“They were suffocating higher up,” said the countess.
“Women always want to prove they are right,” said the count, turning to me.
To avoid agreeing or disagreeing with him by word or look I watched Jacques, who complained of his throat. His mother carried him away, but as she did so she heard her husband say: —
“When they have brought such sickly children into the world they ought to learn how to take care of them.”
Words that were cruelly unjust; but his self-love drove him to defend himself at the expense of his wife. The countess hurried up the steps and across the portico, and I saw her disappear through the glass door. Monsieur de Mortsauf seated himself on the bench, his head bowed in gloomy silence. My position became annoying; he neither spoke nor looked at me. Farewell to the walk he had proposed, in the course of which I had hoped to fathom him. I hardly remember a more unpleasant moment. Ought I to go away, or should I not go? How many painful thoughts must have arisen in his mind, to make him forget to follow Jacques and learn how he was! At last however he rose abruptly and came towards me. We both turned and looked at the smiling valley.
“We will put off our walk to another day, Monsieur le comte,” I said gently.
“No, let us go,” he replied. “Unfortunately, I am accustomed to such scenes – I, who would give my life without the slightest regret to save that of the child.”
“Jacques is better, my dear; he has gone to sleep,” said a golden voice. Madame de Mortsauf suddenly appeared at the end of the path. She came forward, without bitterness or ill-will, and bowed to me.
“I am glad to see that you like Clochegourde,” she said.
“My dear, should you like me to ride over and fetch Monsieur Deslandes?” said the count, as if wishing her to forgive his injustice.
“Don’t be worried,” she said. “Jacques did not sleep last night, that’s all. The child is very nervous; he had a bad dream, and I told him stories all night to keep him quiet. His cough is purely nervous; I have stilled it with a lozenge, and he has gone to sleep.”
“Poor woman!” said her husband, taking her hand in his and giving her a tearful look, “I knew nothing of it.”
“Why should you be troubled when there is no occasion?” she replied. “Now go and attend to the rye. You know if you are not there the men will let the gleaners of the other villages get into the field before the sheaves are carried away.”
“I am going to take a first lesson in agriculture, madame,” I said to her.
“You have a very good master,” she replied, motioning towards the count, whose mouth screwed itself into that smile of satisfaction which is vulgarly termed a “bouche en coeur.”
Two months later I learned she had passed that night in great anxiety, fearing that her son had the croup; while I was in the boat, rocked by thoughts of love, imagined that she might see me from her window adoring the gleam of the candle which was then lighting a forehead furrowed by fears! The croup prevailed at Tours, and was often fatal. When we were outside the gate, the count said in a voice of emotion, “Madame de Mortsauf is an angel!” The words staggered me. As yet I knew but little of the family, and the natural conscience of a young soul made me exclaim inwardly: “What right have I to trouble this perfect peace?”
Glad to find a listener in a young man over whom he could lord it so easily, the count talked to me of the future which the return of the Bourbons would secure to France. We had a desultory conversation, in which I listened to much childish nonsense which positively amazed me. He was ignorant of facts susceptible of proof that might be called geometric; he feared persons of education; he rejected superiority, and scoffed, perhaps with some reason, at progress. I discovered in his nature a number of sensitive fibres which it required the utmost caution not to wound; so that a conversation with him of any length was a positive strain upon the mind. When I had, as it were, felt of his defects, I conformed to them with the same suppleness that his wife showed in soothing him. Later in life I should certainly have made him angry, but now, humble as a child, supposing that I knew nothing and believing that men in their prime knew all, I was genuinely amazed at the results obtained at Clochegourde by this patient agriculturist. I listened admiringly to his plans; and with an involuntary flattery which won his good-will, I envied him the estate and its outlook – a terrestrial paradise, I called it, far superior to Frapesle.
“Frapesle,” I said, “is a massive piece of plate, but Clochegourde is a jewel-case of gems,” – a speech which he often quoted, giving credit to its author.
“Before we came here,” he said, “it was desolation itself.”
I was all ears when he told of his seed-fields and nurseries. New to country life, I besieged him with questions about prices, means of preparing and working the soil, etc., and he seemed glad to answer all in detail.
“What in the world do they teach you in your colleges?” he exclaimed at last in astonishment.
On this first day the count said to his wife when he reached home, “Monsieur Felix is a charming young man.”
That evening I wrote to my mother and asked her to send my clothes and linen, saying that I should remain at Frapesle. Ignorant of the great revolution which was just taking place, and not perceiving the influence it was to have upon my fate, I expected to return to Paris to resume my legal studies. The Law School did not open till the first week in November; meantime I had two months and a half before me.
The first part of my stay, while I studied to understand the count, was a period of painful impressions to me. I found him a man of extreme irascibility without adequate cause; hasty in action in hazardous cases to a degree that alarmed me. Sometimes he showed glimpses of the brave gentleman of Conde’s army, parabolic flashes of will such as may, in times of emergency, tear through politics like bomb-shells, and may also, by virtue of honesty and courage, make a man condemned to live buried on his property an Elbee, a Bonchamp, or a Charette. In presence of certain ideas his nostril contracted, his forehead cleared, and his eyes shot lightnings, which were soon quenched. Sometimes I feared he might detect the language of my eyes and kill me. I was young then and merely tender. Will, that force that alters men so strangely, had scarcely dawned within me. My passionate desires shook me with an emotion that was like the throes of fear. Death I feared not, but I would not die until I knew the happiness of mutual love – But how tell of what I felt! I was a prey to perplexity; I hoped for some fortunate chance; I watched; I made the children love me; I tried to identify myself with the family.
Little by little the count restrained himself less in my presence. I came to know his sudden outbreaks of temper, his deep and ceaseless melancholy, his flashes of brutality, his bitter, cutting complaints, his cold hatreds, his impulses of latent madness, his childish moans, his cries of a man’s despair, his unexpected fury. The moral nature differs from the physical nature inasmuch as nothing is absolute in it. The force of effects is in direct proportion to the characters or the ideas which are grouped around some fact. My position at Clochegourde, my future life, depended on this one eccentric will.
I cannot describe to you the distress that filled my soul (as quick in those days to expand as to contract), whenever I entered Clochegourde, and asked myself, “How will he receive me?” With what anxiety of heart I saw the clouds collecting on that stormy brow. I lived in a perpetual “qui-vive.” I fell under the dominion of that man; and the sufferings I endured taught me to understand those of Madame de Mortsauf. We began by exchanging looks of comprehension; tried by the same fire, how many discoveries I made during those first forty days! – of actual bitterness, of tacit joys, of hopes alternately submerged and buoyant. One evening I found her pensively watching a sunset which reddened the summits with so ravishing a glow that it was impossible not to listen to that voice of the eternal Song of Songs by which Nature herself bids all her creatures love. Did the lost illusions of her girlhood return to her? Did the woman suffer from an inward comparison? I fancied I perceived a desolation in her attitude that was favorable to my first appeal, and I said, “Some days are hard to bear.”
“You read my soul,” she answered;