“What beastly weather!” or “How nice to have a fire!”
Occasionally he would ask:
“Has she anything to say today? Is she happy?”
He was happy, enjoying good health, and wanted nothing beyond his simple, healthy, quiet life.
In December, when the snow fell, she suffered terribly from the icy cold of the castle, which seemed to have grown chill with the centuries, as human beings become chill with age, and she said to her husband one evening:
“I say, Henri, you ought to install a furnace here, it would dry the walls. I assure you I am never warm.”
At first he was speechless at the extravagant idea of installing a furnace in his manor; it would have seemed more natural to him to feed his dogs out of silver-plated dishes. Then he burst out into a ringing fit of laughter, exclaiming:
“A furnace here! A furnace here! Ah! ah! ah! What a joke!”
“I assure you, dear, I am frozen with cold,” she persisted; “you don’t notice it because you are always moving about, but all the same I feel frozen.”
He only replied, still laughing:
“Nonsense, you’ll get used to it. Besides, it is excellent for the health. You will be all the better for it. Good Lord, we are not Parisians to live in front of the fire. After all, spring will soon be here.”
About the beginning of January she had the great misfortune to lose her father and mother, who were killed in a carriage accident. She went to Paris for the funeral, and, for six months, thought of nothing but her loss. The mildness of the beautiful summer finally roused her, and she drifted through life in a state of melancholy languor until autumn. When the cold weather returned she faced the fact of her gloomy future for the first time. What could she do? Nothing. What did life hold for her? Nothing. Was there anything she could hope for that would restore her drooping spirits? Nothing. The doctor had said that she would never have any children.
She suffered continually from the cold, which was sharper and more penetrating than the winter before. She stretched her poor, trembling hands out to the big flames; the blazing fire scorched her face, but icy winds crept down her back, slipping in between her skin and underclothing, and making her shiver all over. The rooms seemed full of draughts, specially lively draughts, crafty draughts as cruel as an enemy. She met them at every turn; without ceasing they blew on her face, her hands, her neck their frozen and perfidious breath.
Again she mentioned the furnace, but her husband listened to her as if she were asking for the moon. The introduction of that sort of thing at Parville seemed as impossible to him as the discovery of the Philosopher’s Stone.
He went to Rouen one day on business and brought back a tiny copper foot-warmer for his wife, which he laughingly called a portable furnace, and he was convinced that it would prevent her from ever feeling cold again.
Towards the end of December she realised that she could not live that life forever, and said timidly one night at dinner:
“I say, dear, can’t we go and spend a week or two in Paris before the spring?”
Full of astonishment, he said:
“In Paris? In Paris? Whatever for? Certainly not! We are better off here, at home. What odd ideas you have!”
She faltered: “It would make a change,” but he could not understand.
“What do you want by way of a change? Theatres, receptions, dinners in town? You knew well when you came here that you could not expect anything of the kind!”
Both words and voice made her feel he was reproaching her. She held her tongue, for she was gentle and retiring, without determination or power of resistance.
It was terribly cold again in January, and everything was covered with snow. One evening, as she was gazing at the cloud of crows circling round the trees, she began to cry in spite of herself. Her husband came in and asked, very surprised:
“What’s the matter with you?”
He was happy, quite happy, having never thought of any other life, any other pleasures. He had been born and had grown up in the melancholy part of the country; he felt quite at home, contented in mind and body.
He did not understand that anyone could want something to happen, that anyone could long for a change, he did not understand that, to some beings, it did not seem natural to be in the same spot throughout the four seasons of the year; apparently he did not know that spring, summer, autumn and winter hold fresh amusements in different countries for many people.
She could say nothing in reply and quickly wiped her tears. At last, she said desperately:
“I am—I—I’m rather sad—I’m rather bored …” But terrified at what she had said, she quickly added:
“Besides, I’m—I’m rather cold.”
The last remark irritated him:
“Ah, yes. Still your idea of a furnace. But, damn it, you haven’t had a single cold since you came here.”
When night came she went up to her room (for she had insisted on having a separate bedroom) and went to bed, but even there she was cold, and she thought:
“It will always be like this, always, until I die.”
Then she thought about her husband; how could he have said: “You have never had a single
