“Still Madeleine!” said I, with an expression of surprise which only half distressed her. “Is it to Madeleine that I remain faithful?”
We then sat in silence, very provokingly interrupted by Monsieur de Mortsauf. My heart was full, but I had to keep up a conversation beset with difficulties, in which my truthful replies as to the policy then carried out by the King offended the Count’s views, while he insisted on my explaining His Majesty’s intentions. Notwithstanding my questions as to his horses, the state of agriculture, whether he was satisfied with his five farms, if he meant to fell the trees in the old avenue, he constantly came back to politics with the petulance of an old maid and the pertinacity of a child; for minds of this type always eagerly turn to the side where light shines, they blunder up to it again and again, buzzing round but getting no nearer, exhausting one’s spirit as bluebottle flies weary the ear by humming against the window pane.
Henriette said nothing. I, to put an end to a dialogue which the warmth of youth might have heated to a flame, replied in assenting monosyllables, thus avoiding a useless discussion; but Monsieur de Mortsauf was far too clear-sighted not to discern the offensive side of my politeness. Presently he turned restive, vexed at being constantly agreed with; his eyebrows and the wrinkles in his forehead twitched, his tawny eyes flashed, his bloodshot nose turned redder than ever, as on that day when, for the first time, I witnessed one of his fits of frenzy. Henriette gave me a beseeching look to convey to me that she could not exert on my behalf the firmness she employed in justifying or defending the children.
I then answered the Count, taking him seriously, and managing him with the greatest skill.
“Poor dear! poor dear!” she said, murmuring the words again and again; they fell on my ear like a breath of air. Then, when she thought she could interfere with some success, she exclaimed, interrupting us:
“Do you know, gentlemen, that you are desperately unamusing?”
Recalled by this remark to the chivalrous deference due to a woman, the Count ceased discussing politics; it was now his turn to be bored as we talked of trifles, and he left us free to walk together, saying that perpetually pacing up and down on the same spot made him giddy.
My gloomy conjectures were accurate. The fair scenery, the mild atmosphere, the clear sky, the exquisite poetry of this valley, which for fifteen years had soothed the acutest vagaries of this sick brain, had now lost their power. At an age when in most men the rough edges wear down and the angles rub smooth, this old gentleman’s temper was more aggressive than ever. For some months now he had been contradictory for contradiction’s sake, without reason, without justifying his opinions; he asked the wherefore of everything, fussed over a delay or a message, interfered incessantly in domestic matters, and demanded an account of the smallest details of the household, till he wore out his wife and his servants, leaving them no freedom of action. Formerly he had not given way to temper without some plausible reason, now his fractiousness was incessant. The care of his money and the anxieties of husbandry, with the stir of a busy life, had perhaps diverted his atrabilious humor by giving his anxious spirit something to work on, and employing his active mind; perhaps it was want of occupation that now left his disorder to react upon itself; having nothing outside him to fret it, it took the form of fixed ideas; the physical individual had become the victim of the moral individual.
He was now his own doctor. He compared medical works, and believed he had all the complaints of which he read the descriptions; then he took the most elaborate precautions to guard his health, always something new, impossible to foresee, more impossible to satisfy. At one time he would have no noise; and when the Countess had succeeded in establishing total silence, he would suddenly complain of living in a tomb, and say that there was a medium between making no noise and the muteness of La Trappe. Sometimes he affected absolute indifference to all earthly things; then the whole house breathed again; the children could play, the work of the household was carried on without any faultfinding; suddenly, in the midst of it all, he would cry out piteously, “You want to kill me!—My dear, if it concerned the children, you would know by instinct what annoyed them!” he would say to his wife, adding to the injustice of the words by the hard, cold tone in which he spoke them. Then he was forever dressing and undressing, studying the least variation of temperature, and never doing anything without consulting the barometer. In spite of his wife’s motherly care, he never found any food to his liking, for he declared that his stomach was always out of order, and that painful digestion hindered his sleeping; at the same time, he ate, drank, digested, and slept in a way that the most learned physician might have admired. His endless caprices wore out the household; like all servants, they were the slaves of routine, and incapable of accommodating themselves to the exigencies of constantly varying orders. The Count would desire that all the windows were to be left open, as fresh air was indispensable to his health; a few days later the air was too damp, or too hot, he could not endure it; he scolded, he quarreled over it, and, to be in
