Before knowing Madame de Mortsauf a stern look hurt me, the tone of a rough word went to my heart; I groaned over it, though I knew nothing of the gentler life of caresses. Whereas, on my return from Clochegourde, I could draw comparisons which gave completeness to my premature knowledge. Observation based on mere suffering is incomplete. Happiness has its lights too. But I allowed myself to be crushed under Charles’ superiority as my elder, all the more readily because I was not his dupe.
I went alone to the Duchesse de Lenoncourt’s house, and heard no mention made of Henriette; no one but the good old Duke, who was simplicity itself, ever spoke of her; but, from the reception he gave me, I guessed that his daughter had secretly recommended me.
Hardly had I begun to get over the loutish surprise which a first sight of the great world produces in every tyro, when, just as I was getting a glimpse of the resources it has for ambitious men, and thinking of the joy of practising Henriette’s axioms, while recognizing their entire truth, the events of the twentieth of March supervened. My brother accompanied the Court to Ghent, and I, by the Countess’ advice—for I kept up a correspondence with her, frequent on my side only—I also went thither with the Duc de Lenoncourt. His habitual benevolence became a sincere desire to help me when he found that I was devoted head, heart, and hands to the Bourbons; he presented me to His Majesty.
The courtiers of disaster are few. Youth has artless enthusiasms and disinterested fidelity; the King was a judge of men; what would have passed unnoticed at the Tuileries was conspicuous at Ghent, and I was so happy as to find favor with Louis XVIII.
A letter from Madame de Mortsauf to her father, brought with some despatches by an emissary of the Vendéans, contained a scrap for me, informing me that Jacques was ill. Monsieur de Mortsauf, in despair alike at his son’s frail health, and at a second emigration of the Sovereign, in which he had no part, had added a few lines that enabled me to imagine my dear lady’s situation. Fretted by him, no doubt, for spending all her time by Jacques’ bedside, getting no rest day or night, scorning such vexations but incapable of controlling herself when she was expending herself wholly in nursing her child, Henriette must be needing the support of a friendship that had made life less burdensome to her, if it were only by amusing Monsieur de Mortsauf. Several times already I had got the Count out for a walk when he was threatening to worry her—an innocent trick of which the success had earned me some of those looks expressing passionate gratitude, and in which love reads a promise. Though I was eager to follow in the footsteps of my brother Charles, recently sent to the Congress at Vienna; though, at the risk of my life even, I longed to justify Henriette’s predictions and free myself from being his vassal, my ambition, my desire for independence, my interests, which bid me remain with the King, all paled before Madame de Mortsauf’s heart-stricken image. I decided on leaving the Court at Ghent, and on going to serve my true sovereign.
God rewarded me. The messenger sent out by the Vendéans could not return to France; the King wanted a man who would devote himself to be the bearer of his instructions. The Duc de Lenoncourt knew that His Majesty would not overlook the man who should undertake this perilous task; without consulting me, he obtained it for me, and I accepted it, only too glad to be able to return to Clochegourde while serving the good cause.
Thus, after having an audience of the King, at one-and-twenty, I returned to France, where, either in Paris or in la Vendée, I was to be so happy as to do His Majesty’s bidding. By the end of May, being the object of pursuit to the Bonapartists who were on my track, I was obliged to fly; affecting to make my way homewards, I went on foot from place to place, from wood to wood, across Upper Vendée, the Bocage, and Poitou; changing my route as circumstances required.
I thus reached Saumur; from Saumur I went to Chinon, and from Chinon, in a single night, I arrived in the woods of Neuil, where I met the Count, on horseback, on a common; he took me up behind him and carried me home, without our meeting a soul who could recognize me.
“Jacques is better,” was his first speech.
I explained to him my position as a diplomatic infantryman, hunted like a wild animal, and the gentleman rose up in him, in arms to dispute with Chessel the risk of harboring me.
When I saw Clochegourde I felt as if the eight past months were but a dream. The Count said to his wife as we entered, “Guess who is come with me!—Félix.”
“Is it possible?” she said, her arms hanging limp, and looking quite amazed.
I came in; we stood, both immovable, she riveted to her seat, I on the threshold, gazing at each other with the fixed avidity of two lovers who want to make up in one look for lost time. But she, ashamed of her surprise, which laid her heart bare, rose, and I went forward.
“I have prayed much for you,” said she, holding out her hand for me to kiss.
She asked for news of her father; then, understanding my fatigue, she went to arrange a room for me, while the Count had some food brought, for I was dying of hunger. My room was over hers, that which had been her aunt’s; she left me to be taken to it by the Count, after setting foot on the bottom step of the stairs, considering no doubt whether she
