“I am but a chattel, a serf to Clochegourde,” said I to the Countess in an undertone.
The fairy wand of the Restoration had worked with a rapidity quite astounding to children brought up under Imperial rule. To me these changes meant nothing. Madame de Mortsauf’s lightest word or merest gesture were the only events to which I attached any importance. I knew nothing of politics, nor of the ways of the world. I had no ambition but to love Henriette better than Petrarch loved Laura. This indifference made the Duchess look upon me as a boy.
A great deal of company came to Frapesle, and we were thirty at dinner. How enchanting for a young man to see the woman he loves the most beautiful person present, and the object of passionate admiration, while he knows the light of those chastely modest eyes is for him alone, and is familiar enough with every tone of her voice to find in her speech, superficially trivial or ironical, proofs of an ever-present thought of him, even while his heart is full of burning jealousy of the amusements of her world.
The Count, delighted with the attentions paid him, was almost young again; his wife hoped it might work some change in him; I was gay with Madeleine, who, like all children in whom the body is too frail for the wrestling soul, made me laugh by her amazing remarks, full of sarcastic but never malignant wit, which spared no one. It was a lovely day. One word, one hope, born that morning, had brightened all nature, and, seeing me so glad, Henriette was glad too.
“This happiness falling across her gray and cloudy life had done her good,” she told me the next day.
Of course I spent the morrow at Clochegourde; I had been exiled for five days, and thirsted for life. The Count had set out for Tours at five in the morning.
A serious matter of dispute had come up between the mother and daughter. The Duchess insisted that the Countess should come to Paris, where she would find her a place at Court, and where the Count, by retracting his refusal, might fill a high position. Henriette, who was regarded as a happy wife, would not unveil her griefs to anybody, not even to her mother, nor betray her husband’s incapacity. It was to prevent her mother from penetrating the secret of her home life that she had sent Monsieur de Mortsauf to Tours, where he was to fight out some questions with the lawyers. I alone, as she had said, knew the secrets of Clochegourde.
Having learned by experience how effective the pure air and blue sky of this valley were in soothing the irritable moods and acute sufferings of sickness, and how favorable the life at Clochegourde was to her children’s health, she gave these reasons for her refusal, though strongly opposed by the Duchess—a domineering woman who felt humiliated rather than grieved by her daughter’s far from brilliant marriage. Henriette could see that her mother cared little enough about Jacques and Madeleine, a terrible discovery.
Like all mothers who have been accustomed to treat a married daughter with the same despotism as they exerted over her as a girl, the Duchess adopted measures which allowed of no reply; now she affected insinuating kindness to extract consent to her views, and now assumed a bitter iciness to gain by fear what she could not achieve by sweetness; then, seeing all her efforts wasted, she showed the same acrid irony as I had known in my own mother. In the course of ten days Henriette went through all the heartrendings a young wife must go through to establish her independence. You, who for your happiness have the best of mothers, can never understand these things. To form any idea of this struggle between a dry, cold, calculating, ambitious woman and her daughter overflowing with the fresh, genial sweetness that never runs dry, you must imagine the lily with which I have compared the Countess crushed in the wheels of a machine of polished steel. The mother had never had anything in common with her daughter; she could not suspect any of the real difficulties which compelled her to forego every advantage from the Restoration, and to live her solitary life. This word, which she used to convey her suspicions, opened a gulf between the women which nothing could ever after bridge over.
Though families bury duly their terrible quarrels, look into their life; you will find in almost every house some wide incurable wounds blighting natural feeling; or some genuine and pathetic passion which affinity of character makes eternal, and which gives an added shock to the hand of death, leaving a dark and ineradicable bruise; or again, simmering hatred, slowly petrifying the heart, and freezing up all tears at the moment of eternal parting.
Tortured yesterday, tortured today, stricken by everyone, even by the two suffering little ones, who were guiltless alike of the ills they endured and of those they caused, how could this sad soul help loving the one person who never gave a blow, but who would fain have hedged her round with a triple barrier of thorns so as to shelter her from storms, from every touch, from every pain?
Though these squabbles distressed me, I was sometimes glad as I felt that she took refuge in my heart, for Henriette confided to me her new griefs. I could appreciate her fortitude in suffering, and the energy of patience she could maintain. Every day I understood more perfectly the meaning of her words, “Love me as my aunt loved me.”
“Have you really no ambition?” said the Duchess to me at dinner in a severe tone.
“Madame,” replied I, with a very serious mien, “I feel myself strong enough to conquer the world; but I am only one-and-twenty, and I stand
