At eight o’clock that evening I was present at a scene which touched me deeply, and which I had never before witnessed, because I had always remained to play with Monsieur de Mortsauf while she went into the dining-room before putting the children to bed. A bell rang twice, and all the house-servants appeared.
“You are our guest; will you submit to convent rule?” she asked, leading me away by the hand with the look of innocent gaiety that is characteristic of all truly pious women.
The Count followed us. Masters, children, and servants, all knelt bareheaded in their accustomed places. It was Madeleine’s turn to say prayers; the dear child did it in her thin, young voice, its artless tones clearly audible in the harmonious country silence, and giving each phrase the holy purity of innocence, that angelic grace. It was the most touching prayer I ever heard. Nature whispered a response to the child’s words in the myriad low rustlings of the evening hour, an accompaniment as of an organ softly played.
Madeleine was on her mother’s right hand, Jacques on the left. The pretty curly heads, and, rising between them, the mother’s plaits of hair; above them, again, Monsieur de Mortsauf’s perfectly white hair and ivory yellow skull, formed a picture of which the coloring seemed to repeat to the mind the idea suggested by the melody of prayer; and to fulfil the conditions of unity which stamp the Sublime, the devout little assembly was wrapped in the subdued light of sunset, while the room was touched with the red beams. The poetical, or the superstitious soul, could thus imagine that the fires of Heaven were shed on the faithful worshipers kneeling there before God without distinction or rank, all equals, as the Church requires. My thoughts reverted to patriarchal times, and my fancy gave added dignity to the scene, itself so grand in its simplicity. The children bid their father good night, the servants bowed, the Countess went away, each child holding a hand, and I went back to the drawing-room with the Count.
“You will have found salvation there and perdition here,” said he, pointing to the backgammon board.
The Countess joined us in about half an hour, and brought her work frame to the table.
“This is for you,” said she, unrolling the canvas; “but the work has hung fire these three months past. Between that red carnation and that rose my poor boy was very ill.”
“Come, come,” said Monsieur de Mortsauf; “do not talk about it. Size cinq, Master King’s messenger.”
When I went to my room I sat motionless to hear her moving about below. Though she was calm and pure, I was tormented by crazy ideas and intolerable cravings.
“Why could she not be mine?” thought I. “Perhaps she, like me, is tossed on the whirlwind of the senses?”
At one o’clock I crept downstairs, treading without a sound, and outside her door I lay down; with my ear to the crack I heard her soft and even breathing, like a child’s. When I was quite chilled, I went up again and to bed, where I slept quietly till morning.
To what predestination, to what taint of nature can I ascribe the pleasure I find in going to the edge of a precipice, in sounding the abyss of evil, in peering into its depths, shuddering at the chill, and drawing back in anguish. That hour at night spent on the threshold of her door, where I wept with frenzy, without her ever knowing on the morrow that she had trodden on my tears and my kisses—wept over her virtue, ruined and respected by turns, cursed and then worshiped—that hour, a madness in the eyes of many persons, was an inspiration of the same nameless feeling that carries on a soldier. Men have told me that in such a mood they have risked their life, rushing in front of a battery to see whether they would escape the grapeshot, and whether they would not enjoy thus trying to leap the gulf of probabilities, like Jean Bart smoking while he sat on a powder barrel.
On the following day I went out and gathered two nosegays; the Count admired them—the Count, who cared for nothing of the kind, and for whom Champenetz’s jest seemed to have been invented: “He builds dungeons in the air!”
I spent several days at Clochegourde, paying short calls only at Frapesle, where I dined, however, three times. The French army took up its quarters at Tours. Though I was evidently life and health to Madame de Mortsauf, she entreated me to get to Châteauroux and return as fast as possible to Paris through Issoudun and Orléans. I tried to rebel; she insisted, saying that her familiar had counseled her; I obeyed. Our parting this time was watered with tears; she was afraid of the captivations of the world I was about to live in. Should I not have to enter seriously into the whirl of interests, of passions, of pleasures, which make Paris an ocean fraught with perils no less to chaste affections than to a clear conscience? I promised her that I would write her every evening the events and the thoughts of the day. At this promise she laid her weary head on my shoulder and said:
“Omit nothing; everything will interest me.”
She gave me letters to the Duke and Duchess, on whom I called the day after my arrival.
“You are in luck,” said the Duke. “Dine here and come with me to the palace this evening; your fortune is made. The King mentioned your name this morning, adding, ‘He is young, able, and faithful.’ And the King regretted not knowing whether you were dead or alive, and whither
