A residence at Clochegourde was so unendurable that the Abbé de Dominis, an exceedingly learned man, had fallen back on the solution of certain problems, and entrenched himself in affected absence of mind. The Countess no longer hoped to be able to keep the secret of his fits of mad fury within the family circle, as of old. The servants had already witnessed many scenes when the prematurely old man’s unreasoning rage passed all bounds; they were so much attached to the Countess that nothing was ever repeated, but she lived in daily terror of some outburst in public of a frenzy which no respect of persons could now control. At a later time I heard terrible details of the Count’s behavior to his wife; instead of being a help to her, he overwhelmed her with gloomy predictions, making her responsible for future ills because she refused to follow the insane medical treatment he wished to inflict on the children. If the Countess went out walking with Jacques and Madeleine, her husband would prophesy of coming storms in spite of a clear sky; then if by chance his prediction was justified by the event, his conceit was so much gratified as to be indifferent to the harm done to his children. If one of them fell ill, the Count exercised his wit in finding a cause for the attack in the system of nursing adopted by his wife, which he would dispute in its minutest details, always ending with these brutal words, “If your children are ill again, it is all your own doing!”
He carried his system into the smallest points of domestic management, in which he always saw the worst side of things, and made himself “the devil’s advocate,” to quote his old coachman’s expression. The Countess had arranged that Jacques and Madeleine should have their meals at a different hour from their parents, and had thus preserved them from the dreadful effects of the Count’s malady, meeting every storm as it broke. The children rarely saw their father.
By an illusion peculiar to selfish people, the Count had no suspicion of the mischief he caused. In his confidential conversation with me he had indeed blamed himself for too great leniency to his family. Thus he wielded the knout, felling and destroying everything about him as a monkey might have done, and after wounding his victim denied that he had ever touched her. I understood now what had drawn the lines, as fine as razor-cuts, across the Countess’ brow; I had noticed them as soon as I saw her. There is a sort of modesty in noble souls that keeps them from uttering their sorrows; they hide their griefs from those they love, out of pride and a feeling of luxurious charity. And in spite of my urgency, I did not at once extract this confession from Henriette. She feared to distress me; she let things out, bit by bit, with sudden blushes; but I was not slow to guess the aggravated bitterness that her husband’s want of occupation had infused into the domestic miseries of Clochegourde.
“Henriette,” said I a few days later, showing her that I had sounded the depths of her new griefs, “did not you make a mistake when you planned your estate so completely as to leave the Count nothing to employ him?”
“Nay, dear,” she said with a smile, “my position is so critical as to need all my attention; believe me, I have studied every alternative—they are all exhausted. It is true, worries increase every day. As Monsieur de Mortsauf and I are always together, I cannot diminish them, by distributing them to several points; everything must bring the same suffering on me. I had thoughts of amusing Monsieur de Mortsauf by advising him to introduce the culture of silkworms at Clochegourde; there are some mulberry-trees here already, survivors from that industry, once known in Touraine; but I understood that he would be none the less tyrannical at home, that all the thousand troubles of the undertaking would fall upon me.
“You see, my observing friend,” she went on, “while a man is young his bad qualities are controlled by the outer world, impeded in their rise by the other passions, checked by respect of persons; but later, in retirement, as a man grows old, little faults come forth, all the more terrible because they have so long been kept under. Human weakness is essentially cowardly; it grants neither peace nor truce; what has once been surrendered yesterday it insists on today, tomorrow, and forever after; it takes possession of all that is conceded and demands more. Strength is merciful; it yields to conviction; it is just and peaceable, while the passions that are born of weakness are pitiless. They are never satisfied but when they can behave like children, who like stolen fruit better than what they may eat at table. Monsieur de Mortsauf takes a real pleasure in stealing a march on me; he who would never deceive anybody loves to deceive me so long as the trick remains unknown.”
One morning, about a month after my arrival, as we came out from breakfast, the Countess took my arm, hurried out by a railed gate that opened into the orchard, and dragged me away to the vineyard.
“Oh! he will kill me!” cried she. “And yet I must live, if only for the children’s sake! Cannot I have a single day’s respite? Must I always be stumbling over brambles, expecting every moment to fall, compelled every moment to summon all my strength to keep my balance! No living creature can endure such an expenditure of energy. If only I knew the ground I should be called upon to struggle over, if my endurance were a fixed quantity, my spirit would bend to it; but
