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 easygoing 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 Quotidienne, and have admired him as a religious man, devoted to his party, frank as to his political antipathies, incapable 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 towards 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 Chessel, 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 afterwards learned, was a second tie that bound her to me so closely. I read in her soul. Her motherly instinct was roused, 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 perhaps, “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 hammers 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 rose.
“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 Frapesle.”
“You were very rash,” said he to me, “though at your age—,” and he wagged his head in token of regret.
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 woodwork of the chairs, upholstered with needlework, 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-stands of Chinese lacquer. But there were flowers in varnished
