“But, father, the bench is burning,” cried Madeleine.
“They were stifling up above,” said the Countess.
“Women will always be in the right!” said he, turning to me.
To avoid encouraging or offending him by a look, I gazed at Jacques, who complained of a pain in his throat, and his mother carried him away. As she went, she could hear her husband say:
“When a mother has such sickly children, she ought to know how to take care of them.”
Hideously unjust, but his self-conceit prompted him to justify himself at his wife’s expense.
The Countess flew on, up slopes and steps; she disappeared through the glass door.
Monsieur de Mortsauf had seated himself on the bench, his head bent, lost in thought; my position was intolerable; he neither looked at me nor spoke. Goodbye to the walk during which I meant to make such way in his good graces. I cannot remember ever in my life to have spent a more horrible quarter of an hour. I was bathed in perspiration as I considered—
“Shall I leave him? Shall I stay?”
How many gloomy thoughts must have filled his brain to make him forget to go and inquire how Jacques was! Suddenly he rose and came up to me. We turned together to look at the smiling scene.
“We will put off out walk till another day. Monsieur le Comte,” I said gently.
“Nay, let us go,” said he. “I am, unfortunately, used to see such attacks—and I would give my life without a regret to save the child’s.”
“Jacques is better now, my dear; he is asleep,” said the golden voice. Madame de Mortsauf appeared at the end of the walk; she had come back without rancor or bitterness, and she returned by bow. “I am pleased to see that you like Clochegourde,” she said to me.
“Would you like me to go on horseback to fetch Monsieur Deslandes, my dear?” said he, with an evident desire to win forgiveness for his injustice.
“Do not be anxious,” replied she. “Jacques did not sleep last night, that is all. The child is very nervous; he had a bad dream, and I spent the time telling him stories to send him to sleep again. His cough is entirely nervous. I have soothed it with a gum lozenge, and he has fallen asleep.”
“Poor dear!” said he, taking her hand in both of his, and looking at her with moistened eyes. “I knew nothing of it.”
“Why worry you about trifles? Go and look at your rye. You know that if you are not on the spot, the farmers will let gleaners who do not belong to the place clear the fields before the sheaves are carried.”
“I am going to take my first lesson in farming, madame,” said I.
“You have come to a good master,” replied she, looking at the Count, whose lips were pursed into the prim smile of satisfaction commonly known as la bouche en coeur.
Not till two months later did I know that she had spent that night in dreadful anxiety, fearing that her son had the croup. And I was in the punt, softly lulled by dreams of love, fancying that from her window she might see me adoring the light of the taper which shone on her brow furrowed by mortal fears.
As we reached the gate, the Count said in a voice full of emotion, “Madame de Mortsauf is an angel!”
The words staggered me. I knew the family but slightly as yet, and the natural remorse that comes over a youthful soul in such circumstances cried out to me:
“What right have you to disturb this perfect peace?”
The Count, enchanted to have for his audience a youth over whom he could so cheaply triumph, began talking of the future prospects of France under the return of the Bourbons. We chatted discursively, and I was greatly surprised at the strangely childish things he said. He was ignorant of facts as well proven as geometry; he was suspicious of well-informed persons; he had no belief in superiority; he laughed at progress, not perhaps without reason; and I found in him a vast number of sensitive chords compelling me to take so much care not to wound him that a long conversation was a labor to the mind. When I had thus laid a finger on his failings, I felt my way with as much pliancy as the Countess showed in coaxing them. At a later stage of my life I should undoubtedly have fretted him; but I was as timid as a child, and thinking that I myself knew nothing, or that men of experience knew everything, I was amazed at the wonders worked at Clochegourde by this patient husbandman. I heard his plans with admiration. Finally—a piece of involuntary flattery which won me the good gentleman’s affections—I envied him this pretty estate so beautifully situated, as an earthly paradise far superior to Frapesle.
“Frapesle,” said I, “is a massive piece of plate, but Clochegourde is a casket of precious gems.”
A speech he constantly repeated, quoting me as the author.
“Well,” said he, “before we came here it was a wilderness.”
I was all ears when he talked of his crops and nursery plantations. New to a country life, I overwhelmed him with questions as to the price of things and the processes of agriculture, and he seemed delighted to have to tell me so much.
“What on earth do they teach you?” he asked in surprise.
And that very first day, on going in, he said to his wife:
“Monsieur Félix is a charming young fellow.”
In the afternoon I wrote to my mother to tell her I should remain at Frapesle, and begged her to send me clothes and linen.
Knowing nothing of the great revolution that was going on, and of the influence it was to exert over my destinies, I supposed that I should return to Paris to finish my studies, and the law-schools would not reopen till early in November; so I had two months and a half before me.
During the first days
