“If only you could know,” she said in conclusion, “with what anxiety I shall follow you on your way, with what joy if you go straight, with what tears if you bruise yourself against corners! Believe me, my affection is a thing apart; it is at once involuntary and deliberately chosen. Oh! I long to see you happy, powerful, respected—you who will be to me as a living dream.”
She made me weep. She was at once mild and terrible. Her feelings were too frankly expressed, and too pure to give the smallest hope to a man thirsting for happiness. In return for my flesh, left torn and bleeding in her heart, she shed on mine the unfailing and unblemished light of the divine love that can only satisfy the soul. She bore me up to heights whither the shining wings of the passion that had led me to kiss her shoulders could never carry me; to follow her flight a man would have needed to wear the white pinions of a seraph.
“On every occasion,” said I, “I will think, ‘What would my Henriette say?’ ”
“Yes, I want to be both the Star and the Sanctuary,” said she, alluding to my childhood’s dreams, and trying to realize them, so as to cheat my desires.
“You will be my religion, my light, my all,” cried I.
“No,” said she. “I can never be the giver of your pleasures.”
She sighed, and gave me a smile of secret sorrow, the smile of a slave in an instant of revolt.
From that day forth she was not merely a woman I loved—she was all I loved best. She dwelt in my heart not as a woman who insists on a place there, whose image is stamped there by devotion or excess of pleasure; no, she had my whole heart, and was indispensable to the action of its muscles; she became what Beatrice was to the Florentine poet, or the spotless Laura to the Venetian—the mother of great thoughts, the unknown cause of saving determinations, my support for the future, the light that shines in darkness like a lily among sombre shrubs. Yes, she dictated the firm resolve that cut off what was to be burned, that reinstated what was in danger; she endowed me with the fortitude of a Coligny to conquer the conquerors, to rise after defeat, to wear out the stoutest foe.
Next morning, after breakfast at Frapesle, and taking leave of the hosts who had been so kind to the selfishness of my passion, I went to Clochegourde. Monsieur and Madame de Mortsauf had agreed to drive with me as far as Tours, whence I was to set out for Paris that night. On the way the Countess was affectionately silent; at first she said she had a headache; then she colored at the falsehood, and suddenly mitigated it by saying that she could not but regret to see me depart. The Count invited me to stay with them if, in the absence of the Chessels, I should ever wish to see the valley of the Indre once more. We parted heroically, with no visible tears; but, like many a sickly child, Jacques had a little emotional spasm which made him cry a little; while Madeleine, a woman already, clasped her mother’s hand.
“Dear little man!” said the Countess, kissing Jacques passionately.
When I was left alone at Tours, after dinner I was seized by one of those inexplicable rages which only youth ever goes through. I hired a horse, and in an hour and a quarter had ridden back the whole distance from Tours to Pont de Ruan. There, ashamed of letting my madness be seen, I ran down the road on foot, and stole under the terrace on tiptoe, like a spy. The Countess was not there; I fancied she might be ill. I had still the key of the little gate, and I went in. She was at that very moment coming down the steps with her two children, slowly and sadly, to revel in the tender melancholy of the landscape under the setting sun.
“Why, mother, here is Félix,” said Madeleine.
“Yes, I myself,” I whispered low. “I asked myself why I was at Tours when I could easily see you once more. Why not gratify a wish which, a week hence, will be beyond fulfilment?”
“Then he is not going away,” cried Jacques, skipping and jumping.
“Be quiet, do,” said Madeleine; “you will bring out the General!”
“This is not right,” said the Countess, “what madness!”
The words, spoken through tears in her voice, were indeed a payment of what I may call usurious calculations in love!
“I had forgotten to return you this key,” said I, with a smile.
“Then are you never coming back again?” said she.
“Can we ever be apart?” said I, with a look before which her eyelids fell to veil the mute reply.
I went away after a few minutes spent in the exquisite blankness of souls strung to the pitch at which excitement ends and frenzied ecstasy begins. I went away, walking slowly, and constantly looking back. When I gazed at the valley for the last time from the top of the down, I was struck by the contrast between its aspect now and when I first came to it: was it not then as green, as glowing, as my hopes and desires had sprung and glowed? Now, initiated into the dark and melancholy mysteries of a home, sharing the pangs of a Christian Niobe, as sad as she, my spirit overshadowed, I saw in the landscape, at this moment, the hues of my ideas. The fields were cleared of their crops, the poplar leaves were falling, and those that remained were rust-color;
