were 
 alone?' 'Alone,' said she, looking at me with a face of in- 
 nocence so perfect that it must have been his distrust of such 
 a look as that which made the Moor kill Desdemona. As 
 she lived alone in the house, the word was a fearful lie. One 
 single lie destroys the absolute confidence which to some 
 souls is the very foundation of happiness. 
 
 " To explain to you what passed in me at that moment it 
 must be assumed that we have an internal self of which the 
 exterior / is but the husk; that this self, as brilliant as light, 
 is as fragile as a shade well, that beautiful self was in me 
 thenceforth for ever shrouded in crape. Yes ; I felt a cold 
 and fleshless hand cast over me the winding-sheet of expe- 
 rience, dooming me to the eternal mourning into which the 
 first betrayal plunges the soul. As I cast my eyes down that 
 she might not observe my dizziness, this proud thought some- 
 what restored my strength : ' If she is deceiving you she is 
 unworthy of you ! ' 
 
 " I ascribed my sudden reddening and the tears which
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 315 
 
 started to my eyes to an attack of pain, and the sweet crea- 
 ture insisted on driving me home with the blinds of the cab 
 drawn. On the way she was full of a solicitude and tender- 
 ness that might have deceived the Moor of Venice whom I 
 have taken as a standard of comparison. Indeed, if that 
 great child were to hesitate two seconds longer, every intelli- 
 gent spectator feels that he would ask Desdemona's forgive- 
 ness. Thus, killing the woman is the act of a boy. She 
 wept as we parted, so much was she distressed at being unable 
 to nurse me herself. She wished she were my valet, in whose 
 happiness she found a cause of envy, and all this was as ele- 
 gantly expressed, oh ! as Clarissa might have written in her 
 happiness. There is always a precious ape in the prettiest and 
 most angelic woman ! " 
 
 At these words all the women looked down as if hurt by 
 this brutal truth so brutally stated. 
 
 " I will say nothing of the night nor the week I spent," 
 de Marsay went on. "I discovered that I was a statesman." 
 
 It was so well said that we all uttered an admiring exclama- 
 tion. 
 
 "As I thought over the really cruel vengeance to be taken 
 on a woman," said de Marsay, continuing his story, "with 
 infernal ingenuity for, as we had loved each other, some 
 terrible and irreparable revenges were possible I despised 
 myself, I felt how common I was, I insensibly formulated a 
 horrible code that of indulgence. In taking vengeance on 
 a woman, do we not in fact admit that there is but one for us, 
 that we cannot do without her? And, then, is revenge the 
 way to win her back ! If she is not indispensable, if there 
 are other women in the world, why not grant her the right to 
 change which we assume ? 
 
 "This, of course, applies only to passion; in any other 
 sense it would be socially wrong. Nothing more clearly 
 proves the necessity for indissoluble marriage than the in- 
 stability of passion. The two sexes must be chained up, like
 
 316 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 wild beasts as they are, by inevitable law, deaf and mute. 
 Eliminate revenge and infidelity in love is nothing. Those 
 who believe that for them there is but one woman in the world 
 must be in favor of vengeance, and then there is but one form 
 of it that of Othello. 
 
 "Mine was different." 
 
 The words prpduced in each of us the imperceptible move- 
 ment which newspaper writers represent in parliamentary re- 
 ports by the words : " Great sensation." 
 
 " Cured of my cold, and of my pure, absolute, divine love, 
 I flung myself into an adventure, of which the heroine was 
 charming and of a style of beauty utterly opposed to that of 
 my deceiving angel. I took care not to quarrel with this 
 clever woman who was so good an actress, for I doubt whether 
 true love can give such gracious delights as those lavished by 
 such a dexterous fraud. Such refined hypocrisy is as good as 
 virtue. I am not speaking to you* Englishwomen, my lady," 
 said the minister suavely, addressing Lady Barimore, Lord 
 Dudley's daughter. " I tried to be the same lover. 
 
 " I wished to have some of my hair worked up for my new 
 angel so I went to a skilled artist, who at that time dwelt in 
 the Rue Boucher. The man had a monopoly of capillary keep- 
 sakes, and I mention his address for the benefit of those who 
 have not much hair ; he has plenty of every kind and every 
 color. After I had explained my order he showed me 
 his work. I then saw achievements of patience surpassing 
 those which the story books ascribe to fairies, or which are 
 executed by prisoners. He brought me up to date as to the 
 caprices and fashions governing the use of hair. ' For the 
 last year,' said he, 'there has been a rage for marking linen 
 with hair ; happily I had a fine collection of hair and skilled 
 needlewomen.' On hearing this a suspicion flashed upon me; 
 I took out my handkerchief and said, ' So this was done in your 
 shop, with false hair?' He looked at the handkerchief, and 
 said, ' Ay ! that lady was very particular, she insisted on veri-
 
 WHEN ARE YOU TO MARRY THE DUKE?'
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 317 
 
 fying the tint of the hair. My wife herself marked those 
 handkerchiefs. You have there, sir, one of the finest pieces 
 of work we have ever executed.' Before this last ray of light I 
 might have believed something might have taken a woman's 
 word. I left the store still having faith in pleasure, but where 
 love was concerned I was as atheistical as a mathematician. 
 
 " Two months later I was sitting by the side of the ethereal 
 being in her boudoir, on her sofa ; I was holding one of her 
 hands they were very beautiful and we scaled the Alps of 
 sentiment, culling their sweetest flowers, and pulling off the 
 daisy-petals ; there is always a moment when one pulls daisies 
 to pieces, even if it is in a drawing-room and there are no 
 daisies. At the intensest moment of tenderness and when we 
 are most in love, love is so well aware of its own short dura- 
 tion that we are irresistibly urged to ask, ' Do you love me? 
 Will you' love me always ? ' I seized the elegiac moment, so 
 warm, so flowery, so full-blown, to lead her to tell her most 
 delightful lies, in the enchanting language of rapturous exag- 
 geration and high-flown poetry peculiar to love. Charlotte 
 displayed her choicest allurements : She could not live with- 
 out me ; I was to her the only man in the world ; she feared 
 to weary me, because my presence bereft her of all her wits ; 
 with me all her faculties were lost in love ; she was indeed 
 too tender to escape alarms ; for the last six months she had 
 been seeking some way to bind me to her eternally, and God 
 alone knew that secret ; in short, I was her god ! " 
 
 The women who heard de Marsay seemed offended by 
 seeing themselves so well acted, for he seconded the words by 
 airs, and sidelong attitudes, and mincing grimaces which 
 were quite illusory. 
 
 "At the very moment when I might have believed these 
 adorable falsehoods, as I still held her right hand in mine, I 
 said to her, ' When are you to marry the Duke ? ' 
 
 "The thrust was so direct, my gaze met hers so boldly, 
 and her hand lay so tightly in mine, that her start, slight as
 
 318 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 it was, could not be disguised ; her eyes fell before mine, and 
 a faint blush colored her cheeks. ' The Duke ! What do 
 you mean ? ' she said, affecting great astonishment. ' I know 
 everything,' I replied ; ' and, in my opinion, you should delay 
 no longer ; he is rich ; he is a duke ; but he is more than de- 
 vout, he is religious ! I am sure, therefore, that you have 
 been faithful to me, thanks to his scruples. You cannot 
 imagine how urgently necessary it is that you should com- 
 promise him with himself and with God; short of that you 
 will never bring him to the point.' ' Is this a dream ? ' said 
 she, pushing her hair from her forehead, fifteen years before 
 Malibran, with the gesture which Malibran has made so 
 famous. ' Come, do not be childish, my angel,' I said, try- 
 ing to take her hands ; but she folded them before her with a 
 little prudish and indignant mien. ' Marry him, you have 
 my permission,' said I, replying to this gesture by using 
 the formal vous (you) instead of tu (thou). ' Nay, better, I 
 beg you will do so.' 'But,' cried she, falling at my knees, 
 ' there is some horrible mistake ; I love no one in the world 
 but you; you may demand any proofs you please.' 'Rise, 
 my dear,' said I, 'and do me the honor of being truthful.' 
 ' As before God.' ' Do you doubt my love? ' ' No.' ' Nor 
 my fidelity?' ' No.' ' Well, I have committed the greatest 
 crime,' I went on. ' I have doubted your love and your 
 fidelity. Between two intoxications I looked calmly about 
 me.' 'Calmly!' sighed she. 'That is enough, Henri ; 
 you no longer love me.' 
 
 " She had at once found, you perceive, a loophole for 
 escape. In scenes like these an adverb is dangerous. But, 
 happily, curiosity made her add: 'And what did you see? 
 Have I ever spoken of the Duke excepting in public ? Have 
 
 you detected in my eyes ?' 'No,' I said, 'but in his. 
 
 And you have eight times made me go to Saint-Thomas 
 d'Aquin to see you listening to the same mass as he.' ' Ah ! ' 
 she exclaimed, ' then I have made you jealous ! ' ' Oh ! I
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 519 
 
 only wish I could be ! ' said I, admiring the pliancy of her 
 quick intelligence, and these acrobatic feats which can only be 
 successful in the eyes of the blind. ' But by dint of going to 
 church I have become very incredulous. On the day of my 
 first cold, and your first treachery, when you thought I was 
 in bed, you received the Duke, and you told me you had 
 seen no one.' ' Do you know that your conduct is infam- 
 ous ? ' 'In what respect ? I consider your marriage to the 
 Duke an excellent arrangement ; he gives you a great name, 
 the only rank that suits you, a brilliant and distinguished 
 position. You will be one of the queens of Paris. I should 
 be doing you a wrong if I placed any obstacle in the way of 
 this prospect, this distinguished life, this splendid alliance. 
 Ah ! Charlotte, some day you will do me justice by discover- 
 ing how unlike my character is to that of other young men. 
 You would have been compelled to deceive me ; yes, you 
 would have found it very difficult to break with me, for he 
 watches you. It is time that we should part, for the Duke is 
 rigidly virtuous. You must turn prude ; I advise you to do 
 so. The Duke is vain ; he will be proud of his wife.' ' Oh ! ' 
 cried she, bursting into tears, ' Henri, if only you had spoken ! 
 Yes, if you had chosen ' it was I who was to blame, you 
 understand ' we would have gone to live all our days in a 
 corner, married, happy, and defied the world.' 'Well, it is 
 too late now,' said I, kissing her hands and putting on a vic- 
 timized air. ' Good God ! But I can undo it all ! ' she said. 
 ' No, you have gone too far with the Duke. I ought indeed 
 to go a journey to part us more effectually. We should both 
 
 have reason to fear our own affection ' ' Henri, do you 
 
 think the Duke has any suspicions?' I was still 'Henri,' 
 but the tu was lost forever. ' I do not think so,' I replied, 
 assuming the manner of a friend; 'but be as devout as possible, 
 reconcile yourself to God, for the Duke waits for proofs; he 
 hesitates, you must bring him to the point.' 
 
 " She arose and walked twice round the boudoir in real or
 
 320 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAtf. 
 
 affected agitation ; then she no doubt found an attitude and 
 a look beseeming the new state of affairs, for she stopped in 
 front of me, held out her hand, and said in a voice broken by 
 emotion, ' Well, Henri, you are loyal, noble, and a charming 
 man ; J shall never forget you. ' 
 
 "These were admirable tactics. She was bewitching in 
 this transition of feeling, indispensable to the situation in 
 which she wished to place herself in regard to me. I fell into 
 the attitude, the manners, and the look of a man so deeply 
 distressed that I saw her too newly assumed dignity giving 
 way ; she looked at me, took my hand, drew me along almost, 
 threw me on to the sofa, but quite gently, and said after a 
 moment's silence, ' I am dreadfully unhappy, my dear fellow. 
 Do you love me?' ' Oh ! yes.' 'Well, then, what will be- 
 come of you ? ' " 
 
 At this point the women all looked at each other. 
 
 " Though I can still surfer when I recall her perfidy, I still 
 laugh at her expression of entire conviction and sweet satis- 
 faction that I must die, or at any rate sink into perpetual 
 melancholy," de Marsay went on. "Oh! do not laugh yet !" 
 he said to his listeners ; " there is better to come. I looked 
 at her very tenderly after a pause, and said to her, ' Yes, that 
 is what I have been wondering.' ' Well, what will you do ? ' 
 
 'I asked myself that the day after my cold.' 'And ?' 
 
 she asked with eager anxiety. ' And I have made advances 
 to the little lady to whom I was supposed to be attached.' 
 
 " Charlotte started up from the sofa like a frightened doe, 
 trembling like a leaf, gave me one of those looks in which 
 women forego all their dignity, all their modesty, their refine- 
 ment, and even their grace ; the sparkling glitter of a hunted 
 viper's eye when driven into a corner, and ejaculated, ' And 
 
 I have loved this man ! I have struggled ! I have ' On 
 
 this last thought, which I leave you to guess, she made the 
 most impressive pause I ever heard. ' Good God ! ' she cried, 
 ' how unhappy are we women ! we never can be loved. To
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN, 321 
 
 you there is nothing serious in the purest feelings. But never 
 mind ; when you cheat us you still are our dupes ! ' 'I see 
 that plainly,' said I, with a stricken air ; ' you have far too 
 much wit in your anger for your heart to suffer from it.' This 
 modest epigram increased her rage ; she found some tears of 
 vexation. 'You disgust me with the world and with life, 'she 
 said ; ' you snatch away all my illusions ; you deprave my 
 heart.' 
 
 " She said to me all that I had a right to say to her, and 
 with a simple effrontery, an artless audacity, which would cer- 
 tainly have nailed any man but me on the spot. ' What is to 
 become of us poor women in a state of society such as Louis 
 XVIII. 's charter has made it?' (Imagine how her words had 
 run away with her.) ' Yes, indeed, we are born to suffer. In 
 matters of passion we are always superior to you, and you are 
 beneath all loyalty. There is no honesty in your hearts. To 
 you love is a game in which you always cheat.' ' My dear,' 
 I answered, ' to take anything serious in society nowadays 
 would be like making romantic love to an actress.' * What a 
 shameless betrayal ! It was deliberately planned ! ' ' No, 
 only a rational issue.' ' Good-by, Monsieur de Marsay,' 
 she said; 'you have deceived me horribly.' ' Surely,' I re- 
 plied, taking up a submissive attitude, ' Madame la Duchesse 
 will not remember Charlotte's grievances? ' ' Certainly,' she 
 aswered bitterly. ' Then, in fact, you hate me ? ' She bowed, 
 and I said to myself, ' There is something still left ! ' 
 
 " The feeling she had when I parted from her allowed her 
 to believe that she still had something to avenge. Well, my 
 friends, I have carefully studied the lives of men who have had 
 great success with women, but I do not believe that the 
 Marechal de Richelieu, or Lauzun, or Louis de Valois ever 
 effected a more judicious retreat at the first attempt. As to 
 my mind and heart, they were cast in a mould then and there, 
 once for all, and the power of control I thus acquired over 
 the thoughtless impulses which make us commit so many 
 21
 
 322 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 follies gained me the admirable presence of mind you all 
 know." 
 
 " How deeply I pity the second ! " exclaimed the Baronne 
 de Nucingen. 
 
 A scarcely perceptible smile on de Marsay's pale lips made 
 Delphine de Nucingen color. 
 
 " How we do forget ! " said the Baron de Nucingen. 
 
 The great banker's simplicity was so extremely droll that 
 his wife, who was de Marsay's "second," could not help 
 laughing like every one else. 
 
 "You are all ready to condemn the woman," said Lady 
 Dudley. " Well, I quite understand that she did not regard 
 her marriage as an act of inconstancy. Men will never dis- 
 tinguish between constancy and fidelity. I know the woman 
 whose story Monsieur de Marsay has told us, she is one of the 
 last of your truly great ladies." 
 
 "Alas ! my lady, you are right," replied de Marsay. " For 
 very nearly fifty years we have been looking on at the pro- 
 gressive ruin of all social distinctions. We ought to have 
 saved our women from this great wreck, but the civil code has 
 swept its leveling influence over their heads. However ter- 
 rible the words, they must be spoken : Duchesses are vanish- 
 ing, and marquises too ! As to the baronesses I must apolo- 
 gize to Madame de Nucingen, who will become a countess 
 when her husband is made a peer of France baronesses have 
 never succeeded in getting people to take them seriously." 
 
 "Aristocracy begins with the viscountess," said Blondet 
 with a smile. 
 
 " Countesses will survive," said de Marsay. " An elegant 
 woman will be more or less of a countess a countess of the 
 empire or of yesterday, a countess of the old block, or, as they 
 say in Italy, a countess by courtesy. But as to the great lady, 
 she died out with the dignified splendor of the last century, 
 with powder, patches, high-heeled slippers, and stiff bodices 
 with a delta stomacher of bows. Duchesses in these days can
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 323 
 
 pass through a door without any need to widen it for their 
 hoops. The empire saw the last of gowns with trains ! I am 
 still puzzled to understand how a sovereign who wished to see 
 his drawing-room swept by ducal satin and velvet did not 
 make indestructible laws. Napoleon never guessed the results 
 of the code he was so proud of. That man, by creating 
 duchesses, founded the race of our 'ladies' of to-day the 
 indirect offspring of his legislation." 
 
 " It was logic, handled as a hammer by boys just out of 
 school and by obscure journalists, which demolished the 
 splendors of the social state," said the Comte de Vandenesse. 
 " In these days every rogue who can hold his head straight in 
 his collar, cover his manly bosom with half an ell of satin 
 by way of a cuirass, display a brow where apocryphal genius 
 gleams under curling locks, and strut in a pair of patent- 
 leather pumps graced by silk socks which cost six francs, 
 screws his eyeglass into one of his eye-sockets by puckering 
 up his cheek, and whether he be an attorney's clerk, a con- 
 tractor's son, or a banker's bastard, he stares impertinently at 
 the prettiest duchess, appraises her as she walks downstairs, 
 and says to his friend dressed by Buisson, as we all are, and 
 mounted in patent-leather like any duke himself ' There, my 
 boy, that is a perfect lady.' ' 
 
 "You have not known how to form a party," said Lord 
 Dudley ; " it will be a long time yet before you have a policy. 
 You talk a great deal in France about organizing labor, and 
 you have not yet organized property. So this is what hap- 
 pens : Any duke and even in the time of Louis XVIII. and 
 Charles X. there were some left who had two hundred thou- 
 sand francs a year, a magnificent residence, and a sumptuous 
 train of servants well, such a duke could live like a great 
 lord. The last of these great gentlemen in France was the 
 Prince de Talleyrand. This duke leaves four children, two 
 of them girls. Granting that he has great luck in marrying 
 them all well, each of these descendants will have but sixty or
 
 324 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 eighty thousand francs a year now; each is the father or 
 mother of children, and consequently obliged to live with the 
 strictest economy in a flat on the first floor or second floor of 
 a large house. Who knows if they may not even be hunting 
 a fortune? Henceforth the eldest son's wife, a duchess in 
 name only, has no carriage, no people, no opera-box, no time 
 to herself. She has not her own rooms in the family mansion, 
 nor her fortune, nor her pretty toys ; she is buried in marriage 
 as a wife in the Rue Saint-Denis is buried in trade ; she buys 
 socks for her dear little children, nurses them herself, and 
 keeps an eye on her girls, whom she no longer sends to school 
 at a convent. Thus your noblest dames have been turned 
 into worthy brood-hens." 
 
 "Alas! it is true," said Joseph Bridau. "In our day we 
 cannot show those beautiful flowers of womanhood which 
 graced the golden ages of the French monarchy. The great 
 lady's fan is broken. A woman has nothing now to blush 
 for; she need not slander or whisper, hide her face or reveal 
 it. A fan is of no use now but for fanning herself. When 
 once a thing is no more than what it is, it is too useful to be 
 a form of luxury." 
 
 " Everything in France has aided and abetted the ' perfect 
 lady,' " said Daniel d'Arthez. " The aristocracy has acknowl- 
 edged her by retreating to the recesses of its landed estates, 
 where it has hidden itself to die emigrating inland before 
 the march of ideas, as of old to foreign lands before that of 
 the masses. The women who could have founded European 
 salons, could have guided opinion and turned it inside out 
 like a glove, could have ruled the world by ruling the men of 
 art or of intellect who ought to have ruled it, have committed 
 the blunder of abandoning their ground ; they were ashamed 
 of having to fight against the citizen class drunk with power, 
 and rushing out on to the stage of the world, there to be cut 
 to pieces perhaps by the barbarians who are at its heels. 
 Hence, where the middle class insists on seeing princesses,
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 325 
 
 these are really only lady-like young women. In these days 
 princes can find no great ladies whom they may compromise ; 
 they cannot even confer honor on a woman taken up at ran- 
 dom. The Due de Bourbon was the last prince to avail 
 himself of this privilege." 
 
 " And God alone knows how dearly he paid for it ! " said 
 Lord Dudley. 
 
 " Nowadays princes have lady-like wives, obliged to share 
 their opera-box with other ladies ; royal favor could not raise 
 them higher by a hair's-breadth ; they glide unremarkable 
 between the waters of the citizen class and those of the nobil- 
 ity not altogether noble nor altogether middle class," said 
 the Marquise de Rochegude acridly. 
 
 " The press has fallen heir to the woman," exclaimed Ras- 
 tignac. " She no longer has the quality of a spoken feuillcton* 
 delightful calumnies graced by elegant language. We read 
 feuilletons written in a dialect which changes every three 
 years, society papers about as mirthful as an undertaker's 
 mute, and as light as the lead of their type. French conver- 
 sation is carried on from one end of the country to the other 
 in a revolutionary jargon, through long columns of type 
 printed in old mansions where a press groans in the place 
 where formerly elegant company used to meet." 
 
 " The knell of the highest society is tolling," said a Rus- 
 sian Prince. " Do you hear it? And the first stroke is your 
 modern word lady." 
 
 "You are right, Prince," said de Marsay. "The 'perfect 
 lady,' issuing from the ranks of the nobility, or sprouting 
 from the citizen class, and the product of every soil, even of 
 the provinces, is the expression of these times, a last remain- 
 ing embodiment of good taste, grace, wit, and distinction, 
 all combined, but dwarfed. We shall see no more great ladies 
 in France, but there will be ' ladies ' for a long time, elected 
 by public opinion to form an upper chamber of women, and 
 
 * The light gossip of a newspaper.
 
 326 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 who will be among the fair sex what a ' gentleman ' is in 
 England." 
 
 "And that they call progress!" exclaimed Mademoiselle 
 des Touches. "I should like to know where the progress 
 lies."' 
 
 " Why in this," said Madame de Nucingen. "Formerly 
 a woman might have the voice of a fish-seller, the walk of a 
 grenadier, the face of an impudent courtesan, her hair too 
 high on her forehead, a large foot, a thick hand she was a 
 great lady in spite of it all ; but in these days, even if she 
 was a Montmorency if a Montmorency could ever be such 
 a creature she would not be a lady." 
 
 "But what do you mean by a 'perfect lady?'" asked 
 Count Adam Laginski. 
 
 " She is a modern product, a deplorable triumph of the 
 elective system as applied to the fair sex," said the minister. 
 " Every revolution has a word of its own which epitomizes 
 and depicts it." 
 
 " You are right," said the Russian, who had come to make 
 a literary reputation in Paris. "The explanation of certain 
 words added from time to time to your beautiful language 
 would make a magnificent history. Organize, for instance, is 
 the word of the empire, and sums up Napoleon completely." 
 
 " But all that does not explain what is meant by a lady ! " 
 the young Pole exclaimed, with some impatience. 
 
 "Well, I will tell you," said Emile Blondet to Count 
 Adam. " One fine morning you go for a saunter in Paris. 
 It is past two, but five has not yet struck. You see a woman 
 coming toward you ; your first glance at her is like the pre- 
 face to a good book, it leads you to expect a world of elegance 
 and refinement. Like a botanist over hill and dale in his 
 pursuit of plants, among the vulgarities of Paris life you have 
 at last found a rare flower. This woman is attended by two 
 very distinguished-looking men, of whom one, at any rate, 
 wears an order ; or else a servant out of livery follows her at
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 327 
 
 a distance of ten yards. She displays no gaudy colors, no 
 open-worked stockings, no over-elaborate waist-buckle, no 
 embroiderd frills to her drawers fussing round her ankles. 
 You will see that she is shod with prunella slippers, with san- 
 dals crossed over extremely fine cotton stockings, or plain 
 gray silk stockings ; or perhaps she wears shoes of the most 
 exquisite simplicity. You notice that her gown is made of a 
 neat and inexpensive material, but made in a way that sur- 
 prises more than one woman of the middle class ; it is almost 
 always a long pelisse, with bows to fasten it, and neatly bound 
 with fine cord or an imperceptible braid. The unknown has 
 a way of her own in wrapping herself in her shawl or mantilla; 
 she knows how to draw it around her from her hips to her 
 neck, outlining a carapace, as it were, which would make an 
 ordinary woman look like a turtle, but which in her sets off 
 the most beautiful forms while concealing them. How does 
 she do it ? This secret she keeps, though unguarded by any 
 patent. 
 
 "As she walks she gives herself a little concentric and har- 
 monious twist, which makes her supple or dangerous slender- 
 ness writhe under the stuff, as a snake does under the green 
 gauze of trembling grass. Is it to an angel or a devil that she 
 owes the graceful undulation which plays under her long, 
 black silk cape, stirs its lace frill, sheds an airy balm, and 
 what I should like to call the breeze of a Parisienne ? You 
 may recognize over her arms, round her waist, about her 
 throat, a science of drapery recalling the antique Mnemosyne, 
 mother of the Muses. 
 
 " Oh ! how thoroughly she understands the cut of her gait 
 forgive the expression. Study the way she puts her foot 
 forward, moulding her skirt with such a decent preciseness 
 that the passer-by is filled with admiration, mingled with de- 
 sire, but subdued by deep respect. When an Englishwoman 
 attempts this step she looks like a grenadier marching for- 
 ward to attack a redoubt. The women of Paris have a genius
 
 328 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 for walking. The municipality really owed them asphalt side- 
 walks. 
 
 " Our unknown jostles no one. If she wants to pass, she 
 waits with proud humility till some one makes way. The 
 distinction peculiar to a well-bred woman betrays itself, espe- 
 cially in the way she holds her shawl or cloak crossed over 
 her bosom. Even as she walks she has a little air of serene 
 dignity, like Raphael's Madonnas in their frames. Her aspect, 
 at once quiet and disdainful, makes the most insolent dandy 
 step aside for her. 
 
 " Her bonnet, remarkable for its simplicity, is trimmed 
 with crisp ribbons ; there may be flowers in it, but the cleverest 
 of such women wear only bows. Feathers demand a carriage ; 
 flowers are too showy. Beneath it you see the fresh unworn 
 face of a woman who, without conceit, is sure of herself ; who 
 looks at nothing, and sees everything ; whose vanity, satiated 
 by being constantly gratified, stamps her face with an indif- 
 ference which piques your curiosity. She knows that she is 
 looked at ; she knows that everybody, even women, turn 
 round to see her again. And she threads her way through 
 Paris like a gossamer, spotless and pure. 
 
 " This delightful species affects the hottest latitudes, the 
 cleanest longitudes of Paris ; you will meet her between the 
 loth and noth arcade of the Rue de Rivoli ; along the line 
 of the boulevards from the equator of the Passage des Pano- 
 ramas, where the products of India flourish, where the warmest 
 creations of industry are displayed, to the cape of the Made- 
 leine; in the least muddy districts of the citizen quarters, 
 between No. 30 and No. 130 of the Rue du Faubourg Saint- 
 Honore. During the winter she haunts the terrace of the 
 Feuillants, but not the asphalt pavement that lies parallel. 
 According to the weather, she may be seen flying in the 
 avenue of the Champs-Elysees, which is bounded on the east 
 by the Place Louis XV., on the west by the Avenue de Ma- 
 rig n y> to the south by the road, to the north by the gardens
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 329 
 
 of the Faubourg Saint-Honore. Never is this pretty variety 
 of woman to be seen in the hyperborean regions of the Rue 
 Saint-Denis, never in the Kamtschatka of miry, narrow, com- 
 mercial streets ; never anywhere in bad weather. These 
 flowers of Paris, blooming only in Oriental weather, perfume 
 the highways ; and after five o'clock fold up like morning- 
 glory flowers. The women you will see later, looking a little 
 like them, trying to ape them, are would-be ladies ; while the 
 fair unknown, your Beatrice of a day, is a ' perfect lady.' 
 
 " It is not very easy for a foreigner, my dear Count, to 
 recognize the differences by which the old observer distin- 
 guishes them women are such consummate actresses ; but 
 they are glaring in the eyes of Parisians : hooks ill fastened, 
 strings showing loops of rusty-white tape through a gaping 
 slit in the back, rubbed shoe-leather, ironed bonnet-strings, 
 an overfull skirt, an overtight waist. You will see a certain 
 effort in the intentional droop of the eyelid. There is some- 
 thing conventional in the attitude. 
 
 "As to the middle class, the citizen womankind, she can 
 not possibly be mistaken for the lady ; she is an admirable 
 foil to her, she accounts for the spell cast over you by the 
 unknown. She is bustling, and goes out in all weathers, trots 
 about, comes, goes, gazes, does not know whether she will or 
 will not go into a store. Where the lady knows just what 
 she wants and what she is doing, the townswoman is unde- 
 cided, tucks up her skirts to cross a gutter, dragging a child 
 by the hand, which compels her to look out for the vehicles ; 
 she is a mother in public, and talks to her daughter ; she 
 carries money in her bag, and has open-work stockings on her 
 feet ; in winter, she wears a boa over her fur cloak ; in 
 summer, a shawl and a scarf; she is accomplished in the re- 
 dundancies of dress. 
 
 "You will meet the fair unknown again at the Italiens, at 
 the opera, at a ball. She will then appear under such a differ- 
 ent aspect that you would think them two beings devoid of any
 
 330 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 analogy. The woman has emerged from those mysterious 
 garments like a butterfly from its silky cocoon. She serves 
 up, like some rare dainty, to your ravished eyes, the forms 
 which her bodice scarcely revealed in the morning. At the 
 theatre she never mounts higher than the second tier, except- 
 ing at the Italiens. You can there watch at your leisure the 
 studied deliberateness of her movements. The enchanting 
 deceiver plays off all the little political artifices of her sex so 
 naturally as to exclude all idea of art or premeditation. If 
 she has a royally beautiful hand, the most perspicacious be- 
 holder will believe that it is absolutely necessary that she 
 should twist, or refix, or push aside the ringlet or curl she 
 plays with. If she has some dignity of profile, you will be 
 persuaded that she is giving irony or grace to what she says 
 to her neighbor, sitting in such a position as to produce the 
 magical effect of the ' lost profile,' so dear to great painters, 
 by which the cheek catches the high light, the nose is shown 
 in clear outline, the nostrils are transparently rosy, the fore- 
 head squarely modeled, the eye has its spangle of fire, but 
 fixed on space, and the white roundness of the chin is accent- 
 uated by a line of light. If she has a pretty foot, she will 
 throw herself on a sofa with the coquettish grace of a cat in 
 the sunshine, her feet outstretched without your feeling that 
 her attitude is anything but the most charming model ever 
 given to a sculptor by lassitude. 
 
 "Only the perfect lady is quite at her ease in full dress; 
 nothing inconveniences her. You will never see her, like the 
 woman of the citizen class, pulling up a refractory shoulder- 
 strap, or pushing down a rebellious whalebone, or looking 
 whether her tucker is doing its office of faithful guardian to two 
 treasures of dazzling whiteness, or glancing in the mirrors to 
 see if her head-dress is keeping its place. Her toilet is always 
 in harmony with her character ; she has had time to study 
 herself, to learn what becomes her, for she has long known 
 what does not suit her. You will not find her as you go out ;
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 331 
 
 she vanishes before the end of the play. If by chance she is 
 to be seen, calm and stately, on the stairs, she is experiencing 
 some violent emotion ; she has to bestow a glance, to receive 
 a promise. Perhaps she goes down so slowly on purpose to 
 gratify the vanity of a slave whom she sometimes obeys. If 
 your meeting takes place at a ball or an evening party, you 
 will gather the honey, natural or affected, of her insinuating 
 voice ; her empty words will enchant you, and she will know 
 how to give them the value of thought by her inimitable 
 bearing." 
 
 "To be such a woman, is it not necessary to be very clever?" 
 asked the Polish Count. 
 
 " It is necessary to have great taste," replied the Princesse 
 de Cadignan. 
 
 "And in France taste is more than cleverness," said the 
 Russian. 
 
 " This woman's cleverness is the triumph of a purely plastic 
 art," Blondet went on. "You will not know what she said, 
 but you will be fascinated. She will toss her head, or gently 
 shrug her white shoulders; she will gild an insignificant 
 speech with a charming pout and smile ; or throw a Vol- 
 tairean epigram into an ' Indeed ! ' an ' Ah ! ' a ' What then ! ' 
 A jerk of her head will be her most pertinent form of ques- 
 tioning ; she will give meaning to the movement by which she 
 twirls a vinaigrette hanging to her finger by a ring. She gets 
 an artificial grandeur out of superlative trivialities ; she simply 
 drops her hand impressively, letting it fall over the arm of her 
 chair as dewdrops hang on the cup of a flower, and all is said 
 she has pronounced judgment beyond appeal, to the appre- 
 hension of the most obtuse. She knows how to listen to you; 
 she gives you the opportunity of shining, and I ask your 
 modesty those moments are rare? " 
 
 The candid simplicity of the young Pole, to whom Blondet 
 spoke, made all the party shout with laughter. 
 
 " Now, you will not talk for half-an-hour with a bourgeoise
 
 332 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 without her alluding to her husband in one way or another," 
 Blondet went on with unperturbed gravity; " whereas, even if 
 you know that your lady is married, she will have the delicacy 
 to conceal her husband so effectually that it will need the 
 enterprise of Christopher Columbus to discover him. Often 
 you will fail in the attempt single-handed. If you have had 
 no opportunity of inquiring, toward the end of the evening 
 you detect her gazing fixedly at a middle-aged man wearing a 
 decoration, who bows and goes out. She has ordered her 
 carriage, and goes. 
 
 "You are not the rose, but you have been with the rose, 
 and you go to bed under the golden canopy of a delicious 
 dream, which will last perhaps after sleep, with his heavy 
 finger, has opened the ivory gates of the temple of dreams. 
 
 "The lady, when she is at home, sees no one before four; 
 she is shrewd enough always to keep you waiting. In her 
 house you will find everything in good taste ; her luxury is 
 for hourly use, and duly renewed ; you will see nothing under 
 glass shades, no rags of wrappings hanging about, and looking 
 like a pantry. You will find the staircase warmed. Flowers 
 on all sides will charm your sight flowers, the only gift she 
 accepts, and those only from certain people, for nosegays live 
 but a day ; they give pleasure, and must be replaced ; to her 
 they are, as in the East, a symbol and a promise. The costly 
 toys of fashion lie about, but not so as to suggest a museum 
 or a curiosity shop. You will find her sitting by the fire in a 
 low chair, from which she will not rise to greet you. Her 
 talk will not now be what it was at the ball ; there she was our 
 creditor ; in her own home she owes you the pleasure of her 
 wit. These are the shades of which the lady is a marvelous 
 mistress. What she likes in you is a man to swell her circle, 
 an object for the cares and attentions which such women are 
 now happy to bestow. Therefore, to attract you to her 
 drawing-room, she will be bewitchingly charming. This 
 especially is where you feel how isolated women are nowa-
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 333 
 
 days, and why they want a little world of their own to which 
 they may seem a constellation. Conversation is impossible 
 without generalities." . 
 
 "Yes," said de Marsay, "you have truly hit the fault of 
 our age. The epigram a volume in a word no longer 
 strikes, as it did in the eighteenth century, at persons or at 
 things, but at squalid events, and it dies in a day." 
 
 " Hence," said Blondet, " the intelligence of the lady, if 
 she has any, consists in casting doubts on everything, while 
 the bourgeoise uses hers to affirm everything. Here lies the 
 great difference between the two women ; the townswoman is 
 certainly virtuous ; the lady does not know yet whether she is, 
 or whether she always will be ; she hesitates and struggles 
 where the other refuses point-blank and falls full length. 
 This hesitancy in everything is one of the last graces left to 
 her by our horrible times. She rarely goes to church, but she 
 will talk to you of religion ; and if you have the good taste to 
 affect freethought, she will try to convert you, for you will have 
 opened a way for the stereotyped phrases, the head-shaking 
 and gestures understood by all these women : ' For shame ! 
 I thought you had too much sense to attack religion. Society 
 is tottering, and you deprive it of its support. Why, religion 
 at this moment means you and me ; it is property, and the 
 future of our children ! Ah ! let us not be selfish ! Individu- 
 alism is the disease of the age and religion is the only remedy ; 
 it unites families which your laws put asunder,' and so forth. 
 Then she plunges into some neo-Christian speech sprinkled 
 with political notions which is neither catholic nor protestant 
 but moral ? Oh ! deuced moral ! in which you may rec- 
 ognize a fag-end of every material woven by modern doc- 
 trines, at loggerheads together." 
 
 The women could not help laughing at the airs by which 
 Blondet illustrated his satire. 
 
 "This explanation, dear Count Adam," said Blondet, 
 turning to the Pole, " will have proved to you that the ' per-
 
 334 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 feet lady' represents the intellectual no less than the political 
 muddle, just as she is surrounded by the showy and not very 
 lasting products of an industry which is always aiming at de- 
 stroying its work in order to replace it by something else. 
 When you leave her you say to yourself: 'She certainly has 
 superior ideas ! ' And you believe it all the more because she 
 will have sounded your heart with a delicate touch and have 
 asked you your secrets ; she affects ignorance, to learn every- 
 thing ; there are some things she never knows, not even when 
 she knows them. You alone will be uneasy, you will know 
 nothing of the state of her heart. The great ladies of old 
 flaunted their love-affairs with newspapers and advertisements ; 
 in these days the lady has her little passion neatly ruled like a 
 sheet of music with its crotchets and quavers and minims, its 
 rests, its pauses, its sharps to sign the key. A mere weak 
 woman, she is anxious not to compromise her love, or her 
 husband, or the future of her children. Name, position, and 
 fortune are no longer flags so respected as to protect all kinds 
 of merchandise on board. The whole aristocracy no longer 
 advances in a body to screen the lady. She has not, like the 
 great lady of the past, the demeanor of lofty antagonism ; she 
 can crush nothing under foot, it is she who would be crushed. 
 Thus she is apt at Jesuitical mezzo terming (middle courses) ; 
 she is a creature of equivocal compromises, of guarded pro- 
 prieties, of anonymous passions steered between two reef- 
 bound shores. She is as much afraid of her servants as an 
 Englishwoman who lives in dread of a trial in the divorce 
 court. This woman so free at a ball, so attractive out walk- 
 ing is a slave at home; she is never independent but in 
 perfect privacy, or theoretically. She must preserve herself 
 in her position as a lady. This is her task. 
 
 "For in our day a woman repudiated by her husband, re- 
 duced to a meagre allowance, with no carriage, no luxury, no 
 opera-box, none of the divine accessories of the toilet, is no 
 longer a wife, a maid, or a townswoman ; she is adrift, and
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 335 
 
 becomes a chattel. The Carmelites will not receive a married 
 woman ; it would be bigamy. Would her lover still have 
 anything to say to her? That is the question. Thus your 
 perfect lady may perhaps give occasion to calumny, never to 
 slander." 
 
 "It is all horribly true," said the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 "And so," responded Blondet, "our 'perfect lady' lives 
 between English hypocrisy and the delightful frankness of the 
 eighteenth century a bastard system, symptomatic of an age 
 in which nothing that grows up is at all like the thing that 
 has vanished, in which transition leads nowhere, every- 
 thing is a matter of degree; all the great figures shrink into 
 the background, and distinction is purely personal. I am 
 fully convinced that it is impossible for a woman, even if she 
 was born close to a throne, to acquire before the age of five- 
 and-twenty the encyclopaedic knowledge of trifles, the prac- 
 tice of manoeuvring, the important small things, the musical 
 tones and harmony of coloring, the angelic bedevilments and 
 innocent cunning, the speech and the silence, the seriousness 
 and the banter, the wit and the obtuseness, the diplomacy and 
 the ignorance which make up the perfect lady." 
 
 "And where, in accordance with the sketch you have 
 drawn," said Mademoiselle des Touches to Emile Blondet, 
 "would you class the female author? Is she a perfect lady 
 a woman commc ilfaut ?" (as she should be). 
 
 "When she has no genius, she is a woman comme il rfen 
 faut pas" (who is not as she should be), Blondet replied, 
 emphasizing the words with a stolen glance, which might 
 make them seem praise frankly addressed to Camille Maupin. 
 "This epigram is not mine, but Napoleon's," he added. 
 
 "You need not owe Napoleon any grudge on that score," 
 said Canalis, with an emphatic tone and gesture. " It was 
 one of his weaknesses to be jealous of literary genius for he 
 had his mean points. Who will ever explain, depict, or un- 
 derstand Napoleon ? A man represented with his arms folded,
 
 336 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 and who did everything, who was the greatest force ever known, 
 the most concentrated, the most mordant, the most acid of 
 all forces ; a singular genius who carried armed civilization 
 ih every direction without fixing it anywhere ; a man who could 
 do everything because he willed everything ; a prodigious 
 phenomenon of will conquering an illness by a battle, and yet 
 doomed to die of disease in bed after living in the midst of 
 ball and bullets ; a man with a code and a sword in his brain, 
 word and deed ; a clear-sighted spirit that foresaw everything 
 but his own fall ; a capricious politician who risked men by 
 handfuls out of economy, and who spared three heads those 
 of Talleyrand, of Pozzo di Borgo, and of Metternich, diplo- 
 matists whose death would have saved the French empire, and 
 who seemed to him of greater weight than thousands of sol- 
 diers; a man to whom nature, as a rare privilege, had given a 
 heart in a frame of bronze ; mirthful and kind at midnight 
 amid women, and next morning manipulating Europe as a 
 young girl might amuse herself by splashing the water in her 
 bath ! Hypocritical and generous ; loving tawdriness and 
 simplicity; devoid of taste, but protecting the arts; and, in 
 spite of these antitheses, really great in everything by instinct 
 or by temperament ; Caesar at five-and-twenty, Cromwell at 
 thirty; and then, like my grocer buried in Pere Lachaise, a 
 good husband and a good father. In short, he improvised 
 public works, empires, kings, codes, verses, a romance and all 
 with more range than precision. Did he not aim at making 
 all Europe France? And, after making us weigh on the earth 
 in such away as to change the laws of gravitation, he left us 
 poorer than on the day when he first laid hands on us; while 
 he, who had taken an empire by his name, lost his name on 
 the frontier of his empire in a sea of blood and soldiers. A 
 man all thought and all action, who comprehended Desaix 
 and Fouche." 
 
 " All despotism and all justice at the right moments. The 
 true king? " said de Marsay.
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN: 337 
 
 "Ah! vat a pleashre it is to dichest vile you talk," said 
 Baron de Nucingen. 
 
 " But do you suppose that the treat we are giving you is a 
 common one?" asked Joseph Bridau. " If you had to pay 
 for the charms of conversation as you do for those of dancing 
 or of music, your fortune would be inadequate ! There is no 
 second performance of the same flash of wit." 
 
 "And are we really so much deteriorated as these gentle- 
 men think?" said the Princesse de Cadignan, addressing the 
 women with a smile at once skeptical and ironical. " Because, 
 in these days, under a regime which makes everything small, 
 you prefer small dishes, small rooms, small pictures, small 
 articles, small newspapers, small books, does that prove that 
 women too have grown smaller? Why should the human 
 heart change because you change your coat ? In all ages the 
 passions will remain the same. I know cases of beautiful 
 devotion, of sublime sufferings, which lack the publicity 
 the glory, if you choose which formerly gave lustre to the 
 errors of some women. But though one may not have saved 
 a King of France, one is not the less an Agnes Sorel. Do 
 you believe that our dear Marquise d'Espard is not the peer 
 of Madame Doublet or Madame du Deffant, in whose rooms 
 so much evil was spoken and done ? Is not Taglioni a match 
 for Camargo ? or Malibran the equal of Saint-Huberti ? Are 
 not our poets superior to those of the eighteenth century ? 
 If at this moment, through the fault of the grocers who govern 
 us, we have not a style of our own, had not the empire its 
 distinguishing stamp as the age of Louis XV. had, and was 
 not its splendor fabulous? Have the sciences lost any- 
 thing?" 
 
 " I am quite of your opinion, madame ; the women of this 
 age are truly great," replied the Comte de Vandenesse. 
 "When posterity shall have followed us, will not Madame 
 Recamier appear in proportions as fine as those of the most 
 beautiful women of the past ? We have made so much his- 
 22
 
 338 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 tory that historians will be lacking ! The age of Louis XIV. 
 had but one Madame de Sevigne ; we have a thousand now 
 in Paris who certainly write better than she did, and who do 
 not publish their letters. Whether the Frenchwoman be 
 called ' perfect lady ' or great lady, she will always be the 
 woman among women. 
 
 " Emile Blondet has given us a picture of the fascinations 
 of a woman of the day; but, at need, this creature who bridles 
 or shows off, who chirps out the ideas of Mr. This and Mr. 
 That, would be heroic. And it must be said, your faults, 
 mesdames, are all the more poetical, because they must always, 
 and under all circumstances, be surrounded by greater perils. 
 I have seen much of the world, I have studied it perhaps too 
 late ; but in cases where the illegality of your feelings might 
 be excused, I have always observed the effects of I know not 
 what chance which you may call providence inevitably 
 overwhelming such as we consider light women." 
 
 " I hope," said Madame de Vandenesse, " that we can be 
 great in other ways " 
 
 " Oh, let the Comte de Vandenesse preach to us ! " ex- 
 claimed Madame de Serizy. 
 
 "With all the more reason because he has preached a great 
 deal by example," said the Baronne de Nucingen. 
 
 "On my honor! " said General de Montriveau, "in all 
 the dramas a word you are very fond of," he said, looking 
 at Blondet " in which the finger of God has been visible, 
 the most frightful I ever knew was very near being by my 
 act " 
 
 "Well, tell us all about it ! " cried Lady Barimore ; "I 
 love to shudder ! " 
 
 "It is the taste of a virtuous woman," replied de Marsay, 
 looking at Lord Dudley's lovely daughter. 
 
 "During the campaign of 1812," General de Montriveau 
 began, " I was the involuntary cause of a terrible disaster 
 which may be of use to you, Doctor Bianchon," turning to
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 339 
 
 the doctor, " since, while devoting yourself to the human body, 
 you concern yourself a good deal with the mind ; it may tend 
 to solve some of the problems of the will. 
 
 "I was going through my second campaign; I enjoyed 
 danger, and laughed at everything, like the young and foolish 
 lieutenant of artillery that I was. When we reached the 
 Beresina, the army had, as you know, lost all discipline and 
 had forgotten military obedience. It was a medley of men 
 of all nations, instinctively making their way from north to 
 south. The soldiers would drive a general in rags and bare- 
 foot away from their fire if he brought neither wood nor vic- 
 tuals. After the passage of this famous river disorder did not 
 diminish. I had come quietly and alone, without food, out 
 of the marshes of Zembin, and was wandering in search of a 
 house where I might be taken in. Finding none, or driven 
 away from those I came across, happily toward evening I per- 
 ceived a wretched little Polish farm, of which nothing can 
 give you any idea unless you have seen the wooden houses of 
 Lower Normandy, or the poorest farm-buildings of la Beauce. 
 These dwellings consist of a single room, with one end divided 
 off by a wooden partition, the smaller division serving as a 
 storeroom for forage. 
 
 " In the darkness of twilight I could just see a faint smoke 
 rising above this house. Hoping to find there some comrades 
 more compassionate than those I had hitherto addressed, I 
 boldly walked as far as the farm. On going in, I found the 
 table laid. Several officers, and with them a woman a com- 
 mon sight enough were eating potatoes, some horseflesh 
 broiled over the charcoal, and some frozen beet-roots. I rec- 
 ognized among the company two or three artillery captains 
 of the regiment in which I had first served. I was welcomed 
 with a shout of acclamation, which would have amazed me 
 greatly on the other side of the Beresina ; but at this moment 
 the cold was less intense ; my fellow-officers were resting, they 
 were warm, they had food, and the room, strewn with trusses
 
 340 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 of straw, gave the promise of a delightful night. We did 
 not ask for so much in those days. My comrades could be 
 philanthropists gratis one of the commonest ways of being 
 philanthropic. I sat down to eat on one of the bundles of 
 straw. 
 
 " At the end of the table, by the side of the door opening 
 into the smaller room full of straw and hay, sat my old 
 colonel, one of the most extraordinary men I ever saw among 
 all the mixed collection of men it has been my lot to meet. 
 He was an Italian. Now, whenever human nature is truly 
 fine in the lands of the south, it is really sublime. I do not 
 know whether you have ever observed the extreme fairness of 
 Italians when they are fair. It is exquisite, especially under 
 an artificial light. When I read the fantastical portrait of 
 Colonel Oudet sketched by Charles Nodier, I found my own 
 sensations in every one of his elegant phrases. Italian, then, 
 as were most of the officers of his regiment, which had, in 
 fact, been borrowed by the Emperor from Eugene's army, 
 my colonel was a tall man, at least eight or nine inches above 
 the standard, and admirably proportioned a little stout per- 
 haps, but prodigiously powerful, active, and clean-limbed as a 
 grayhound. His black hair in abundant curls showed up his 
 complexion, as white as a woman's ; he had small hands, a 
 shapely foot, a pleasant mouth, and an aquiline nose delicately 
 formed, of which the tip used to become naturally pinched 
 and white whenever he was angry, as happened often. His 
 irascibility was so far beyond belief that I will tell you nothing 
 about it ; you will have the opportunity of judging of it. No 
 one could be calm in his presence. I alone, perhaps, was not 
 afraid of him ; he had indeed taken such a singular fancy to 
 me that he thought everything I did right. When he was in 
 a rage his brow was knit and the muscles of the middle of his 
 forehead set in a delta, or, to be more explicit, in Redgaunt- 
 let's horseshoe. This mark was, perhaps, even more terrify- 
 ing than the magnetic flashes of his blue eyes. His whole
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WO MAX. 341 
 
 frame quivered, and his strength, great as it was in his normal 
 state, became almost unbounded. 
 
 " He spoke with a strong guttural roll. His voice, at least 
 as powerful as that of Charles Nodier's Oudet, threw an in- 
 credible fullness of tone into the syllable or the consonant in 
 which this burr was sounded. Though this faulty pronuncia- 
 tion was at times a grace, when commanding his men or 
 when he was excited, you cannot imagine, unless you had 
 heard it, what force was expressed by this accent, which at 
 Paris is so common. When the colonel was quiescent, his 
 blue eyes were sweetly angelic, and his smooth brow had a 
 most charming expression. On parade or with the army of 
 Italy, not a man could compare with him. Indeed, d'Orsay 
 himself, the handsome d'Orsay, was eclipsed by our colonel 
 on the occasion of the last review held by Napoleon before 
 the invasion of Russia. 
 
 " Everything was in contrasts in this exceptional man. 
 Passion lives on contrast. Hence you need not ask whether 
 he exerted over women the irresistible influences to which our 
 nature yields " and the general looked at the Princesse de 
 Cadignan " as vitreous matter is moulded under the pipe of 
 the glassblower; still, by a singular fatality an observer 
 might perhaps explain the phenomenon the colonel was not 
 a lady-killer, or was indifferent to such successes. 
 
 " To give you an idea of his violence, I will tell you in a 
 few words what I once saw him do in a paroxysm of fury : 
 We were dragging our guns up a very narrow road, bordered 
 by a somewhat high slope on one side and by thickets on the 
 other. When we were half-way up we met another regiment 
 of artillery, its colonel marching at the head. This colonel 
 wanted to make the captain who was at the head of our fore- 
 most battery back down again. The captain, of course, re- 
 fused ; but the colonel of the other regiment signed to his 
 foremost battery to advance, and, in spite of the care the 
 driver took to keep among the scrub, the wheel of the first
 
 342 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 gun struck our captain's right leg and broke it, throwing him 
 over on the near -side of his horse. All this was the work of 
 a moment. Our colonel, who was but a little way off, guessed 
 that there was a quarrel ; he galloped up, riding among the 
 guns at the risk of falling with his horse's four feet in the 
 air, and reached the spot, face to face with the other colonel, 
 at the very moment when the captain fell, calling out 
 ' Help ! ' No, our Italian colonel was no longer human ! 
 Foam like the froth of champagne rose to his lips ; he roared 
 inarticulately like a lion. Incapable of uttering a word, or 
 even a cry, he made a terrific signal to his antagonist, point- 
 ing to the wood and drawing his sword. The two colonels 
 went aside. In two seconds we saw our colonel's opponent 
 stretched on the ground, his skull split in two. The soldiers 
 of his regiment backed yes, by heaven, and pretty quickly 
 too ! 
 
 " The captain, who had been so nearly crushed, and who 
 lay yelping in the puddle where the gun carriage had thrown 
 him, had an Italian wife, a beautiful Sicilian of Messina, who 
 was not indifferent to our colonel. This circumstance had 
 aggravated his rage. He was pledged to protect the husband, 
 bound to defend him as he would have defended the woman 
 herself. 
 
 " Now, in the hovel beyond Zembin, where I was so well 
 received, this captain was sitting opposite to me, and his wife 
 was at the other end of the table, facing the colonel. This 
 Sicilian was a little woman named Rosina, very dark, but 
 with all the fire of the southern sun in her black almond- 
 shaped eyes. At this moment she was deplorably thin ; her 
 face was covered with dust, like fruit exposed to the drought 
 of a high-road. Scarcely clothed in rags, exhausted by 
 marches, her hair in disorder, and clinging together under a 
 piece of a shawl tied close over her head, still she had the 
 graces of a woman ; her movements were engaging, her small 
 rosy mouth and white teeth, the outline of her features and
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 343 
 
 figure, charms which misery, cold, and neglect had not alto- 
 gether defaced, still suggested love to any man who could 
 think of a woman. Rosina had one of those frames which 
 are fragile in appearance, but wiry and full of spring. Her 
 husband, a gentleman of Piedmont, had a face expressive of 
 ironical simplicity, if it is allowable to ally the two words. 
 Brave and well informed, he seemed to know nothing of the 
 connection which had subsisted between his wife and the 
 colonel for three years past. I ascribed this unconcern to 
 Italian manners, or to some domestic secret ; yet there was in 
 the man's countenance one feature which always filled me 
 with involuntary distrust. His under lip, which was thin and 
 very restless, turned down at the corners instead of turning 
 up, and this, as I thought, betrayed a streak of cruelty in a 
 character which seemed so phlegmatic and indolent. 
 
 " As you may suppose, the conversation was not very spark- 
 ling when I went in. My weary comrades ate in silence; of 
 course, they asked me some questions, and we related our 
 misadventures, mingled with reflections on the campaign, the 
 generals, their mistakes, the Russians, and the cold. A min- 
 ute after my arrival the colonel, having finished his meagre 
 meal, wiped his mustache, bade us good-night, shot -a black 
 look at the Italian woman, saying, 'Rosina?' and then, with- 
 out waiting for a reply, went into the little barn full of hay 
 to bed. The meaning of the colonel's utterance was self- 
 evident. The young wife replied by an indescribable gesture, 
 expressing all the annoyance she could not but feel at seeing 
 her thraldom thus flaunted without human decency, and the 
 offense to her dignity as a woman and to her husband. But 
 there was, too, in the rigid setting of her features and the 
 tight knitting of her brows a sort of presentiment ; perhaps 
 she foresaw her fate. Rosina remained quietly in her place. 
 
 "A minute later, and apparently when the colonel was 
 snug in his couch of straw or hay, he repeated, ' Rosina?' 
 
 " The tone of this second call was even more brutally
 
 344 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 questioning than the first. The colonel's strong burr, and the 
 length which the Italian language allows to be given to vow- 
 els and the final syllable, concentrated all the man's despotism, 
 impatience, and strength of will. Rosina turned pale, but she 
 rose, passed behind us, and went to the colonel. 
 
 "All the party sat in utter silence; I, unluckily after look- 
 ing at them all, began to laugh, and then they all laughed 
 too. 'Tu ridi? you laugh?' said the husband. 
 
 " ' On my honor, old comrade,' said I, becoming serious 
 again, ' I confess that I was wrong ; I ask your pardon a 
 thousand times, and if you are not satisfied by my apologies I 
 am ready to give you satisfaction.' 
 
 " ' Oh ! it is not you who are wrong, it is I ! ' he replied 
 coldly. 
 
 "Thereupon we all lay down in the room and before long 
 all were sound asleep. 
 
 " Next morning each one, without rousing his neighbor or 
 seeking companionship, set out again on his way, with that 
 selfishness which made our rout one of the most horrible 
 dramas of self-seeking, melancholy, and horror which ever 
 was enacted under heaven. Nevertheless, at about seven or 
 eight hundred paces from our shelter we, most of us, met 
 again and walked on together, like geese led in flocks by a 
 child's willful tyranny. The same necessity urged us all. 
 
 " Having Reached a knoll whence we could still see the farm- 
 house where we had spent the night, we heard sounds resem- 
 bling the roar of lions in the desert, the bellowing of bulls 
 no, it was a noise which can be compared to no known cry. 
 And yet, mingling with this horrible and ominous roar, we 
 could hear a woman's feeble scream. We all looked round, 
 seized by I know not what impulse of terror ; we no longer 
 saw the house, but a huge bonfire. The farmhouse had been 
 barricaded, and was in flames. Swirls of smoke borne on the 
 wind brought us hoarse cries and an indescribable pungent 
 smell. A few yards behind the captain was quietly approach-
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAtf. 345 
 
 ing to join our caravan ; we gazed at him in silence, for no 
 one dared question him ; but he, understanding our curiosity, 
 pointed to his breast with the forefinger of his right hand, 
 and, waving the left in the direction of the fire, he said, 
 'Son' to.' 
 
 " We all walked on without saying a word to him." 
 
 " There is nothing more terrible than the revolt of a 
 sheep," said de Marsay. 
 
 " It would be frightful to let us leave with this horrible 
 picture in our memory," said Madame de Montcornet. "I 
 shall dream of it " 
 
 "And what was the punishment of Monsieur de Marsay's 
 'First?' " asked Lord Dudley, smiling. 
 
 "When the English are in jest, their foils have the buttons 
 on," said Blondet. 
 
 "Monsieur Bianchon can tell us, for he saw her dying," 
 replied de Marsay, turning to me. 
 
 "Yes," said Bianchon, "her end was one of the most beau- 
 tiful I ever saw. The Duke and I spent the night by the dying 
 woman's pillow; pulmonary consumption, in the last stage, 
 left no hope ; she had taken the sacrament the day before. 
 The Duke had fallen asleep. The Duchess, waking at about 
 four in the morning, signed to me in the most touching way, 
 with a friendly smile, to bid me leave him to rest, and she 
 meanwhile was about to die. She had become incredibly 
 thin, but her face had preserved its really sublime outline and 
 features. Her pallor made her skin look like porcelain with 
 a light within. Her bright eyes and color contrasted with 
 this languidly elegant complexion, and her countenance was 
 full of impressive calm. She seemed to pity the Duke, and 
 the feeling had its origin in a lofty tenderness which, as death 
 approached, seemed to know no bounds. The silence was 
 absolute. The room, softly lighted by a lamp, looked like 
 every sick-room at the hour of death. 
 
 " At this moment the clock struck. The Duke awoke, and
 
 346 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 was in despair at having fallen asleep. I did not see the gesture 
 of impatience by which he manifested the regret he felt at hav- 
 ing lost sight of his wife for a few of the last minutes vouch- 
 safed to him ; but it is quite certain that any one but the dying 
 woman might have misunderstood it. A busy statesman, 
 always thinking of the interests of France, the Duke had a 
 thousand- odd ways on the surface, such as often lead to a man 
 of genius being mistaken for a madman, and of which the 
 explanation lies in the exquisiteness and exacting needs of 
 their intellect. He came to seat himself in an armchair by 
 his wife's side, and looked fixedly at her. The dying woman 
 put her hand out a little way, took her husband's and clasped 
 it feebly ; and in a low but agitated voice she said, ' My poor 
 dear, who is left to understand you now ? ' Then she died, 
 looking at him." 
 
 "The stories the doctor tells us," said the Comte de Van- 
 denesse, "always leave a deep impression." 
 
 " But a sweet one," said Mademoiselle des Touches, as she 
 arose. 
 
 PARIS, June, 1839-42.
 
 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 
 
 (Sequel to "Another Study of Woman."} 
 
 Translated by CLARA BELL. 
 
 "An! madame," replied the doctor, "I have some ap- 
 palling stories in my collection. But each one has its proper 
 hour in a conversation you know the pretty jest recorded 
 by Chamfort, and said to the Due de Fronsac: 'Between 
 your sally and the present moment lie ten bottles of cham- 
 pagne.' " 
 
 " But it is two in the morning, and the story of Rosina has 
 prepared us," said the mistress of the house. 
 
 "Tell us, Monsieur Bianchon," was the cry on every side. 
 
 The obliging doctor bowed, and silence reigned. 
 
 " At about a hundred paces from Vendome, on the banks 
 of the Loire," said he, "stands an old brown house, crowned 
 with very high roofs, and so completely isolated that there is 
 nothing near it, not even a fetid tannery or a squalid tavern, 
 such as are commonly seen outside small towns. In front of 
 this house is a garden down to the river, where the box-shrubs, 
 formerly clipped close to the edge of the walks, now straggle 
 at their own will. A few willows, rooted in the stream, have 
 grown up quickly like an enclosing fence and half-hide the 
 house. The wild plants we call weeds have clothed the bank 
 with their beautiful luxuriance. The fruit trees, neglected 
 for these ten years past, no longer bear a crop, and their 
 suckers have formed a thicket. The espaliers are like a copse. 
 The paths, once graveled, are overgrown with purslane ; but, 
 to be accurate, there is no trace of a path. 
 
 " Looking down from the hill-top, to which cling the ruins 
 of the old castle of the Dukes of Vendome, the only spot 
 
 (347)
 
 348 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 
 
 whence the eye can see into this enclosure, we think that at a 
 time, difficult now to determine, this spot of earth must have 
 been the joy of some country gentleman devoted to roses and 
 tulips in a word, to horticulture but, above all, a lover of 
 choice fruit. An arbor is visible, or rather the wreck of an 
 arbor, and under it a table still stands not entirely destroyed 
 by time. At the aspect of this garden that is no more, the 
 negative joys of the peaceful life of the provinces may be 
 divined as we divine the history of a worthy tradesman when 
 we read the epitaph on his tomb. To complete the mournful 
 and tender impressions which seize the soul, on one of the 
 walls is a sundial graced with this homely Christian motto, 
 'Ulttmam cogitaS 
 
 " The roof of this house is dreadfully dilapidated ; the out- 
 side shutters are always closed ; the balconies are hung with 
 swallows' nests ; the doors are for ever shut. Straggling 
 grasses have outlined the flagstones of the steps with green ; 
 the ironwork is rusty. Moon and sun, winter, summer, and 
 snow have eaten into the wood, warped the boards, peeled 
 off the paint. The dreary silence is broken only by birds 
 and cats, polecats, rats, and mice, free to scamper around, 
 and fight, and eat each other. An invisible hand has written 
 over it all : ' Mystery.' 
 
 " If, prompted by curiosity, you go to look at this house 
 from the street, you will see a large gate, with a round-arched 
 top; the children have made many holes in it. I learned 
 later that this door had been blocked for ten years. Through 
 these irregular breaches you will see that the side toward the 
 courtyard is in perfect harmony with the side toward the 
 garden. The same ruin prevails. Tufts of weeds outline 
 the paving stones ; the walls are scored by enormous cracks, 
 and the blackened coping is laced with a thousand festoons of 
 pellitory. The stone steps are disjointed ; the bell-cord is 
 rotten ; the gutter-spouts broken. What fire from heaven can 
 have fallen there ? By what decree has salt been sown on this
 
 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 349 
 
 dwelling ? Has God been mocked here ? Or was France 
 betrayed ? These are the questions we ask ourselves. Rep- 
 tiles crawl over it, but give no reply. This empty and de- 
 serted house is a vast enigma of which the answer is known 
 to none. 
 
 " It was formerly a little domain, held in fief, and is known 
 as La Grande BretSche. During my stay at Vendome, where 
 Despleins had left me in charge of a rich patient, the sight 
 of this strange dwelling became one of my keenest pleasures. 
 Was it not far better than a ruin ? Certain memories of in- 
 disputable authenticity attach themselves to a ruin ; but this 
 house, still standing, though being slowly destroyed by an 
 avenging hand, contained a secret, an unrevealed thought. 
 At the very least it testified to a caprice. More than once 
 in the evening I boarded the hedge, run wild, which sur- 
 rounded the enclosure. I braved scratches, I got into this 
 ownerless garden, this plot which was no longer public or 
 private ; I lingered there for hours gazing at the disorder. I 
 would not, as the price of the story to which this strange 
 scene no doubt was due, have asked a single question of any 
 gossiping native. On that spot I wove delightful romances, 
 and abandoned myself to little debauches of melancholy which 
 enchanted me. If I had known the reason perhaps quite 
 commonplace of this neglect, I should have lost the unwrit- 
 ten poetry which intoxicated me. To me this refuge repre- 
 sented the most various phases of human life, shadowed by 
 misfortune ; sometimes the calm of a cloister without the 
 monks ; sometimes the peace of the graveyard without the 
 dead, who speak in the language of epitaphs ; one day I saw 
 in it the home of lepers ; another, the house of the Atridae ; 
 but, above all, I found there provincial life, with its contem- 
 plative ideas, its hour-glass existence. I often wept there ; I 
 never laughed. 
 
 " More than once I felt involuntary terrors as I heard over- 
 head the dull hum of the wings of some hurrying wood-
 
 350 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 
 
 pigeon. The earth is dank ; you must be on the watch for 
 lizards, vipers, and frogs, wandering about with the wild 
 freedom of nature ; above all, you must have no fear of cold, 
 for in a few minutes you feel an icy cloak settle on your 
 shoulders, like the commendatore's hand on Don Giovanni's 
 neck. 
 
 " One evening I felt a shudder; the wind had turned an 
 old rusty weathercock, and the creaking sounded like a cry 
 from the house, at the very moment when I was finishing a 
 gloomy drama to account for this monumental embodiment of 
 woe. I returned to my inn, lost in gloomy thoughts. When 
 I had supped, the hostess came in to my room with an air of 
 mystery, and, apologetically, said, ' Monsieur, here is Mon- 
 sieur Regnault.' 
 
 " ' Who is Monsieur Regnault ? ' 
 
 " ' What, sir, do you not know Monsieur Regnault ? Well, 
 that's odd,' said she, leaving the room. 
 
 "On a sudden I saw a man appear, tall, slim, dressed in 
 black, hat in hand, who came in like a ram ready to butt his 
 opponent, showing a receding forehead, a small pointed head, 
 and a colorless face of the hue of a glass of dirty water. You 
 would have taken him for an usher. The stranger wore an 
 old coat, much worn at the seams ; but he had a diamond in 
 his shirt frill and gold rings in his ears. 
 
 " ' Monsieur,' said I, 'whom have I the honor of address- 
 ing?' He took a chair, placed himself in front of my fire, 
 put his hat on my table, and answered while he rubbed his 
 hands : ' Dear me, it is very cold. Monsieur, I am Mon- 
 sieur Regnault.' 
 
 "I was encouraging myself by saying to myself, 'Here 
 good dog ! Seek ! ' 
 
 " 'I am,' he went on, ' notary at Vendome.' 
 
 "'I am delighted to hear it, monsieur,' I exclaimed. 
 ' But I am not in a position to make a will for reasons best 
 known to myself.'
 
 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 351 
 
 " ' One moment ! ' said he, holding up his hand as though 
 to gain silence. ' Allow me, monsieur, allow me ! I am in- 
 formed that you sometimes go to walk in the garden of La 
 Grande Breteche.' 
 
 " ' Yes, monsieur.' 
 
 " ' One moment ! ' said he, repeating his gesture. ' That 
 constitutes a misdemeanor. Monsieur, as executor under the 
 will of the late Comtesse de Merret, I come in her name to 
 beg you to discontinue the practice. One moment ! I am not 
 a Turk, and do not wish to make a crime of it. And, be- 
 side, yoi* are free to be ignorant of the circumstances which 
 compel me to leave the finest mansion in Vendome to fall 
 into ruin. Nevertheless, monsieur, you must be a man of 
 education, and you should know that the laws forbid, under 
 heavy penalties, any trespass on enclosed property. A hedge 
 is the same as a wall. But the state in which the place is 
 left may be an excuse for your curiosity. For my part, I 
 should be quite content to make you free to come and go in 
 the house ; but being bound to respect the will of the testa- 
 trix, I have the honor, monsieur, to beg that you will go into 
 the garden no more. I myself, monsieur, since the will was 
 read, have never set foot in the house, which, as I had the 
 honor of informing you, is part of the estate of the late 
 Madame de Merret. We have done nothing there but verify 
 the number of doors and windows to assess the taxes I have 
 to pay annually out of the funds left for that purpose by the 
 late Madame de Merret. Ah ! my dear sir, her will made a 
 great commotion in the town.' 
 
 " The good man paused to blow his nose. I respected 
 his volubility, perfectly understanding that the administration 
 of Madame de Merret's estate had been the most important 
 event of his life, his reputation, his glory, his restoration. As 
 I was forced to bid farewell to my beautiful reveries and 
 romances, I was to reject learning the truth on official 
 authority.
 
 352 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 
 
 " ' Monsieur,' said I, ' would it be indiscreet if I were to 
 ask you the reasons for such eccentricity ? ' 
 
 "At these words an expression, which revealed all the pleas- 
 ure which men feel who are accustomed to ride a hobby, over- 
 spread the lawyer's countenance. He pulled up the collar of 
 his shirt with an air, took out his snuff-box, opened it and 
 offered me a pinch ; on my refusing, he took a large one. He 
 was happy ! A man who has no hobby does not know all the 
 good to be gotten out of life. A hobby is the happy medium 
 between a passion and a monomania. At this very moment 
 I understood the whole bearing of Sterne's charming passion, 
 and had a perfect idea of the delight with which my Uncle 
 Toby, encouraged by Trim, bestrode his hobby-horse. 
 
 " ' Monsieur,' said Monsieur Regnault, ' I was the head 
 clerk in Monsieur Roguin's law office, in Paris. A first-rate 
 house, which you, perhaps, have heard mentioned ? No ! An 
 unfortunate bankruptcy made it famous. Not having money 
 enough to purchase a practice in Paris at the price to which 
 they were run up in 1816, I came here and bought my prede- 
 cessor's business. I had relations in Vendome ; among others, 
 a wealthy aunt, who allowed me to marry her daughter. Mon- 
 sieur,' he went on after a little pause, ' three months after 
 being licensed by the keeper of the seals, one evening, as I 
 was going to bed it was before my marriage I was sent for 
 by Madame la Comtesse de Merret, to her chateau of Merret. 
 Her maid, a good girl, who is now a servant in this inn, was 
 waiting at my door with the Countess' own carriage. Ah ! 
 one moment ! I ought to tell you that Monsieur le Comte de 
 Merret had gone to Paris to die two months before I came 
 here. He came to a miserable end, flinging himself into 
 every kind of dissipation. You understand? 
 
 " ' On the day when he left, Madame la Comtesse had 
 quitted La Grande Bret&che, having dismantled it. Some 
 people even say that she had burnt all the furniture, the 
 hangings in short, all the chattels and furniture whatever
 
 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 353 
 
 used in furnishing the premises now let by the said M. (Dear ! 
 what am I saying? I beg your pardon, I thought I was dictat- 
 ing a lease.) In short, that she burnt everything in the 
 meadow at Merret. Have you been to Merret, monsieur? 
 No,' said he, answering himself. ' Ah, indeed, it is a very 
 fine place. 
 
 " ' For about three months previously,' he went on, with a 
 jerk of his head, ' the Count and Countess had lived in a 
 very eccentric way ; they admitted no visitors ; madame lived 
 on the first floor and monsieur on the second floor. When 
 the Countess was left alone, she was never seen excepting at 
 church. Subsequently, at home, at the chateau, she refused 
 to see the friends, whether gentlemen or ladies, who went to 
 call on her. She was already very much altered when she 
 left La Grande Breteche to- go to Merret. That dear lady I 
 say dear lady, for it was she who gave me this diamond, but 
 indeed I saw her but once that kind lady was very ill ; she 
 had, no doubt, given up all hope, for she died without choos- 
 ing to send for a doctor ; indeed, many of our ladies fancied 
 she was not quite right in her head. Well, sir, my curiosity 
 was strangely excited by hearing that Madame de Merret had 
 need of my services. Nor was I the only person who took an 
 interest in the affair. That very night, though it was already 
 late, all the town knew that I was going to Merret. 
 
 " ' The waiting-woman replied but vaguely to the questions 
 I asked her on the way ; nevertheless, she told me that her 
 mistress had received the sacrament in the course of the day 
 at the hands of the cure of Merret, and seemed unlikely to 
 live through the night. It was about eleven when I reached 
 the chateau. I went up the great staircase. After crossing 
 some large, lofty, dark rooms, diabolically cold and damp, I 
 reached the state bedroom where the Countess lay. From 
 the rumors that were current concerning this lady (monsieur, 
 I should never end if I were to repeat all the tales that were 
 told about her), I had imagined her a coquette. Imagine, 
 23
 
 354 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 
 
 then, that I had great difficulty in seeing her in the great bed 
 whereon she was lying. To be sure, to light this enormous 
 room, with old-fashioned heavy cornices and so thick with 
 dust that merely to see it was enough to make you sneeze, she 
 had only an old argand lamp. Ah ! but you have not been 
 to Merret. Well, the bed is one of those old-world beds, with 
 a high tester hung with flowered chintz. A small table stood 
 by the bed, on which I saw an " Imitation of Christ," which, 
 by the way, I bought for my wife, as well as the lamp. There 
 were also a deep armchair for her confidential maid, and two 
 small chairs. There was no fire in the large old-fashioned 
 grate. That was all the furniture ; not enough to fill ten lines 
 in an inventory. 
 
 " ' My dear sir, if you had seen, as I then saw, that vast 
 room, papered and hung with brown, you would have felt 
 yourself transported into a scene of a romance. It was icy ; 
 nay more, funereal,' and he lifted his hand with a theatrical 
 gesture and paused. 
 
 " ' By dint of seeking, as I approached the bed, at last I 
 saw Madame de Merret, under the glimmer of the lamp, which 
 fell on the pillows. Her face was as yellow as wax and as 
 narrow as two folded hands. The Countess had a lace cap 
 showing abundant hair, but as white as linen thread. She 
 was sitting up in bed, and seemed to keep upright with great 
 difficulty. Her large black eyes, dimmed by fever, no doubt, 
 and half-dead already, hardly moved under the bony arch of 
 her eyebrows. There,' he added, pointing to his own brow. 
 ' Her forehead was clammy ; her fleshless hands were like 
 bones covered with soft skin ; the veins and muscles were 
 perfectly visible. She must have been very handsome ; but 
 at this moment I was startled into an indescribable emotion 
 at the sight. Never, said those who wrapped her in her 
 shroud, had any living creature been so emaciated and lived. 
 In short, it was awful to behold ! Sickness had so consumed 
 that woman that she was no more than a phantom. Her
 
 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 365 
 
 lips, which were pale violet, seemed to me not to move when 
 she spoke to me. 
 
 "'Though my profession has familiarized me with such 
 spectacles, by calling me not unfrequently to the bedside of 
 the dying to record their last wishes, I confess that families 
 in tears and the agonies I have seen were as nothing in com- 
 parison with this lonely and silent woman in her vast chateau. 
 I heard not the least sound, I did not perceive the movement 
 which the sufferer's breathing ought to have given to the 
 sheets that covered her, and I stood motionless, absorbed in 
 looking at her in a sort of stupor. In fancy I am there still. 
 At last her large eyes moved ; she tried to raise her right 
 hand, but it fell back on the bed, and she uttered these words, 
 which came like a breath, for her voice was no longer a voice : 
 "I have waited for you with the greatest impatience." A 
 bright flush rose to her cheeks. It was a great effort to her 
 to speak. 
 
 " ' " Madame," I began. She signed to me to be silent. 
 At that moment the old housekeeper arose and said in my ear, 
 " Do not speak ; Madame la Comtesse is not in a state to bear 
 the slightest noise, and what you would say might agitate her." 
 
 " ' I sat down. A few instants after, Madame de Merret 
 collected all her remaining strength to move her right hand 
 and slipped it, not without infinite difficulty, under the 
 bolster ; she then paused a moment. With a last effort, she 
 withdrew her hand, and, when she brought out a sealed paper, 
 drops of perspiration rolled from her brow. " I place my will 
 in your hands. Oh! God! Oh!" and that was all. She 
 clutched a crucifix that lay on the bed, lifted it hastily to her 
 lips, and died. 
 
 " 'The expression of her eyes still makes me shudder as 
 I think of it. She must have suffered much ! There was joy 
 in her last glance, and it remained stamped on her dead 
 eyes. 
 
 " ' I brought away the will, and when it was opened I
 
 356 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 
 
 found that Madame de Merret had appointed me her executor. 
 She left the whole of her property to the hospital at Ven- 
 dome excepting a few legacies. But these were her instruc- 
 tions as relating to La Grande Breteche : She ordered me to 
 leave the place, for fifty years counting from the day of her 
 death, in the state in which it might be at the time of her 
 decease, forbidding any one, whoever he might be, to enter 
 the apartments, prohibiting any repairs whatever, and even 
 settling a salary to pay watchmen if it were needful to secure 
 the absolute fulfillment of her intentions. At the expiration 
 of that term, if the will of the testatrix has been duly carried 
 out, the house is to become the property of my heirs, for, as 
 you know, a notary cannot take a bequest. Otherwise La 
 Grande BretSche reverts to the heirs-at-law, but on condition 
 of fulfilling certain conditions set forth in a codicil to the 
 will, which is not to be opened until the expiration of the said 
 
 term of fifty years. The will has not been disputed, so ' 
 
 And without finishing his sentence, the lanky notary looked 
 at me with an air of triumph ; I made him quite happy by 
 offering him my congratulations. 
 
 " ' Monsieur,' I said in conclusion, ' you have so vividly 
 impressed me that I fancy I see the dying woman whiter than 
 her sheets ; her glittering eyes frighten me ; I shall dream of 
 her to-night. But you must have formed some idea as to 
 the instructions contained in that extraordinary will.' 
 
 "'Monsieur,' said he, with comical reticence, 'I never 
 allow myself to criticise the conduct of a person who honors 
 me with the gift of a diamond.' 
 
 " However, I soon loosened the tongue of the discreet 
 notary of Vendome, who communicated to me, not without 
 long digressions, the opinions of the deep politicians of both 
 sexes whose judgments are law in Vendome. But these opin- 
 ions were so contradictory, so diffuse, that I was near falling 
 asleep in spite of the interest I felt in this authentic history. 
 The notary's ponderous voice and monotonous accent, accus-
 
 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 357 
 
 tomed no doubt to listen to himself and to make himself 
 listened to by his clients or fellow-townsmen, were too much 
 for my curiosity. Happily, he soon went away. 
 
 " ' Ah, ha, monsieur,' said he on the stairs, ' a good many 
 persons would be glad to live five-and-forty years longer ; but 
 one moment ! ' and he laid the first finger of his right 
 hand to his nostril with a cunning look, as much as to say, 
 ' Mark my words ! To last as long as that as long as that, 
 you must not be past sixty now.' 
 
 "I closed my door, having been roused from my apathy 
 by this last speech, which the notary thought very funny; 
 then I sat down in my armchair, with my feet on the fire- 
 dogs. I had lost myself in a romance a la Radcliffe, con- 
 structed on the juridical base given me by Monsieur Regnault, 
 when the door, opened by a woman's cautious hand, turned 
 on the hinges. I saw my landlady come in, a buxom, florid 
 dame, always good-humored, who had missed her calling in 
 life. She was a Fleming, who ought to have seen the light in 
 a picture by Teniers. 
 
 " 'Well, monsieur,' said she, 'Monsieur Regnault has no 
 doubt been giving you his history of La Grande Brete'che ? ' 
 
 " ' Yes, Madame Lepas.' 
 
 " ' And what did he tell you ? " 
 
 " I repeated in a few words the creepy and sinister story of 
 Madame de Merret. At each sentence my hostess put her 
 head forward, looking at me with an innkeeper's keen 
 scrutiny, a happy compromise between the instinct of a police 
 constable, the astuteness of a spy, and the cunning of a 
 dealer. 
 
 " ' My good Madame Lepas,' said I, as I ended, ' you seem 
 to know more about it. Heh ? If not, why have you come 
 up to me ? ' 
 
 " ' On my word as an honest woman ' 
 
 "'Do not swear; your eyes are big with a secret. You 
 knew Monsieur de Merret ; what sort of man was he ? '
 
 358 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 
 
 " 'Monsieur de Merret well, you see he was a man you 
 never could see the top of, he was so tall ! A very good gen- 
 tleman, from Picardy, and who had, as we say, his head close 
 to his cap. He paid for everything down, so as never to have 
 difficulties with any one. He was hot-tempered, you see ! 
 All our ladies liked him very much.' 
 
 " ' Because he was hot-tempered? ' I asked her. 
 
 "'Well, may be,' she said; 'and you may suppose, sir, 
 that a man had to have something to show for a figure-head 
 before he could marry Madame de Merret, who, without any 
 reflection on others, was the handsomest and richest heiress 
 in our parts. She had about twenty thousand francs a year. 
 All the town was at the wedding ; the bride was pretty and 
 sweet-looking, quite a gem of a woman. Oh, they were a 
 handsome couple in their day ! ' 
 
 " 'And were they happy together? ' 
 
 " ' Hm, hm ! so-so so far as can be guessed, for, as you 
 may suppose, we of the common sort were not hail-fellow- 
 well-met with them. Madame de Merret was a kind woman 
 and very pleasant, who had no doubt sometimes to put up 
 with her husband's tantrums. But though he was rather 
 haughty, we were fond of him. After all, it was his place to 
 behave so. When a man is a born nobleman, you see ' 
 
 " ' Still, there must have been some catastrophe for Mon- 
 sieur and Madame de Merret to part so violently? ' 
 
 " ' I did not say there was any catastrophe, sir. I know 
 nothing about it.' 
 
 " 'Indeed. Well, now, I am sure you know everything.' 
 
 " ' Well, sir, I will tell you the whole story. When I saw 
 Monsieur Regnault go up to see you, it struck me that he 
 would speak to you about Madame de Merret as having to do 
 with La Grande Breteche. That put it into my head to ask 
 your advice, sir, seeming to me that you are a man of good 
 judgment and incapable of playing a poor woman like me 
 false for I never did any one a wrong and yet I am tor-
 
 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 359 
 
 merited by my conscience. Up to now I have never dared to 
 say a word to the people of these parts ; they are all chatter- 
 mags, with tongues like knives. And never till now, sir, have 
 I had any traveler here who stayed so long in the inn as you 
 have, and to whom I could tell the history of the fifteen thou- 
 sand francs ' 
 
 " ' My dear Madame Lepas, if there is anything in your 
 story of a nature to compromise me, 1 I said, interrupting the 
 flow of her words, ' I would not hear it for all the world.' 
 
 " ' You need have no fears,' said she ; ' you will see.' 
 
 " Her eagerness made me suspect that I was not the only 
 person to whom my worthy landlady had communicated the 
 secret of which I was to be sole possessor, but I listened. 
 
 " ' Monsieur,' said she, ' when the Emperor sent the Span- 
 iards here, prisoners of war and others, I was required to lodge 
 at the charge of the government a young Spaniard sent to 
 Vendome on parole. Notwithstanding his parole, he had to 
 show himself every day to the sub-prefect. He was a Spanish 
 grandee neither more nor less. He had a name in os and 
 dia t something like Bagos de Feredia. I wrote his name 
 down in my books, and you may see it if you like. Ah ! he 
 was a handsome young fellow for a Spaniard, who are all ugly, 
 they say. He was not more than five feet two or three in 
 height, but so well made ; and he had little hands that he 
 kept so beautifully ! Ah ! you should have seen them. He 
 had as many brushes for his hands as a woman has for her 
 toilet. He had thick, black hair, a flame in his eye, a some- 
 what coppery complexion, but which I admired all the same. 
 He wore the finest linen I have ever seen, though I have had 
 princesses to lodge here, and, among others, General Bert- 
 rand, the Due and Duchesse d'Abrant6s, Monsieur Descazes, 
 and the King of Spain. He did not eat much, but he had 
 such polite and amiable ways that it was impossible to owe 
 him a grudge for that. Oh ! I was very fond of him, though 
 he did not say four words to me in a day, and it was impossi-
 
 360 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 
 
 ble to have the least bit of talk with him ; if he was spoken 
 to, he did not answer ; it is a way, a mania they all have, it 
 would seem. 
 
 " ' He read his breviary like a priest, and went to mass and 
 all the services quite regularly. And where did he post him- 
 self? we found this out later. Within two yards of Madame 
 de Merret's chapel. As he took that place the very first time 
 he entered the church no one imagined that there was any 
 purpose in it. Beside, he never raised his nose above his 
 book, poor young man ! And then, monsieur, of an evening 
 he went for a walk on the hill among the ruins of the old 
 castle. It was his only amusement, poor man ; it reminded 
 him of his native land. They say that Spain is all hills ! 
 
 " ' One evening, a few days after he was sent here, he was 
 out very late. I was rather uneasy when he did not come in 
 till just on the stroke of midnight ; but we all got used to his 
 whims ; he took the key of the door, and we never sat up for 
 him. He lived in a house belonging to us in the Rue des 
 Casernes. Well, then, one of our stable-boys told us one 
 evening that, going down to wash the horses in the river, he 
 fancied he had seen the Spanish grandee swimming some little 
 way off, just like a fish. When he came in, I told him to be 
 careful of the weeds, and he seemed put out at having been 
 seen in the water. 
 
 " 'At last, monsieur, one day, or rather one morning, we 
 did not find him in his room ; he had not come back. By 
 hunting through his things, I found a written paper in the 
 drawer of his table, with fifty pieces of Spanish gold of the 
 kind they call doubloons, worth about five thousand francs ; 
 and in a little sealed box ten thousand francs' worth of dia- 
 monds. The paper said that in case he should not return, 
 he left us this money and these diamonds in trust to found 
 masses to thank God for his escape and for his salvation. 
 
 " ' At that time I still had my husband, who ran off in 
 search of him. And this is the queer part of the story : he
 
 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 361 
 
 brought back the Spaniard's clothes, which he had found under 
 a big stone on a sort of breakwater along the river-bank, nearly 
 opposite La Grande Breteche. My husband went so early that 
 no one saw him. After reading the letter, he burned the 
 clothes, and, in obedience to Count Feredia's wish, we. an- 
 nounced that he had escaped. 
 
 " ' The sub-prefect set all the constabulary at his heels ; 
 but, pshaw ! he was never caught. Lepas believed that the 
 Spaniard had drowned himself. I, sir, have never thought 
 so ; I believe, on the contrary, that he had something to do 
 with the business about Madame de Merret, seeing that Rosalie 
 told me that the crucifix her mistress was so fond of that she 
 had it buried with her was made of ebony and silver ; now 
 in the early days of his stay here, Monsieur Feredia had one 
 of ebony and silver which I never saw later. And now, mon- 
 sieur, do not you say that I need have no remorse about the 
 Spaniard's fifteen thousand francs ? Are they not really and 
 truly mine?' 
 
 " ' Certainly. But have you never tried to question 
 Rosalie ? ' I asked. 
 
 " ' Oh, to be sure I have, sir. But what is to be done? 
 That girl is like a wall. She knows something, but it is im- 
 possible to make her talk.' 
 
 " After chatting with me for a few minutes, my hostess left 
 me a prey to vague and sinister thoughts, to romantic curi- 
 osity, and a religious dread, not unlike the deep emotion 
 which comes upon us when we go into a dark church at night 
 and discern a feeble light glimmering under a lofty vault a 
 dim figure glides across the sweep of a gown or of a priest's 
 cassock is audible and we shiver ! La Grande BretSche, 
 with its rank grasses, its shuttered windows, its rusty iron- 
 work, its locked doors, its deserted rooms, suddenly rose be- 
 fore me in fantastic vividness. I tried to get into the mysteri- 
 ous dwelling to search out the heart of this solemn story, 
 this drama which had killed three persons.
 
 362 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 
 
 "Rosalie became in my eyes the most interesting being in 
 Vendome. As I studied her, I detected signs of an inmost 
 thought, in spite of the blooming health that glowed in her 
 dimpled face. There was in her soul some element of ruth 
 or of hope ; her manner suggested a secret, like the expres- 
 sion of devout souls who pray in excess, or of a girl who has 
 killed her child and for ever hears its last cry. Nevertheless, 
 she was simple and clumsy in her ways ; her vacant smile had 
 nothing criminal in it, and you would have pronounced her 
 innocent only from seeing the large red and blue checked 
 kerchief that covered her stalwart bust, tucked into the tight- 
 laced square bodice of a lilac- and white-striped gown. ' No,' 
 said I to myself, ' I will not quit Vendome without knowing 
 the whole history of La Grande BretSche. To achieve this 
 end, I will make love to Rosalie if it proves necessary.' 
 
 " ' Rosalie ! ' said I, one evening. 
 
 " ' Your servant, sir ? ' 
 
 " ' You are not married ? ' She started a little. 
 
 " ' Oh ! there is no lack of men if ever I take a fancy to be 
 miserable ! ' she replied, laughing. She got over her agita- 
 tion at once ; for every woman, from, the highest lady to the 
 inn-servant inclusive, has a native presence of mind. 
 
 "'Yes; you are fresh and good-looking enough never to 
 lack lovers ! But tell me, Rosalie, why did you become an 
 inn-servant on leaving Madame de Merret ? Did she not 
 leave you some little annuity ? ' 
 
 " ' Oh yes, sir. But my place here is the best in all the 
 town of Vendome.' 
 
 " This reply was such a one as judges and attorneys call 
 evasive. Rosalie, as it seemed to me, held in this romantic 
 affair the place of the middle square of the chess-board ; she 
 was at the very centre of the interest and of the truth ; she 
 appeared to me to be tied into the knot of it. It was not a 
 case for ordinary love-making; this girl contained the last 
 chapter of a romance, and from that moment all my attentions
 
 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 363 
 
 were devoted to Rosalie. By dint of studying the girl, I 
 observed in her, as in every woman whom we make our rul- 
 ing thought, a variety of good qualities ; she was clean and 
 neat ; she was handsome, I need not say ; she soon was pos- 
 sessed of every charm that desire can lend to a woman in 
 whatever rank of life. A fortnight after the notary's visit, 
 one evening, or rather one morning, in the small hours, I said 
 to Rosalie 
 
 " ' Come, tell me all you know about Madame de Merret.' 
 
 " ' Oh ! ' she cried in terror, ' do not ask me that, Mon- 
 sieur Horace ! ' 
 
 " Her handsome features clouded over, her bright coloring 
 grew pale, and her eyes lost their artless, liquid brightness. 
 
 " ' Well,' she said, ' I will tell you ; but keep the secret 
 carefully. ' 
 
 " ' All right, my child ; I will keep all your secrets -with a 
 thief s honor, which is the most loyal known.' 
 
 " * If it is all the same to you,' she said, ' I would rather it 
 should be with your own.' 
 
 "Thereupon she set her head-kerchief straight, and settled 
 herself to tell the tale ; for, there is no doubt, a particular atti- 
 tude of confidence and security is necessary to the telling of 
 a narrative. The best tales are told at a certain hour just as 
 we are all here at table. No one ever told a story well 
 standing up or fasting. 
 
 " If I were to reproduce exactly Rosalie's diffuse eloquence, 
 a whole volume would scarcely contain it. Now, as the event 
 of which she gave me a confused account stands exactly mid- 
 way between the notary's gossip and that of Madame Lepas, 
 as precisely as the middle term of a rule-of-three sum stands 
 between the first and third, I have only to relate it in as few 
 words as may be. I shall therefore be brief: 
 
 " The room at La Grande Bret&che in which Madame de 
 Merret slept was on the first floor ; a little wardrobe in the 
 wall, about four feet deep, served her to hang her dresses in.
 
 364 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 
 
 Three months before the evening of which I have to relate 
 the events, Madame de Merret had been seriously ailing, so 
 much so that her husband had left her to herself, and had his 
 own bedroom on the second floor. By one of those accidents 
 which it is impossible to foresee, he came in that evening two 
 hours later than usual from the club, where he went to read 
 the papers and talk politics with the residents in the neighbor- 
 hood. His wife supposed him to have come in, to be in bed 
 and asleep. But the invasion of France had been the subject 
 of a very animated discussion ; the game of billiards had 
 waxed vehement ; he had lost forty francs, an enormous sum 
 at Vendome, where everybody is thrifty, and where social 
 habits are restrained within the bounds of a simplicity worthy 
 of all praise, and the foundation, perhaps, of a form of true 
 happiness which no Parisian would care for. 
 
 " For some time past Monsieur de Merret had been satis- 
 fied to ask Rosalie whether his wife was in bed ; on the girl's 
 replying always in the affirmative, he at once went to his own 
 room, with the good faith that comes of habit and confidence. 
 But this evening, on coming in, he took it into his head to go 
 to see Madame de Merret, to tell her of his ill-luck and per- 
 haps to find consolation. During dinner he had observed 
 that his wife was very becomingly dressed ; he reflected as 
 he came home from the club that his wife was certainly much 
 better, that convalescence had improved her beauty, discov- 
 ering it, as husbands discover everything, a little too late. 
 Instead of calling Rosalie, who was in the kitchen at the 
 moment watching the cook and the coachman playing a 
 puzzling hand at cards, Monsieur de Merret made his way to 
 his wife's room by the light of his lantern, which he set down 
 on the lowest step of the stairs. His step, easy to recognize, 
 rang under the vaulted passage. 
 
 "At the instant when the gentleman turned the key to 
 enter his wife's room, he fancied he heard the door shut of 
 the closet of which I have spoken ; but, when he went in,
 
 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 365 
 
 Madame de Merret was alone, standing in front of the fire- 
 place. The unsuspecting husband fancied that Rosalie was 
 in the cupboard ; nevertheless, a doubt, ringing in his ears 
 like a peal of bells, put him on his guard ; he looked at his 
 wife and read in her eyes an indescribably anxious and hunted 
 expression. 
 
 " 'You are very late, 1 she said. Her voice, usually so clear 
 and sweet, struck him as being slightly husky. 
 
 " Monsieur de Merret made no reply, for at this moment 
 Rosalie came in. This was like a thunderclap. He walked 
 up and down the room, going from one window to another at 
 a regular pace, his arms folded. 
 
 " ' Have you had bad news or are you ill ? ' his wife asked 
 him timidly, while Rosalie helped her to undress. He made 
 no reply. 
 
 " ' You can go, Rosalie,' said Madame de Merret to her 
 maid ; ' I can put in my curl-papers myself.' She scented 
 disaster at the mere aspect of her husband's face, and wished 
 to be alone with him. As soon as Rosalie was gone, or sup- 
 posed to be gone, for she lingered a few minutes in the pas- 
 sage, Monsieur de Merret came and stood facing his wife, and 
 said coldly, ' Madame, there is some one in your cupboard ! ' 
 She looked at her husband calmly, and replied quite simply, 
 * No, monsieur. ' 
 
 "This 'No' wrung Monsieur de Merret's heart; he did 
 not believe it ; and yet his wife had never appeared purer and 
 more saintly than she seemed to be at this moment. He rose 
 to go and open the closet door. Madame de Merret took his 
 hand, stopped him, looked at him sadly, and said in a voice 
 of strange emotion, ' Remember, if you should find no one 
 there, everything must be at an end between you and me.' 
 
 " The extraordinary dignity of his wife's attitude filled him 
 with deep esteem for her and inspired him with one of those 
 resolves which need only a grander stage to become immortal. 
 
 " ' No, Josephine,' he said, ' I will not open it. In either
 
 366 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 
 
 event we should be parted for ever. Listen ; I know all the 
 purity of your soul, I know you lead a saintly life, and would 
 not commit a deadly sin to save your life.' At these words 
 Madame de Merret looked at her husband with a haggard 
 stare ' See, here is your crucifix,' he went on. ' Swear to 
 me before God that there is no one in there ; I will believe 
 you I will never open that door. ' 
 
 "Madame de Merret took up the crucifix and said, 'I 
 swear it.' 
 
 " ' Louder,' said her husband ; ' and repeat : I swear before 
 God that there is nobody in that closet.' She repeated the 
 words without flinching. 
 
 " ' That will do,' said Monsieur de Merret coldly. After 
 a moment's silence : ' You have there a fine piece of work 
 which I never saw before,' said he, examining the crucifix of 
 ebony and silver, very artistically wrought. 
 
 " ' I found it at Duvivier's ; last year when that troop of 
 Spanish prisoners came through Vendome, he bought it of a 
 Spanish monk.' 
 
 " ' Indeed,' said Monsieur de Merret, hanging the crucifix 
 on its nail ; and he rang the bell. 
 
 " He had not to wait for Rosalie. Monsieur de Merret 
 went forward quickly to meet her, led her into the bay of the 
 window that looked on to the garden, and said to her in an 
 undertone 
 
 " ' I know that Gorenflot wants to marry you, that poverty 
 alone prevents your setting up house, and that you told him 
 you would not be his wife until he found means to become a 
 master mason. Well, go and fetch him ; tell him to come 
 here with his trowel and tools. Contrive to wake no one in 
 his house but himself. His reward will be beyond your 
 wishes. Above all, go out without saying a word or else ! ' 
 and he frowned. 
 
 " Rosalie was going, and he called her back. ' Here, take 
 my latch-key,' said he.
 
 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 367 
 
 " ' Jean ! ' Monsieur de Merret called in a voice of thunder 
 down the passage. Jean, who was both coachman and con- 
 fidential servant, left his cards and came. 
 
 " ' Go to bed, all of you,' said his master, beckoning him 
 to come close ; and the gentleman added in a whisper, ' When 
 they are all asleep mind, asleep you understand ? come 
 down and tell me.' 
 
 " Monsieur de Merret, who had never lost sight of his wife 
 while giving his orders, quietly came back to her at the fire- 
 side and began to tell her the details of the game of billiards 
 and the discussion at the club. When Rosalie returned she 
 found Monsieur and Madame de Merret conversing amiably. 
 
 "Not long before this Monsieur de Merret had had new 
 ceilings made to all the reception-rooms on the first floor. 
 Plaster is very scarce at Vendome ; the price is enhanced by 
 the cost of carriage; the gentleman had therefore had a con- 
 siderable quantity delivered to him, knowing that he could 
 always find purchasers for what might be left. It was this 
 circumstance which suggested the plan he carried out. 
 
 " 'Gorenflot is here, sir,' said Rosalie in a whisper. 
 
 " 'Tell him to come in,' said her master aloud. 
 
 " Madame de Merret turned paler when she saw the mason. 
 
 " ' Gorenflot,' said her husband, ' go and fetch some bricks 
 from the coach-house ; bring enough to wall up the door of 
 this cupboard ; you can use the plaster that is left for cement. ' 
 Then, dragging Rosalie and the workman close to him 
 ' Listen, Gorenflot,' said he, in a low voice, ' you are to sleep 
 here to-night ; but to-morrow morning you shall have a pass- 
 port to take you abroad to a place I will tell you of. I will 
 give you six thousand francs for your journey. You must live 
 in that town for ten years ; if you find you do not like it, you 
 may settle in another, but it must be in the same country. 
 Go through Paris and wait there till I join you. I will there 
 give you an agreement for six thousand francs more, to be 
 paid to you on your return, provided you have carried out
 
 368 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 
 
 the conditions of the bargain. For that price you are to keep 
 perfect silence as to what you have to do this night. To you, 
 Rosalie, I will secure ten thousand francs, which will not be 
 paid to you until your wedding-day, and on condition of 
 your marrying Gorenflot ; but, to get married, you must hold 
 your tongue. If not, no wedding-gift ! ' 
 
 " ' Rosalie,' said Madame de Merret, ' come and brush my 
 hair.' 
 
 " Her husband quietly walked up and down the room, keep- 
 ing an eye on the door, on the mason, and on his wife, but 
 without any insulting display of suspicion. Gorenflot could 
 not help making some noise. Madame de Merret seized a 
 moment when he was unloading some bricks, and when her 
 husband was at the other end of the room, to say to Rosalie : 
 * My dear child, I will give you a thousand francs a year if 
 only you will tell Gorenflot to leave a crack at the bottom.' 
 Then she added aloud quite coolly: 'You had better help 
 him.' 
 
 " Monsieur and Madame de Merret were silent all the time 
 while Gorenflot was walling up the door. This silence was 
 intentional on the husband's part ; he did not wish to give 
 his wife the opportunity of saying anything with a double 
 meaning. On Madame de Merret's side it was pride or pru- 
 dence. When the wall was half built up the cunning mason 
 took advantage of his master's back being turned to break one 
 of the two panes in the top of the door with a blow of his 
 pick. By this Madame de Merret understood that Rosalie 
 had spoken to Gorenflot. They all three then saw the face 
 of a dark, gloomy-looking man, with black hair and flaming 
 eyes. 
 
 " Before her husband turned round again the poor woman 
 had nodded to the stranger, to whom the signal was meant to 
 convey, ' Hope.' 
 
 "At four o'clock, as day was dawning, for it was the 
 month of September, the work was done. The mason was
 
 THE GREAT B RE TECH E. 369 
 
 placed in charge of Jean, and Monsieur de Merret slept in 
 his wife's room. 
 
 " Next morning when he got up he said with apparent care- 
 lessness, ' Oh, by the way, I must go to the mayor for the 
 passport.' He put on his hat, took two or three steps toward 
 the door, paused, and took the crucifix. His wife was trem- 
 bling with joy. 
 
 " ' He will go to Duvivier's,' thought she. 
 
 " As soon as he had left, Madame de Merret rang for 
 Rosalie, and then in a terrible voice she cried : * The pick ! 
 Bring the pick ! and set to work. I saw how Gorenflot did 
 it yesterday ; we shall have time to make a gap and build it 
 up again.' 
 
 " In an instant Rosalie had brought her mistress a sort of 
 cleaver ; she, with a vehemence of which no words can give 
 an idea, set to work to demolish the wall. She had already 
 gotten out a few bricks, when, turning to deal a stronger blow 
 than before, she saw behind her Monsieur de Merret. She 
 fainted away. 
 
 " ' Lay madame on her bed,' he said coldly. 
 
 " Foreseeing what would certainly happen in his absence, 
 he had laid this trap for his wife ; he had merely written to 
 the mayor and sent for Duvivier. The jeweler arrived just as 
 the disorder in the room had been repaired. 
 
 "'Duvivier,' asked Monsieur de Merret, 'did you not 
 buy some crucifixes of the Spaniards who passed through the 
 town ? ' 
 
 " ' No, monsieur.' 
 
 " ' Very good ; thank you,' said he, flashing a tiger's glare 
 at his wife. 'Jean,' he added, turning to his confidential 
 valet, ' you can serve my meals here in Madame de Merret's 
 room. She is ill, and I shall not leave her until she re- 
 covers. ' 
 
 " The cruel man remained in his wife's room for twenty 
 days. During the earlier time, when there was some little 
 24
 
 370 
 
 THE GREAT BRETECHE. 
 
 noise in the closet, and Josephine wanted to intercede for the 
 dying man, he said, without allowing her to utter a word, 
 'You swore on the cross that there was no one in there.' ' 
 
 After this story all the ladies arose from the table, and thus 
 the spell under which Bianchon had held them was broken. 
 But there were some among them who had almost shivered 
 at the last words.
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 Translated by ELLEN MARRIAGE. 
 
 To Monsieur ic Baron James de Rothschild, Banker and 
 Austrian Consul- General at Paris. 
 
 THE word lorette is a euphemism invented to describe the 
 status of a personage, or a personage of a status, of which it 
 is awkward to speak ; the French Academic, in its modesty, 
 having omitted to supply a definition out of regard for the 
 age of its forty members. Whenever a new word comes in to 
 supply the place of an unwieldy circumlocution, its fortune is 
 assured; the word lorette has passed into the language of 
 every class of society, even where the lorette herself will 
 never gain an entrance. It was only invented in 1840, and 
 derived beyond a doubt from the agglomeration of such swal- 
 lows' nests about the church of Our Lady of Loretto. This 
 information is for etymologists only. Those gentlemen would 
 not be so often in a quandary if mediaeval writers had only 
 taken such pains with details of contemporary manners as we 
 take in these days of analysis and description. 
 
 Mile. Turquet, or Malaga, for she is better known by her 
 pseudonym,* was one of the earliest parishioners of that 
 charming church. At the time to which this story belongs, 
 that light-hearted and lively damsel gladdened the existence 
 of a notary with a wife somewhat too bigoted, rigid, and frigid 
 for domestic happiness. 
 
 Now, it so fell out that one carnival evening Master Cardot 
 was entertaining guests at Mile. Turquet's house Desroches 
 the attorney, Bixiou of the caricatures, Lousteau the jour- 
 
 * See " The Imaginary Mistress." 
 
 (371)
 
 372 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 nalist, Nathan, and others ; it is quite unnecessary to give any 
 further description of these personages, all bearers of illustri- 
 ous names in the "Comedie Humaine." Young La Palferine, 
 in spite of his title of Count and his great descent, which, 
 alas ! means a great descent in fortune likewise, had honored 
 the notary's little establishment with his presence. 
 
 At dinner, in such a house, one does not expect to meet 
 the patriarchal beef, the skinny fowl and salad of domestic 
 and family life, nor is there any attempt at the hypocritical 
 conversation of drawing-rooms furnished with highly respect- 
 able matrons. When, alas ! will respectability be charming ? 
 When will the women in good society vouchsafe to show rather 
 less of their shoulders and rather more wit or geniality? 
 Marguerite Turquet, the Aspasia of the Cirque-Olympique, is 
 one of those frank, very living personalities to whom all is 
 forgiven, such unconscious sinners are they, such intelligent 
 penitents; of such as Malaga one might ask, like Cardot a 
 witty man enough, albeit a notary to be well "deceived." 
 And yet you must not think that any enormities were com- 
 mitted. Desroches and Cardot were good fellows grown too 
 gray in the profession not to feel at ease with Bixiou, Lous- 
 teau, Nathan, and young La Palfdrine. And they on their 
 side had too often had recourse to their legal advisers and 
 knew them too well to try to "draw them out," in lorette lan- 
 guage. 
 
 Conversation, perfumed with seven cigars, at first was as fan- 
 tastic as a kid let loose, but finally it settled down upon the 
 strategy of the constant war waged in Paris between creditors 
 and debtors. 
 
 Now, if you will be so good as to recall the history and 
 antecedents of the guests, you will know that in all Paris you 
 could scarcely find a group of men with more experience 
 in this matter ; the professional men on one hand and the 
 artists on the other were something in the position of magis- 
 trates and criminals hobnobbing together. A set of Bixiou's
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 373 
 
 drawings to illustrate life in the debtors' prison led the con- 
 versation to take this particular turn ; and from debtors' 
 prisons they went to debts. 
 
 It was midnight. They had broken up into little knots 
 around the table and before the fire, and gave themselves up to 
 the burlesque fun which is only possible or comprehensible in 
 Paris and in that particular region which is bounded by the 
 Faubourg Montmartre, the Rue Chaussee d'Antin, the upper 
 end of the Rue de Navarin and the line of the boulevards. 
 
 In ten minutes' time they had come to an end of all the 
 deep reflections, all the moralizings, small and great, all the 
 bad puns made on a subject already exhausted by Rabelais 
 three hundred and fifty years ago. It is not a little to their 
 credit that the pyrotechnic display was cut short with a final 
 squib from Malaga. 
 
 " It all goes to the shoemakers," she said. " I left a 
 milliner because she failed twice with my hats. The vixen 
 has been here twenty-seven times to ask for twenty francs. 
 She did not know that we never have twenty francs. One 
 has a thousand francs, or one sends to one's notary for five 
 hundred ; but twenty francs I have never had in my life. 
 My cook and my maid may, perhaps, have so much between 
 them ; but for my own part, I have nothing but credit, and I 
 should lose that if I took to borrowing small sums. If I were 
 to ask for twenty francs, I should have nothing to distinguish 
 me from my colleagues that walk the boulevard." 
 
 " Is the milliner paid ? " asked La Palferine. 
 
 " Oh, come now, are you turning stupid? " she said, with 
 a wink. "She came this morning for the twenty-seventh 
 time, that is how I came to mention it." 
 
 "What did you do?" asked Desroches. 
 
 "I took pity upon her, and ordered a little hat that I 
 have just invented, a quite new shape. If Mademoiselle 
 Amanda succeeds with it, she will say no more about the 
 money, her fortune is made."
 
 374 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 "In my opinion," put in Desroches, "the finest things 
 that I have seen in a duel of this kind give those who know 
 Paris a far better picture of the city than all the fancy portraits 
 that they paint. Sonv of you think that you know a thing 
 or two," he continued, glancing round at Nathan, Bixiou, 
 La Pal ferine, and Lousteau, " but the king of the ground is a 
 certain Count, now busy ranging himself. In his time, he 
 was supposed to be the cleverest, adroitest, canniest, boldest, 
 stoutest, most subtle, and experienced of all the pirates, who, 
 equipped with fine manners, yellow kid gloves, and cabs, have 
 ever sailed or ever will sail upon the stormy sea of Paris. He 
 fears neither God nor man. He applies in private life the 
 principles that guide the English cabinet. Up to the time of 
 his marriage, his life was one continual war, like Lousteau's, 
 for instance. I was and am still his attorney." 
 
 "And the first letter of his name is Maxime de Trailles," 
 said La Pal ferine. 
 
 " For that matter, he has paid every one and injured no 
 one," continued Desroches. "But as our friend Bixiou was 
 saying just now, it is a violation of the liberty of the subject 
 to be made to pay in March when you have no mind to pay 
 till October. By virtue of this article of his particular code, 
 Maxime regarded a creditor's scheme for making him pay at 
 once as a swindler's trick. It was long since he had grasped 
 the significance of the bill of exchange in all its bearings, 
 direct and remote. A young man once, in my place, called 
 a bill of exchange the ' asses' bridge ' in his hearing. ' No,' 
 said he, ' it is the Bridge of Sighs ; it is the shortest way to 
 an execution.' Indeed, his knowledge of commercial law was 
 so complete that a professional could not have taught him any- 
 thing. At that time he had nothing, as you know. His 
 carriage and horses were jobbed ; he lived in his valet's 
 house ; and, by the way, he will be a hero to his valet to the 
 end of the chapter, even after the marriage that he proposes 
 to make. He belonged to three clubs, and dined at one of
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 375 
 
 them whenever he did not dine out. As a rule, he was to be 
 found very seldom at his own address " 
 
 "He once said to me," interrupted la Palferine, "'My 
 own affectation is the pretense that I make of living in the 
 Rue Pigalle.' " 
 
 "Well," resumed Desroches, " he was one of the combat- 
 ants ; and now for the other. You have heard more or less 
 talk of one Claparon ? " 
 
 " Had hair like this ! " cried Bixiou, ruffling his locks till 
 they stood on end. Gifted with the same talent for mimicking 
 absurdities which Chopin the pianist possesses to so high a 
 degree, he proceeded forthwith to represent the character 
 with startling truth. 
 
 " He rolls his head like this when he speaks ; he was once 
 a commercial traveler ; he has been all sorts of things " 
 
 " Well, he was born to travel, for at this minute, as I speak, 
 he is on the sea on his way to America," said Desroches. 
 " It is his only chance, for in all probability he will be con- 
 demned by default as a fraudulent bankrupt next session." 
 
 " Very much at sea ! " exclaimed Malaga. 
 
 " For six or seven years this Claparon acted as man of 
 straw, cat's-paw, and scapegoat to two friends of ours, du 
 Tillet and Nucingen ; but in 1829 his part was so well known 
 that " 
 
 " Our friends dropped him," put in Bixiou. 
 
 " They left him to his fate at last, and he wallowed in the 
 mire," continued Desroches. " In 1833 he went into part- 
 nership with one Cerizet " 
 
 " What ! he that promoted a joint-stock company so nicely 
 that the Sixth Chamber cut short his career with a couple of 
 years in jail ? " asked the lorette. 
 
 " The same. Under the restoration, between 1823 and 
 1827, Cerizet's occupation consisted in first putting his name 
 intrepidly to various paragraphs, on which the public prosecutor 
 fastened with avidity, and subsequently marching him off to
 
 376 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 prison. A man could make a name for himself with small 
 expense in those days. The liberal party called their provin- 
 cial champion ' the courageous Cerizet,' and toward 1828 so 
 much zeal received its reward in 'general interest.' 
 
 " ' General interest ' is a kind of civic crown bestowed on 
 the deserving by the daily press. Cerizet tried to discount 
 the ' general interest ' taken in him. He came to Paris, and, 
 with some help from capitalists in the opposition, started as a 
 broker, and conducted financial operations to some extent, 
 the capital being found by a man in hiding, a skillful gambler 
 who overreached himself, and in consequence, in July, 1830, 
 his capital foundered in the shipwreck of the government." 
 
 " Oh ! it was he whom we used to call the System," cried 
 Bixiou. 
 
 "Say no harm of him, poor fellow," protested Malaga. 
 " D'Estourny was a good sort." 
 
 " You can imagine the part that a ruined man was sure to 
 play in 1830 when his name in politics was 'the courageous 
 Cerizet.' He was sent off into a very snug little sub-prefec- 
 ture. Unluckily for him, it is one thing to be in opposition 
 any missile is good enough to throw, so long as the fight 
 lasts ; but quite another to be in office. Three months later 
 he was obliged to send in his resignation. Had he not taken 
 it into his head to attempt to win popularity? Still, as he 
 had done nothing as yet to imperil his title of ' courageous 
 Cerizet,' the government proposed by way of compensation 
 that he should manage a newspaper ; nominally an opposition 
 paper, but ministerialist in petto. So the fall of this noble 
 nature was really due to the government. To Cerizet, as 
 manager of the paper, it was rather too evident that he was 
 as a bird perched on a rotten bough ; and then it was that he 
 promoted that nice little joint-stock company and thereby 
 secured a couple of years in prison ; he was caught, while 
 more ingenious swindlers succeeded in catching the public." 
 
 " We are acquainted with the more ingenious," said Bixiou ;
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 377 
 
 " let us say no ill of the poor fellow ; he was nabbed ; Couture 
 allowed them to squeeze his cash-box ; who would ever have 
 thought it of him? " 
 
 ''At all events, Cerizet was a low sort of fellow, a good 
 deal damaged by low debauchery. Now for the duel I spoke 
 about. Never did two tradesmen of the worst type, with the 
 worst manners, the lowest pair of villains imaginable, go into 
 partnership in a dirtier business. Their stock-in-trade con- 
 sisted of the peculiar idiom of the man about town, the 
 audacity of poverty, the cunning that comes of experience, 
 and a special knowledge of Parisian capitalists, their origin, 
 connections, acquaintances, and intrinsic value. This part- 
 nership of two ' dabblers ' (let the stock exchange term pass, 
 for it is the only word which describes them), this partner- 
 ship of dabblers did not last very long. They fought like 
 famished curs over every bit of garbage. 
 
 " The earlier speculations of the firm of Cerizet and Clap- 
 aron were, however, well planned. The two scamps joined 
 forces with Barbet, Chaboisseau, Samanon, and usurers of that 
 stamp and bought up hopelessly bad debts. 
 
 "Claparon's place of business at that time was a cramped 
 entresol in the Rue Chabannais five rooms at a rent of seven 
 hundred francs at most. Each partner slept in a little closet, 
 so carefully closed from prudence that my head clerk could 
 never get inside. The furniture of the other three rooms 
 an antechamber, a waiting-room, and a private office would 
 not have fetched three hundred francs altogether at a distress- 
 warrant sale. You know enough of Paris to know the look 
 of it ; the stuffed horsehair-covered chairs, a table covered 
 with a green cloth, a trumpery clock between a couple of 
 candle sconces, growing tarnished under glass shades, the 
 small gilt-framed mirror over the chimney-piece, and in the 
 grate a charred stick or two of firewood which had lasted 
 them for two winters, as my head clerk put it. As for the 
 office, you can guess what it was like more letter-files than
 
 378 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 business letters, a set of common pigeon-holes for either 
 partner, a cylinder desk, empty as the cash-box, in the middle 
 of the room, and a couple of armchairs on either side of a 
 coal fire. The carpet on the floor was bought cheap at 
 second-hand (like the bills and bad debts). In short, it was 
 the mahogany furniture of furnished apartments which usually 
 descends from one occupant of chambers to another during 
 fifty years of service. Now you know the pair of antagonists. 
 
 " During the first three months of a partnership dissolved 
 four months later in a bout of fisticuffs, Cerizet and Claparon 
 bought up two thousand francs' worth of bills bearing Max- 
 ime's signature (since Maxime is his name), and filled a 
 couple of letter-files to bursting with judgments, appeals, 
 orders of the court, distress-warrants, application for stay of 
 proceedings, and all the rest of it ; to put it briefly, they had 
 bills for three thousand two hundred francs odd centimes, for 
 which they had given five hundred francs ; the transfer being 
 made under private seal, with special power of attorney, to 
 save the expense of registration. Now it so happened at this 
 juncture, Maxime, being of ripe age, was seized with one of 
 the fancies peculiar to the man of fifty " 
 
 "Antonia!" exclaimed La Palfe~rine. "That Antonia 
 whose fortune I made by writing to ask for a tooth-brush ! " 
 
 "Her real name is Chocardelle," said Malaga, not over 
 well pleased by the fine-sounding pseudonym. 
 
 "The same," continued Desroches. 
 
 " It was the only mistake Maxime ever made in his life. 
 But what would you have, no vice is absolutely perfect?" 
 put in Bixiou. 
 
 " Maxime had still to learn what sort of a life a man may 
 be led into by a girl of eighteen when she is minded to take 
 a header from her honest garret into a sumptuous carriage ; it 
 is a lesson that all statesmen should take to heart. At this 
 time, de Marsay had just been employing his friend, our 
 friend de Trailles, in the high comedy of politics. Maxime
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 379 
 
 had looked high for his conquests ; he had no experience of 
 untitled women ; and at fifty years he felt that he had a right 
 to take a bite of a little so-called wild fruit, much as a sports- 
 man will halt under a peasant's apple tree. So the Count 
 found a reading-room for Mademoiselle Chocardelle, a rather 
 smart little place to be had cheap, as usual " 
 
 "Pooh!" said Nathan. "She did not stay in it six 
 months. She was too handsome to keep a reading-room." 
 
 " Perhaps you are the father of her child? " suggested the 
 lorette. 
 
 Desroches resumed : 
 
 " Since the firm bought up Maxime's debts, Cerizet's like- 
 ness to a bailiff's officer grew more and more striking, and one 
 morning after seven fruitless attempts he succeeded in pene- 
 trating into the Count's presence. Suzon, the old man- 
 servant, albeit he was by no means in his novitiate, at last 
 mistook the visitor for a petitioner, come to propose a thou- 
 sand crowns if Maxime would obtain a license to sell postage 
 stamps for a young lady. Suzon, without the slightest suspi- 
 cion of the little scamp, a thoroughbred Paris street-boy into 
 whom prudence had been rubbed by repeated personal ex- 
 perience of the police courts, induced his master to receive 
 him. Can you see the man of business, with an uneasy eye, 
 a bald forehead, and scarcely any hair on his head, standing 
 in his threadbare jacket and muddy shoes " 
 
 " What a picture of a dun ! " cried Lousteau. 
 
 "Standing before the Count, that image of flaunting debt, 
 in his blue flannel dressing-gown, slippers worked by some 
 marquise or other, trousers of white woollen stuff, and a daz- 
 zling shirt ? There he stood, with a gorgeous cap on his 
 black dyed hair, playing with the tassels at his waist " 
 
 " 'Tis a bit of genre for anybody who knows the pretty 
 little morning room, hung with silk and full of valuable paint- 
 ings, where Maxime breakfasts," said Nathan. "You tread 
 on a Smyrna carpet, you admire the sideboards filled with
 
 380 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 curiosities, ornaments, and rarities fit to make a King of 
 Saxony envious " 
 
 " Now for the scene itself," said Desroches, and the 
 deepest silence followed. 
 
 " ' Monsieur le Comte/ began Cerizet, ' I have come from 
 a Monsieur Charles Claparon, who used to be a banker ' 
 
 " ' Ah ! poor devil, and what does he want with me ? ' 
 
 " ' Well, he is at present your creditor for a matter of three 
 thousand two hundred francs, seventy-five centimes, principal, 
 interest, and costs ' 
 
 " ' Coutelier's business ? ' put in Maxime, who knew his 
 affairs as a pilot knows his coast. 
 
 " ' Yes, Monsieur le Comte,' said Cerizet with a bow. ' I 
 have come to ask your intentions.' 
 
 "'I shall only pay when the fancy takes me,' returned 
 Maxime, and he rang for Suzon. ' It was very rash of 
 Claparon to buy up bills of mine without speaking to me be- 
 forehand. I am sorry for him, for he did so very well for 
 such a long time as a man of straw for friends of mine. I 
 always said that a man must really be weak in his intellect to 
 work for men that stuff themselves with millions, and to serve 
 them so faithfully for such low wages. And now here he 
 gives me another proof of his stupidity ! Yes, men deserve 
 what they get. It is your own doing whether you get a 
 crown on your forehead or a bullet through your head ; 
 whether you are a millionaire or a porter, justice is always 
 done you. I cannot help it, my dear fellow ; I myself am 
 not a king, I stick to my principles. I have no pity for those 
 that put me to expense or do not know their business as 
 creditors. Suzon ! my tea ! Do you see this gentleman ? ' 
 he continued when the man came in. ' Well, you have 
 allowed yourself to be taken in, poor old boy. This gentle- 
 man is a creditor ; you ought to have known him by his shoes. 
 No friend nor foe of mine, nor those that are neither and 
 want something of me, come to see me on foot. My dear
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 381 
 
 Monsieur Cerizet, do you understand ? You will not wipe 
 your shoes on my carpet again ' (looking as he spoke at the 
 mud that whitened the enemy's soles). ' Convey my compli- 
 ments and sympathy to Claparon, poor buffer, for I shall file 
 this business under the letter Z.' 
 
 " All this with an easy good-humor fit to give a virtuous 
 citizen the colic. 
 
 " 'You are wrong, Monsieur le Comte,' retorted Cerizet, in 
 a slightly peremptory tone. ' We shall be paid in full, and 
 that in a way which you may not like. That was why I 
 came to you first in a friendly spirit, as is right and fit be- 
 tween gentlemen ' 
 
 " * Oh ! so that is how you understand it ? ' began Maxime, 
 enraged by this last piece of presumption. There was some- 
 thing of Talleyrand's wit in the insolent retort, if you have 
 quite grasped the contrast between the two men and their cos- 
 tumes. Maxime scowled and looked full at the intruder; 
 Cerizet not merely endured the glare of cold fury, but even 
 returned it, with an icy, cat-like malignance and fixity of 
 gaze. 
 
 " ' Very good, sir, go out ' 
 
 " 'Very well, good-day, Monsieur le Comte. We shall be 
 quits before six months are out.' 
 
 " ' If you can steal the amount of your bill, which is legally 
 due I own, I shall be indebted to you, sir,' replied Maxime. 
 ' You will have taught me a new precaution to take. I am 
 very much your servant.' 
 
 " 'Monsieur le Comte,' said Cerizet, 'it is I, on the con- 
 trary, who am yours.' 
 
 " Here was an explicit, forcible, confident declaration on 
 either side. A couple of tigers confabulating, with the prey 
 before them and a fight impending, would have been no finer 
 and no shrewder than this pair ; the insolent fine gentleman 
 as great a blackguard as the other in his soiled and mud- 
 stained clothes.
 
 382 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 "Which will you lay your money on?" asked Desroches, 
 looking round at an audience, surprised to find how deeply it 
 was interested. 
 
 "A pretty story ! " cried Malaga. " My dear boy, go on, 
 I beg of you. This goes to one's heart." 
 
 " Nothing commonplace could happen between two fight- 
 ing-cocks of that calibre," added La Palferine. 
 
 " Pooh ! " cried Malaga, " I will wager my cabinet-maker's 
 invoice (the fellow is dunning me) that the little toad was too 
 many for Maxime." 
 
 "I bet on Maxime," said Cardot. " Nobody ever caught 
 him napping." 
 
 Desroches drank off a glass that Malaga handed to him. 
 
 "Mademoiselle Chocardelle's reading-room," he continued, 
 after a pause, " was in the Rue Coquenard, just a step or two 
 from the Rue Pigalle where Maxime was living. The said 
 Chocardelle lived at the back on the garden-side of the house, 
 beyond a big, dark place where the books were kept. Antonia 
 left her aunt to look after the business " 
 
 " Had she an aunt even then ? " exclaimed Malaga. " Hang 
 it all, Maxime did things handsomely." 
 
 ' 'Alas ! it was a real aunt, ' ' said Desroches ; ' ' her name was 
 let me see " 
 
 " Ida Bonamy," said Bixiou. 
 
 " So as Antonia's aunt took a good deal of the work off her 
 hands, she went to bed late and lay late of a morning, never 
 showing her face at the desk until the afternoon, some time 
 between two and four. From the very first her appearance 
 was enough to draw custom. Several elderly men in the 
 quarter used to come, among them a retired coach-builder, 
 one Croizeau. Beholding this miracle of female loveliness 
 through the window-panes, he took it into his head to read 
 the newspapers in the beauty's reading-room ; and a some- 
 time custom-house officer, named Denisart, with a ribbon in 
 his button-hole, followed the example. Croizeau chose to look
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 383 
 
 upon Denisart as a rival. 'Mosieur* he said afterward, ' I 
 did not know what to buy for you ! ' 
 
 " That speech should give you an idea of the man. The 
 Sieur Croizeau happens to belong to a particular class of old 
 man which should be known as ' Coquerels ' since Henri 
 Monnier's time ; so well did Monnier render the piping 
 voice, the little mannerisms, little queue, little sprinkling of 
 powder, little movements of the head, prim little manner, 
 and tripping gait in the part of Coquerel in ' La Famille 
 Improvise^.' This Croizeau used to hand over his halfpence 
 with a flourish and a * There, fair lady ! ' 
 
 " Madame Ida Bonamy the aunt was not long in finding 
 out through the servant that Croizeau, by popular report of 
 the neighborhood of the Rue de Buffault, where he lived, was 
 a man of exceeding stinginess, possessed of forty thousand 
 francs per annum. A week after the installment of the charm- 
 ing librarian he was delivered of a pun 
 
 " 'You lend me books (Itvres*}, but I give you plenty of 
 francs in return,' he said. 
 
 " A few days later he put on a knowing little air, as much 
 as to say, ' I know you are engaged, but my turn will come 
 one day ; I am a widower. ' 
 
 " He always came arrayed in fine linen, a cornflower blue 
 coat, a paduasoy waistcoat, black trousers, and black ribbon 
 bows on the double-soled shoes that creaked like an abbe's ; 
 he always held a fourteen-franc silk hat in his hand. 
 
 " 'I am old and I have no children,' he took occasion to 
 confide to the young lady some few days after Cerizet's visit to 
 Maxime. ' I hold my relations in horror. They are peasants 
 born to work in the fields. Just imagine it, I came up from 
 the country with six francs in my pocket, and made my fortune 
 here. I am not proud. A pretty woman is my equal. Now 
 would it not be nicer to be Madame Croizeau for some years 
 to come than to do a Count's pleasure for a twelvemonth ? 
 
 * Livre : masculine, book ; feminine, franc.
 
 384 A MAN OF BUSfNESS. 
 
 He will go off and leave you some time or other ; and when 
 that day comes, you will think of me your servant, my 
 pretty lady ! ' 
 
 "All this was simmering below the surface. The slightest 
 approach at love-making was made quite on the sly. Not a 
 soul suspected that the trim little old fogey was smitten with 
 Antonia ; and so prudent was the elderly lover, that no rival 
 could have guessed anything from his behavior in the reading- 
 room. For a couple of months Croizeau watched the retired 
 custom-house official ; but before the third month was out he 
 had good reason to believe that his suspicions were groundless. 
 He exerted his ingenuity to scrape an acquaintance with 
 Denisart, came up with him in the street, and at length seized 
 his opportunity to remark, ' It is a fine day, sir ! ' 
 
 "Whereupon the retired official responded with, ' Austerlitz 
 weather, sir. I was there myself I was wounded indeed ; I 
 won my cross on that glorious day.' 
 
 " And so from one thing to another the two drifted wrecks 
 of the empire struck up an acquaintance. Little Croizeau 
 was attached to the empire through his connection with 
 Napoleon's sisters. He had been their coach-builder, and 
 had frequently dunned them for money ; so he gave out that 
 he 'had had relations with the imperial family.' Maxime, 
 duly informed by Antonia of the ' nice old man's ' proposals 
 (for so the aunt called Croizeau), wished to see him. Cerizet's 
 declaration of war had so far taken effect that he of the yellow 
 kid gloves was studying the position of every piece, however 
 insignificant, upon the board ; and it so happened that at the 
 mention of that ' nice old man,' an ominous tinkling sounded 
 in his ears. One evening, therefore, Maxime seated himself 
 among the bookshelves in the dimly lighted back room, 
 reconnoitred the seven or eight customers through the chink 
 between the green curtains, and took the little coach-builder's 
 measure. He gauged the man's infatuation, and was very 
 well satisfied to find that the varnished doors of a tolerably
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 385 
 
 sumptuous future were ready to turn at a word from Antonia 
 so soon as his own fancy had passed off. 
 
 " 'And that other one yonder? ' he asked, pointing out the 
 stout, fine-looking elderly man with the cross of the Legion 
 of Honor. 'Who is he?' 
 
 " 'A retired custom-house officer.' 
 
 " ' The cut of his countenance is not reassuring,' said 
 Maxime, beholding the Sieur Denisart. 
 
 "And, indeed, the old soldier held himself upright as a 
 steeple. His head was remarkable for the amount of powder 
 and pomatum bestowed upon it ; he looked almost like a 
 postillion at a fancy ball. Underneath that felted covering, 
 moulded to the top of the wearer's cranium, appeared an 
 elderly profile, half-official, half-soldierly, with a comical ad- 
 mixture of arrogance, altogether something like caricatures of 
 the 'Constitutionnel.' The sometime official finding that 
 age, and hair-powder, and the conformation of his spine made 
 it impossible to read a word without spectacles, sat dis- 
 playing a very creditable expanse of chest with all the pride 
 of an old man with a mistress. Like old General Montcornet, 
 that pillar of the Vaudeville, he wore ear-rings. Denisart was 
 partial to blue ; his roomy trousers and well-worn great-coat 
 were both of blue cloth. 
 
 " * How long is it since that old fogey came here ? ' inquired 
 Maxime, thinking that he saw danger in the spectacles. 
 
 "'Oh, from the beginning,' returned Antonia, 'pretty 
 nearly two months ago now.' 
 
 " 'Good,' said Maxime to himself, ' Cerizet only came to 
 me a month ago. Just get him to talk,' he added in An- 
 tonia's ear ; ' I want to hear his voice.' 
 
 " 'Pshaw,' she replied, 'that is not so easy. He never 
 says a word to me. ' 
 
 " 'Then why does he come here?' demanded Maxime. 
 
 " 'For a queer reason,' returned the fair Antonia. 'In the 
 first place, although he is sixty-nine, he has a fancy ; and be- 
 25
 
 386 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 cause he is sixty-nine, he is as methodical as a clock-face. 
 Every day at five o'clock the old gentleman goes to dine with 
 her in the Rue de la Victoire. (I am sorry for her.) Then 
 at six o'clock he comes here, reads steadily at the papers for 
 four hours, and goes back at ten o'clock. Daddy Croizeau says 
 that he knows Monsieur Denisart's motives, and approves his 
 conduct ; and, in his place, he would do the same. So I know 
 exactly what to expect. If ever I am Madame Croizeau, I 
 shall have four hours to myself between six and ten o'clock.' 
 "Maxime looked through the directory and found the fol- 
 lowing reassuring item : 
 
 " ' DENISART, * retired custom-house officer, Rue de la Victoire.' 
 
 " His uneasiness vanished. 
 
 "Gradually the Sieur Denisart and the Sieur Croizeau 
 began to exchange confidences. Nothing so binds two men 
 together as a similarity of views in the matter of womankind. 
 Daddy Croizeau went to dine with ' Monsieur Denisart's fair 
 lady,' as he called her. And here I must make a somewhat 
 important observation. 
 
 "The reading-room had been paid for half in cash, half in 
 bills signed by the said Mile. Chocardelle. The quart dhfure 
 de Rabelais (Rabelais' ' instant of action ') arrived; the Count 
 had no money. So the first bill of three thousand-franc bills 
 was met by the amiable coach-builder; that old scoundrel 
 Denisart having recommended him to secure himself with a 
 mortgage on the reading-room. 
 
 " 'For my own part,' said Denisart, 'I have seen pretty 
 doings from pretty women. So, in all cases, even when I 
 have lost my head, I am always on my guard with a woman. 
 There is this creature, for instance ; I am madly in love with 
 her ; but this is not her furniture ; no, it belongs to me. The 
 lease is taken out in my name.' 
 
 " You know Maxime ! He thought the coach-builder un- 
 commonly green. Croizeau might pay all three bills, and get
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 387 
 
 nothing for a long while ; for Maxime felt more infatuated 
 with Antonia than ever." 
 
 "I can well believe it," said La Palferine. "She is the 
 bella imperia (imperial beauty) of our day." 
 
 "With her rough skin?" exclaimed Malaga ; "so rough, 
 that she ruins herself in bran baths?" 
 
 " Croizeau spoke with a coach-builder's admiration of the 
 sumptuous furniture provided by the amorous Denisart as a 
 setting for his fair one, describing it all in detail with dia- 
 bolical complacency for Antonia's benefit," continued Des- 
 roches. "The ebony chests inlaid with mother-of-pearl and 
 gold wire, the Brussels carpets, a mediaeval bedstead worth 
 three thousand francs, a boule clock, candelabra in the four 
 corners of the dining-room, silk curtains, on which Chinese 
 patience had wrought pictures of birds, and hangings over the 
 doors, worth more than the portress that opened them. 
 
 "'And that is what you ought to have, my pretty lady. 
 And that is what I should like to offer you,' he would con- 
 clude. ' I am quite aware that you scarcely care a bit about 
 me ; but, at my age, we cannot expect too much. Judge how 
 much I love you ; I have lent you a thousand francs. I must 
 confess that, in all my born days, I have not lent anybody 
 thai much ' 
 
 " He held out his penny as he spoke, with the important 
 air of a man that gives a learned demonstration. 
 
 " That same evening at the Varietes, Antonia spoke to the 
 Count. 
 
 " ' A reading-room is very dull, all the same,' said she; 'I 
 feel that I have no sort of taste for that kind of life, and I see 
 no future in it. It is only fit for a widow that wishes to keep 
 body and soul together, or for some hideously ugly thing that 
 fancies she can catch a husband with a little finery.' 
 
 " 'It was your own choice,' returned the Count. Just at 
 that moment in came Nucingen, of whom Maxime, king of 
 lions (the ' yellow kid gloves ' were the lions of that day), had
 
 388 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 won three thousand francs the evening before. Nucingen 
 had come to pay his gaming debt. 
 
 " ' Ein writ of attachment haf shoost peen served on me by 
 der order of dot teufel Glabaron,' he said, seeing Maxime's 
 astonishment. 
 
 " * Oh, so that is how they are going to work, is it ? ' cried 
 Maxime. ' They are not up to much, that pair ' 
 
 " ' It makes not,' said the banker, ' bay dem, for dey may 
 apply demselfs to oders pesides, und do you harm. I dake 
 dees bretty voman to vitness dot I haf baid you dees morning, 
 long pefore dat writ was serfed.' " 
 
 "Queen of the boards," smiled La Palferine, looking at 
 Malaga, "thou art about to lose thy bet." 
 
 " Once, a long time ago, in a similar case, resumed Des- 
 roches, a too honest debtor took fright at the idea of a solemn 
 declaration in a court of law, and declined to pay Maxime 
 after notice was given. That time we made it hot for the 
 crditor by piling on writs of attachment, so as to absorb the 
 whole amount in costs " 
 
 "Oh, what is that?" cried Malaga; "it all sounds like 
 gibberish to me. As you thought the sturgeon so excellent at 
 dinner, let me take out the value of the sauce in lessons in 
 chicanery. ' ' 
 
 " Very well," said Desroches. " Suppose that a man owes 
 you money, and your creditors serve a writ of attachment 
 upon him ; there is nothing to prevent all your other creditors 
 from doing the same thing. And now what does the court 
 do when all the creditors make application for orders to pay ? 
 The court divides the whole sum attached, proportionately among 
 them all. That division, made under the eye of a magistrate, 
 is what we call a contribution. If you owe ten thousand 
 francs, and your creditors issue writs of attachment on a debt 
 due to you of a thousand francs, each one of them gets so 
 much per cent., 'so much in the franc,' in legal phrase; so 
 much (that means) in proportion to the amounts severally
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 389 
 
 claimed by^ the creditors. But the creditors cannot touch 
 the money without a special order from the clerk of the court. 
 Do you guess what all this work drawn up by a judge and 
 prepared by attorneys must mean ? It means a quantity of 
 stamped paper full of diffuse lines and blanks, the figures 
 almost lost in vast spaces of completely empty ruled columns. 
 The first proceeding is to deduct the costs. Now, as the 
 costs are precisely the same whether the amount attached is 
 one thousand or one million francs, it is not difficult to eat up 
 three thousand francs (for instance) in costs, especially if you 
 can manage to raise counter-applications." 
 
 "And an attorney always manages to do it," said Cardot. 
 " How many a time one of you has come to me with, ' What 
 is there to be got out of the case ? ' ' 
 
 "It is particularly easy to manage it if the debtor eggs you 
 on to run up costs till they eat up the amount. And, as a 
 rule, the Count's creditors took nothing by that move, and 
 were out of pocket in law and personal expenses. To get 
 money out of so experienced a debtor as the Count, a creditor 
 should really be in a position uncommonly difficult to reach ; 
 it is a question of being creditor and debtor both, for then 
 you are legally entitled to work the confusion of rights, in law 
 language " 
 
 " To the confusion of the debtor? " asked Malaga, lending 
 an attentive ear to this discourse. 
 
 " No, the confusion of rights of debtor and creditor, and 
 pay yourself through your own hands. So Claparon's inno- 
 cence in merely issuing writs of attachment eased the Count's 
 mind. As he came back from the Varietes with Antonia, he 
 was so much the more taken with the idea of selling the 
 reading-room to pay off the last two thousand francs of the 
 purchase-money, because he did not care to have his name 
 made public as a partner in such a concern. So he adopted 
 Antonia's plan. Antonia wished to reach the higher ranks 
 of her calling, with splendid rooms, a maid, and a carriage ;
 
 390 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 in short, she wanted to rival our charming hostess, for in- 
 stance " 
 
 " She was not woman enough for that," cried the famous 
 beauty of the circus; "still, she ruined young d'Esgrignon 
 very neatly." 
 
 "Ten days afterward, little Croizeau, perched on his dig- 
 nity, said almost exactly the same thing, for the fair Antonia's 
 benefit," continued Desroches. 
 
 " ' Child,' said he, ' your reading-room is a hole of a place. 
 You will lose your complexion ; the gas will ruin your eye- 
 sight. You ought to come out of it ; and, look here, let us 
 take advantage of an opportunity. I have found a young 
 lady for you that asks no better than to buy your reading- 
 room. She is a ruined woman with nothing before her but a 
 plunge into the river; but she has four thousand francs in 
 cash, and the best thing to do is to turn them to account, so 
 as to feed and educate a couple of children. This is the place 
 for her.' 
 
 "'Very well. It is kind of you, Daddy Croizeau,' said 
 Antonia. 
 
 " ' Oh, I shall be much kinder before I have done. Just 
 imagine it, poor Monsieur Denisart has been worried into the 
 jaundice ! Yes, it has gone to the liver, as it usually does 
 with susceptible old men. It is a pity he feels things so. I 
 told him so myself; I said, "Be passionate, there is no harm 
 in that, but as for taking things to heart draw the line at 
 that ! It is the way to kill yourself." Really, I would not 
 have expected him to take on so about it; a man that has 
 sense enough and experience enough to keep away as he does 
 while he digests his dinner ' 
 
 "'But what is the matter?' inquired Mademoiselle Cho- 
 cardelle. 
 
 " 'That little baggage with whom I dined has cleared out 
 and left him ! Yes. Gave him the slip without any warning 
 but a letter, in which the spelling was all to seek.'
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 391 
 
 " ' There, Daddy Croizeau, you see what comes of boring a 
 woman ' 
 
 "'It is indeed a lesson, my pretty lady,' said the guileful 
 Croizeau. ' Meanwhile, I have never seen a man in such a 
 state. Our friend Denisart cannot tell his left hand from his 
 right ; he will not go back to look at the " scene of his happi- 
 ness," as he calls it. He has so thoroughly lost his wits that 
 he proposes that I should buy all Hortense's furniture (Hor- 
 tense was her name) for four thousand francs.' 
 
 " * A pretty name,' said Antonia. 
 
 " 'Yes. Napoleon's step-daughter was called Hortense. I 
 built carriages for her as you know,' said the stricken ex- 
 coach-maker. 
 
 " ' Very well, I will see,' said cunning Antonia; ' begin by 
 sending this young woman to me.' 
 
 " Antonia hurried off to see the furniture, and came back 
 fascinated. She brought Maxime under the spell of antiqua- 
 rian enthusiasm. That very evening the Count agreed to the 
 sale of the reading-room. The establishment, you see, nomi- 
 nally belonged to Mademoiselle Chocardelle. Maxime burst 
 out laughing at the idea of little Croizeau's finding him a 
 buyer. The firm of Maxime and Chocardelle was losing two 
 thousand francs, it is true, but what was the loss compared with 
 four glorious thousand-franc notes in hand ? ' Four thousand 
 francs of live coin ! there are moments in one's life when one 
 would sign bills for eight thousand to get them,' as the Count 
 said to me. 
 
 " Two days later the Count must see the furniture himself, 
 and took the four thousand francs upon him. The sale had 
 been arranged ; thanks to little Croizeau's diligence, he 
 pushed matters on ; he had ' come round ' the widow, as he 
 expressed it. It was Maxime's intention to have all the furni- 
 ture removed at once to a lodging in a new house in the Rue 
 Tronchet, taken in the name of Madame Ida Bonamy ; he did 
 not trouble himself much about the nice old man that was
 
 392 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 about to lose his thousand francs. But he had sent before- 
 hand for several big furniture vans. 
 
 " Once again he was fascinated by the beautiful furniture 
 which a wholesale dealer would have valued at six thousand 
 francs. By the fireside sat the wretched owner, yellow with 
 jaundice, his head tied up in a couple of printed handker- 
 chiefs, and a cotton night-cap on the top of them ; he was 
 huddled up in wrappings like a chandelier, exhausted, unable 
 to speak, and altogether so knocked to pieces that the Count 
 was obliged to transact his business with the manservant. 
 When he had paid down the four thousand francs, and the 
 servant had taken the money to his master for a receipt, Max- 
 ime turned to tell the man to call up the vans to the door : 
 but even as he spoke, a voice like a rattle sounded in his ears : 
 
 " ' It is not worth while, Monsieur le Comte. You and I 
 are quits ; I have six hundred and thirty francs fifteen cen- 
 times to give you ! ' 
 
 "To his utter consternation, he saw Cerizet, emerged from 
 his wrappings like a butterfly from the chrysalis, holding out 
 the accursed bundle of documents. 
 
 " ' When I was down on my luck I learned to act on the 
 stage,' added Cerizet. 'I am as good as Bouffe at old men.' 
 
 " ' I have fallen among thieves ! ' shouted Maxime. 
 
 " ' No, Monsieur le Comte, you are in Mademoiselle Hor- 
 tense's house. She is a friend of old Lord Dudley's ; he 
 keeps her hidden away here ; but she has the bad taste to 
 like your humble servant.' 
 
 " * If ever I longed to kill a man,' so the Count told me 
 afterward, ' it was at that moment ; but what could one do ? 
 Hortense showed her pretty face, one had to laugh. To keep 
 my dignity, I flung her the six hundred francs. " There's for 
 the girl," I said.' " 
 
 " That is Maxime all over ! " cried La Palferine. 
 
 " More especially as it was little Croizeau's money," added 
 Cardot the profound.
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 393 
 
 "Maxime scored a trump," continued Desroches, "for 
 Hortense exclaimed, ' Oh ! if I had only known that it was 
 you.' " 
 
 "A pretty ' confusion ' indeed ! " put in Malaga. "You 
 have lost, milord," she added, turning to the notary. 
 
 And in this way the cabinet-maker, to whom Malaga owed 
 a hundred crowns, was paid. 
 
 PARIS, 1845.
 
 11CSB LIBKAHY 
 X
 
 A 000 525 457
 
 I