“She does not love me,” thought I.
That she might not read my soul, I bent down and kissed Madeleine’s hair.
“I am afraid of your mother,” I said to the Countess, to reopen the conversation.
“So am I,” she replied, with a childish gesture. “Do not forget to address her as Madame la Duchesse, and speak to her in the third person. Young people of the present day have forgotten those polite formalities; revive them; do that much for me. Besides, it is always in good taste to be respectful to a woman, whatever her age may be, and to accept social distinctions without hesitancy. Is not the homage you pay to recognized superiority a guarantee for what is due to yourself? In society everything holds together. The Cardinal de Rovere and Raphael d’Urbino were in their time two equally respected powers.
“You have drunk the milk of the Revolution in your schools, and your political ideas may show the taint; but as you get on in life, you will discover that ill-defined notions of liberty are inadequate to create happiness of nations. I, before considering, as a Lenoncourt, what an aristocracy is or ought to be, listen to my peasant common sense, which shows me that society exists only by the hierarchy. You are at a stage in your life when you must make a wise choice. Stick to your party, especially,” she added, with a laugh, “when it is on the winning side.”
I was deeply touched by these words, in which wise policy lurked below the warmth of her affection, a union which gives women such powers of fascination. They all know how to lend the aspect of sentiment to the shrewdest reasoning.
Henriette, in her anxiety to justify the Count’s actions, had, as it seemed, anticipated the reflections which must arise in my mind when, for the first time, I saw the results of being a courtier. Monsieur de Mortsauf, a king in his domain, surrounded with his historic halo, had assumed magnificent proportions in my eyes, and I own that I was greatly astonished at the distance he himself set between the Duchess and himself by his subservient manner. A slave even has his pride; he will only obey the supreme despot; I felt myself humbled at seeing the abject attitude of the man who made me tremble by overshadowing my love. This impulse of feeling revealed to me all the torment of a woman whose generous soul is joined to that of a man whose meanness she has to cover decently every day. Respect is a barrier which protects great and small alike; each on his part can look the other steadily in the face.
I was deferent to the Duchess by reason of my youth; but where others saw only the Duchess, I saw my Henriette’s mother, and there was a solemnity in my respect.
We went into the front court of Frapesle, and there found all the party. The Comte de Mortsauf introduced me to the lady with much graciousness, and she examined me with a cold, reserved manner. Madame de Lenoncourt was then a woman of fifty-six, extremely well preserved, and with lordly manners. Seeing her hard, blue eyes, her wrinkled temples, her thin, ascetic face, her stately upright figure, her constant quiescence, her dull pallor—in her daughter brilliant whiteness—I recognized her as of the same race as my own mother, as surely as a mineralogist recognizes Swedish iron. Her speech was that of the old Court circles; she pronounced oit as ait, spoke of frait for froid, and of porteux for porteurs. I was neither servile nor prim, and I behaved so nicely, that as we went to vespers, the Countess said in my ear, “You are perfect.”
The Count came up to me, took my hand, and said, “We have not quarreled, Félix? If I was a little hasty, you will forgive your old comrade. We shall probably stay to dine here, and we hope to see you at Clochegourde on Thursday, the day before the Duchess leaves us. I am going to Tours on business.—Do not neglect Clochegourde, my mother-in-law is an acquaintance I advise you to cultivate; her drawing-room will pitch the keynote for the Faubourg Saint-Germain. She has the tradition of the finest society, she is immensely well informed, and knows the armorial bearings of every gentleman in Europe from the highest to the lowest.”
The Count’s good taste, aided perhaps by the counsels of his good genius, told well in the new circumstances in which he was placed by the triumph of his party. He was neither arrogant nor offensively polite; he showed no affectation, and the Duchess no patronizing airs. Monsieur and Madame do Chessel gratefully accepted the invitation to dinner on the following Thursday.
The Duchess liked me, and her way of looking at me made me understand that she was studying me as a man of whom her daughter had spoken. On our return from church, she inquired about my family, and asked whether the Vandenesse, who was already embarked in diplomacy, were a relation of mine.
“He is my brother,” said I.
Then she became almost affectionate. She informed me that my grandaunt, the old Marquise de Listomère, had been a Grandlieu. Her manner was polite, as Monsieur de Mortsauf’s had been on the day when he saw me for the first time. Her eyes lost that haughty expression by which the princes of the earth make you feel the distance that divides you from them.
I knew hardly anything of my family; the Duchess told me that my great-uncle, an old Abbé whom I did not know even by name, was a member of the Privy Council; that my brother had got promotion;
