She had seen this expanse of woes stretching before her, a thorny wilderness, after every surmounted difficulty. From the top of each rock she had discovered new deserts to cross, till the day when she really knew her husband, knew her children’s constitution, and the land she was to dwell in; till the day when, like the boy taken by Napoleon from the tender care of home, she had inured her feet to tramp through mire and snow, inured her forehead to flying bullets, and broken herself entirely to the passive obedience of a soldier. All these things, which I abridge for you, she related in their gloomy details, with all their adjuncts of cruel incidents, of conjugal defeats, and fruitless efforts.
“In short,” she said in conclusion, “only a residence here of months would give you a notion of all the troubles the improvements at Clochegourde cost me, all the weary coaxing to persuade him to do the thing that is most useful for his interests. What childish malice possesses him whenever anything I have advised is not an immediate success! How delighted he is to proclaim himself in the right! What patience I need when I hear continual complaints while I am killing myself to clear each hour of weeds, to perfume the air he breathes, to strew sand and flowers on the paths he has beset with stones! My reward is this dreadful burden—‘I am dying; life is a curse to me!’
“If he is so fortunate as to find visitors at home, all is forgotten; he is gracious and polite. Why cannot he be the same to his family? I cannot account for this want of loyalty in a man who is sometimes chivalrous. He is capable of going off without a word, all the way to Paris, to get me a dress, as he did the other day for that ball. Miserly as he is in his housekeeping, he would be lavish for me if I would allow it. It ought to be just the other way; I want nothing, and the house expenses are heavy. In my anxiety to make him happy, and forgetting that I might be a mother, I perhaps gave him the habit of regarding me as his victim, whereas with a little flattery I might still manage him like a child if I would stoop to play so mean a part! But the interests of the household make it necessary that I should be as calm and austere as a statue of Justice; and yet I too have a tender and effusive soul.”
“But why,” said I, “do you not avail yourself of your influence to be the mistress and guide him?”
“If I alone were concerned, I could never defy the stolid silence with which for hours he will oppose sound arguments, nor could I answer his illogical remarks—the reasoning of a child. I have no courage against weakness or childishness; they may hit me, and I shall make no resistance. I might meet force with force, but I have no power against those I pity. If I were required to compel Madeleine to do something that would save her life, we should die together. Pity relaxes all my fibres and weakens my sinews. And the violent shocks of the past ten years have undermined me; my nervous force so often attacked, is sometimes deliquescent, nothing can restore it; the strength that weathered those storms is sometimes wanting. Yes, sometimes I am conquered.
“For want of rest and of sea-bathing, which would give tone to my whole system, I shall be worn out. Monsieur de Mortsauf will kill me, and he will die of my death.”
“Why do you not leave Clochegourde for a few months? Why should not you and the children go to the sea?”
“In the first place, Monsieur de Mortsauf would feel himself lost if I left him. Though he will not recognize the situation, he is aware of his state. The man and the invalid are at war in him, two different natures, whose antagonism accounts for many eccentricities. And indeed he has every reason to dread it; if I were absent, everything here would go wrong. You have seen, no doubt, that I am a mother perpetually on the watch to guard over her brood against the hawk that hovers over them; a desperate task, increased by the cares required by Monsieur de Mortsauf, whose perpetual cry is, ‘Where is Madame?’ But this is nothing. I am at the same time Jacques’ tutor and Madeleine’s governess. This again is nothing. I am steward and bookkeeper. You will some day know the full meaning of my words when I say that the management of an estate is here the most exhausting toil. We have but a small income in money, and our farms are worked on a system of half-profits which requires incessant superintendence. We ourselves must sell our corn, our beasts, and every kind of crop. Our competitors are our own farmers, who agree with the purchasers over their wine at the tavern, and fix a price after being before us in the market.
“I should tire you out if I were to tell you all the thousand difficulties of our husbandry. With all my vigilance, I cannot keep our farmers from manuring their lands from our middens; I can neither go to make sure that our bailiffs do not agree with them to cheat us when the crops are divided, nor can I know the best time to sell. And if you think how little memory Monsieur de Mortsauf can boast of, and what trouble it costs me to induce him to attend to business, you will understand what a load I have to carry, and the impossibility of setting it down even for a moment. If I went away, we should be ruined. No one would
