I flew like a swallow to Touraine. For the first time I was to show myself to my beloved, not merely a little less insignificant, but actually in the guise of an elegant young man, whose manners had been formed in the best salons, his education finished by gracious women;who had found at last a compensation for all his sufferings, and had put to use the experience given to him by the purest angel to whom heaven had ever committed the care of a child. You know how my mother had equipped me for my three months' visit at Frapesle. When I reached Clochegourde after fulfilling my mission in Vendee, I was dressed like a huntsman; I wore a jacket with white and red buttons, striped trousers, leathern gaiters and shoes. Tramping through underbrush had so injured my clothes that the count was obliged to lend me linen. On the present occasion, two years' residence in Paris, constant intercourse with the king, the habits of a life at ease, my completed growth, a youthful countenance, which derived a lustre from the placidity of the soul within magnetically united with the pure soul that beamed on me from Clochegourde,--all these things combined had transformed me. I was self-possessed without conceit, inwardly pleased to find myself, in spite of my years, at the summit of affairs; above all, I had the consciousness of being secretly the support and comfort of the dearest woman on earth, and her unuttered hope. Perhaps I felt a flutter of vanity as the postilions cracked their whips along the new avenue leading from the main road to Clochegourde and through an iron gate I had never seen before, which opened into a circular enclosure recently constructed. I had not written to the countess of my coming, wishing to surprise her. For this I found myself doubly in fault: first, she was overwhelmed with the excitement of a pleasure long desired, but supposed to be impossible; and secondly, she proved to me that all such deliberate surprises are in bad taste.
When Henriette saw a young man in him who had hitherto seemed but a child to her, she lowered her eyes with a sort of tragic slowness. She allowed me to take and kiss her hand without betraying her inward pleasure, which I nevertheless felt in her sensitive shiver. When she raised her face to look at me again, I saw that she was pale.
"Well, you don't forget your old friends?" said Monsieur de Mortsauf, who had neither changed nor aged.
The children sprang upon me. I saw them behind the grave face of the Abbe Dominis, Jacques' tutor.
"No," I replied, "and in future I am to have six months' leave, which will always be spent here--Why, what is the matter?" I said to the countess, putting my arm round her waist and holding her up in presence of them all.
"Oh, don't!" she said, springing away from me; "it is nothing."I read her mind, and answered to its secret thought by saying, "Am Inot allowed to be your faithful slave?"
She took my arm, left the count, the children, and the abbe, and led me to a distance on the lawn, though still within sight of the others;then, when sure that her voice could not be heard by them, she spoke.
"Felix, my dear friend," she said, "forgive my fears; I have but one thread by which to guide me in the labyrinth of life, and I dread to see it broken. Tell me that I am more than ever Henriette to you, that you will never abandon me, that nothing shall prevail against me, that you will ever be my devoted friend. I have suddenly had a glimpse into my future, and you were not there, as hitherto, your eyes shining and fixed upon me--""Henriette! idol whose worship is like that of the Divine,--lily, flower of my life, how is it that you do not know, you who are my conscience, that my being is so fused with yours that my soul is here when my body is in Paris? Must I tell you that I have come in seventeen hours, that each turn of the wheels gathered thoughts and desires in my breast, which burst forth like a tempest when I saw you?""Yes, tell me! tell me!" she cried; "I am so sure of myself that I can hear you without wrong. God does not will my death. He sends you to me as he sends his breath to his creatures; as he pours the rain of his clouds upon a parched earth,--tell me! tell me! Do you love me sacredly?""Sacredly."
"For ever?"
"For ever."
"As a virgin Mary, hidden behind her veil, beneath her white crown.""As a virgin visible."
"As a sister?"
"As a sister too dearly loved."
"With chivalry and without hope?"
"With chivalry and with hope."
"As if you were still twenty years of age, and wearing that absurd blue coat?""Oh better far! I love you thus, and I also love you"--she looked at me with keen apprehension--"as you loved your aunt.""I am happy! You dispel my terrors," she said, returning towards the family, who were surprised at our private conference. "Be still a child at Clochegourde--for you are one still. It may be your policy to be a man with the king, but here, let me tell you, monsieur, your best policy is to remain a child. As a child you shall be loved. I can resist a man, but to a child I can refuse nothing, nothing! He can ask for nothing I will not give him.--Our secrets are all told," she said, looking at the count with a mischievous air, in which her girlish, natural self reappeared. "I leave you now; I must go and dress."Never for three years had I heard her voice so richly happy. For the first time I heard those swallow cries, the infantile notes of which Itold you. I had brought Jacques a hunting outfit, and for Madeleine a work-box--which her mother afterwards used. The joy of the two children, delighted to show their presents to each other, seemed to annoy the count, always dissatisfied when attention was withdrawn from himself. I made a sign to Madeleine and followed her father, who wanted to talk to me of his ailments.
"My poor Felix," he said, "you see how happy and well they all are. Iam the shadow on the picture; all their ills are transferred to me, and I bless God that it is so. Formerly I did not know what was the matter with me; now I know. The orifice of my stomach is affected; Ican digest nothing."
