Before finding myself cabined in a bedroom, I felt that I must pause in rapture under the blue vault spangled with stars, to hear again in my mind’s ear those tones as of a wounded dove, the simple accents of her ingenuous confidence, and inhale with the air the emanations of her soul which she must be sending out to me. How noble she appeared to me—the woman who so utterly forgot herself in her religious care for weak or suffering or wounded creatures, her devotedness apart from legal chains. She stood serene at the stake of saintly martyrdom! I was gazing at her face as it appeared to me in the darkness, when suddenly I fancied that I discerned in her words a mystical significance which made her seem quite sublime. Perhaps she meant that I was to be to her what she was to her world; perhaps she intended to derive strength and consolation from me by thus raising me to her sphere, to her level—or higher? The stars, so some bold theorists tell us, thus interchange motion and light. This thought at once lifted me to ethereal realms. I was once more in the heaven of my early dreams, and I accounted for the anguish of my childhood by the infinite beatitude in which I now floated.
Ye souls of genius extinguished by tears, misprized hearts, Clarissa Harlowes, saintly and unsung, outcast children, guiltless exiles—all ye who entered life through its desert places, who have everywhere found cold faces, closed hearts, deaf ears—do not bewail yourselves! You alone can know the immensity of joy in the moment when a heart opens to you, an ear listens, a look answers you. One day wipes out all the evil days. Past sorrows, broodings, despair, and melancholy—past, but not forgotten—are so many bonds by which the soul clings to its sister soul. The woman, beautified by our suppressed desires, inherits our wasted sighs and loves; she refunds our deluded affections with interest; she supplies a reason for antecedent griefs, for they are the equivalent insisted on by Fate for the eternal joy she bestows on the day when souls are wed. The angels only know the new name by which this sacred love may be called; just as you, sweet martyrs, alone can know what Madame de Mortsauf had suddenly become to me—hapless and alone.
This scene had taken place one Tuesday; I waited till the following Sunday before recrossing the Indre in my walks.
During these five days great events occurred at Clochegourde. The Count was promoted to the grade of Major-General, and the Cross of Saint-Louis was conferred on him with a pension of four thousand francs. The Duc de Lenoncourt-Givry was made a peer of France, two of his forest domains were restored to him, he had an appointment at Court, and his wife was reinstated in her property, which had not been sold, having formed part of the Imperial Crown lands. Thus the Comtesse de Mortsauf had become one of the richest heiresses in the province. Her mother had come to Clochegourde to pay her a hundred thousand francs she had saved out of the revenues from Givry; this money, settled on her at her marriage, she had never received; but the Count, in spite of his necessity, had never alluded to this. In all that concerned the outer circumstances of life, this man’s conduct was marked by disinterested pride.
By adding this sum to what he had saved, the Count could now purchase two adjoining estates, that would bring in about nine thousand francs a year. His son was to inherit his maternal grandfather’s peerage; and it occurred to the Count to entail on Jacques the landed property of both families without prejudice to Madeleine, who, with the Duc de Lenoncourt’s interest, would, no doubt, marry well.
All these schemes and this good fortune shed some balm on the exile’s wounds.
The Duchesse de Lenoncourt at Clochegourde was an event in the district. I sorrowfully reflected what a great lady she was, and I then discerned in her daughter that spirit of caste which her noble soul had hitherto hidden from my eyes. What was I—poor, and with no hope for the future but in my courage and my brains? I never thought of the consequences of the Restoration either to myself or to others.
On Sunday, from the side chapel, where I attended mass with Monsieur and Madame de Chessel and the Abbé Quélus, I sent hungry looks to the chapel on the opposite side, where the Duchess and her daughter were, the Count, and the children. The straw bonnet that hid my idol’s face never moved, and this ignoring of my presence seemed to be a stronger tie than all that had passed. The noble Henriette de Lenoncourt, who was now my beloved Henriette, was absorbed in prayer; faith gave an indescribable sentiment of prostrate dependence to her attitude, the feeling of a sacred statue, which penetrated my soul.
As is customary in village churches, Vespers were chanted some little time after High Mass. As we left the church, Madame de Chessel very naturally suggested to her neighbors that they should spend the two hours’ interval at Frapesle instead of crossing the Indre and the valley twice in the heat. The invitation was accepted. Monsieur de Chessel gave the Duchess his arm, Madame de Chessel took the Count’s, and I offered mine to the Countess. For the first time I felt that light wrist resting by my side. As we made our way back from the church to Frapesle through the woods of Saché, where the dappled lights, falling through the leaves, made pretty patterns like chiné silk, I went through surges of pride and thrills of feeling that gave me violent palpitations.
“What ails you?”
