I sat, sunk in a gulf of meditations as I here saw the unknown 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 daughter’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 creature, 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 heart for their winding-sheet, their memory is perpetually one 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 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. Then 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 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 would 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 émigré, 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, and 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 scheme which your adored mother had cherished for the last seven years, and which 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 till time has modified your ideas of social life. At this moment I would not
