Two hours went by in perfect silence, Henriette holding my hand, and pressing it without being able to speak. Now and again she looked up to make me understand that she longed only for peace without a sound; then there was a moment’s truce, when she raised herself on her elbow and murmured in my ear:
“Unhappy man! If you could but know—”
She laid her head on the pillow again. The remembrance of past sufferings, added to her present anguish, brought on again the nervous spasms, which I had soothed only by the magnetism of love—its effects were hitherto unknown to me, but I had used it instinctively. I now supported her with gentle and tender firmness, and she gave me such looks as brought tears to my eyes.
When the convulsive attack was over, I smoothed her disordered hair—the first and only time I ever touched it—then again I held her hand, and sat a long time looking at the room—a brown-and-gray room, with a bed simply hung with cotton chintz, a table covered with an old-fashioned toilet set, a poor sofa with a stitched mattress. What poetry I found here! What indifference to personal luxury! Her only luxury was exquisite neatness. The noble cell of a married nun, stamped with holy resignation, where the only adornments were a crucifix by her bed, and over it the portrait of her aunt; then, on each side of the holy-water shell, sketches of her two children, done in pencil by herself, and locks of their hair when they were babies. What a hermitage for a woman whose appearance in the world of fashion would have cast the loveliest into the shade!
Such was the retreat where tears were so constantly shed by this daughter of an illustrious race, at this moment swamped in bitterness, and rejecting the love that might have brought her consolation. A hidden and irremediable misfortune! The victim in tears for the torturer, the torturer in tears for his victim.
When the children and the maid came in, I left her. The Count was waiting for me; he already regarded me as a mediator between his wife and himself; and he grasped my hands, exclaiming, “Stay with us; stay with us, Félix!”
“Unluckily,” said I, “Monsieur de Chessel has company; it would not do for his guests to wonder at the reason for my absence; but I will return after dinner.”
He came out with me and walked to the lower gate without saying a word; then he accompanied me all the way to Frapesle, unconscious of what he was doing. When there, I said to him:
“In Heaven’s name, Monsieur le Comte, leave the management of your house to her if she wishes it, and do not torment her.”
“I have not long to live,” he replied seriously; “she will not suffer long on my account; I feel that my head will burst.”
He turned away in a fit of involuntary egoism.
After dinner I went back to inquire for Madame de Mortsauf, and found her better already. If these were for her the joys of marriage, if such scenes were to be frequently repeated, how could she live? What slow, unpunished murder! I had seen this evening the indescribable torture by which the Count racked his wife. Before what tribunal could such a case be brought?
These considerations bewildered me; I could say nothing to Henriette, but I spent the night in writing to her. Of three or four letters that I wrote, I have nothing left but this fragment, which did not satisfy me; but though it seems to me to express nothing, or to say too much about myself when I only ought to have thought of her, it will show you the state of my mind.
To Madame de Mortsauf.
“How many things I had to say to you this evening that I had thought of on the way and forgot when I saw you! Yes, as soon as I see you, dearest Henriette, I feel my words out of harmony with the reflections from your soul that add to your beauty. And, then, by your side, I feel such infinite happiness that the immediate experience effaces every memory of what has gone before. I am born anew each time to a larger life, like a traveler who, as he climbs a crag, discovers a new horizon. In every conversation with you I add some new treasure to my vast treasury. This, I believe, is the secret of long and indefatigable attachments. So I can only speak of you to yourself when I am away from you. In your presence I am too much dazzled to see you, too happy to analyze my happiness, too full of you to be myself, made too eloquent by you to speak to you, too eager to seize the present to be able to remember the past. Understand this constant intoxication, and you will forgive its aberrations. When I am with you I can only feel.
“Nevertheless, I will dare to tell you, dear Henriette, that never in all the joy you have given me, have I felt any rapture to compare with the delights that filled my soul yesterday when, after the dreadful storm, in which, with superhuman courage, you did battle with evil, you came back to me alone in the twilight of your room, whither the unfortunate scene had led me. I alone was there to know the light that can shine in a woman when she returns from the gates of death to the gates of life and the dawn of a new birth tinges her brow. How harmonious was your voice! How trivial words seemed—even yours—as the vague recollection of past suffering made itself heard in your adored tones, mingled
