The Countess was my Henriette once more, Henriette constrained to love me yet more, as I strove to be her second self. Ere long, I never had to wait for her hand, which she would give me irresistibly at the least beseeching glance; and I could study with delight the outlines of her fine figure without her shrinking from my gaze, during the long hours while we sat listening to the patient’s slumbers. The slender joys we allowed ourselves, the appealing looks, the words spoken in a whisper not to awake the Count, the hopes and fears repeated again and again, in short, the myriad details of this fusion of two hearts so long sundered, stood out distinctly against the sad gloom of the real scene before us. We read each other’s souls through and through in the course of this long test, to which the strongest affections sometimes succumb, unable to withstand the familiarity of every hour, and dropping away after testing the unyielding cohesion which makes life so heavy or so light a burden.
You know what mischief comes of a master’s long illness, what disorder in his business; there is never time for anything; the stoppage put to his life hampers the movement of the house and family. Though everything always fell on Madame de Mortsauf, the Count was of use on the estate; he went to talk to the farmers, he called on the business agents, he drew the rents; if she was the soul, still he was the body. I now appointed myself steward that she might nurse the Count without fear of ruin out of doors. She accepted everything without apologies, without thanks. This partition of household cares was another happy community of interests, and the orders I gave in her name. In her room in the evening we often discussed the children’s prospects. These conversations lent a still further semblance of reality to our make-believe married life. How gladly would Henriette lend herself to my playing the master’s part, putting me in his place at table, sending me to speak to the gamekeeper; and all with simple innocence, but not without the secret pleasure which the most virtuous woman on earth must feel at finding a middle course combining strict observation of every law with the satisfaction of her unconfessed wishes. The Count, nullified by illness, was no longer a weight on his wife or on the house; and now the Countess was herself, she had a right to attend to me and make me the object of endless cares. What joy I felt on discovering in her a purpose of which she, perhaps, was but vaguely conscious, though it was exquisitely expressed—of revealing to me all the worth of her person and her character, of making me feel the change that came over her when she felt herself understood! This blossom, constantly curled up in the cold atmosphere of her home, unfolded before my eyes and for me alone; she had as much delight in opening as I had in looking on with the inquisitive eye of love.
On the mornings when I slept late, after sitting up all night, Henriette was up before anyone. She preserved the most perfect silence; Jacques and Madeleine, without needing to be told, went away to play. She would devise endless wiles to lay my table herself, and she would serve my breakfast with such a sparkle of glee in every movement, with such a wild swallow-like precision, with such a color in her cheeks, such quaverings in her voice, such a lynx-like keenness of eye! Can such expansions of the soul be described? She was often overpowered by fatigue; but if by chance at one of these moments I needed anything, she found fresh strength for me, as for her children; she started up active, busy, and glad. She loved to shed her tenderness like sunbeams through the air. Yes, Natalie, some women here below enjoy the privileges of angelic spirits, and, like them, diffuse the light which Saint-Martin, the unknown philosopher, tells us is intelligent, melodious, and fragrant.
Henriette, secure in my reticence, rejoiced in lifting the heavy curtain which hid the future from us by showing herself to me as two women: the woman in bonds who had fascinated me in spite of her asperities; the woman freed, whose sweetness was to seal my love to eternity. What a difference! Madame de Mortsauf was a lovebird transported into cold Europe, sadly drooping on its perch, mute and dying in the cage where it is kept by some naturalist; Henriette was the bird singing its Oriental raptures in a grove on the banks of the Ganges, and flying like a living gem from bough to bough amid the rosy flowers of an ever-blooming Volkameria.
Her beauty was renewed, her spirit revived. These constant fireworks of gladness were a secret between our two souls; for to the Countess the eye of the Abbé de Dominis, who represented the world, was more alarming than her husband’s. She, like me, took pleasure in giving her words ingenious turns; she hid her glee under a jest, and veiled the evidences of her affection under the specious flag of gratitude.
“We have put your friendship to the severest tests, Félix,” she would say at dinner. “We may surely grant him such liberties as we allow to Jacques, Monsieur l’Abbé?”
The austere Abbé replied with the kindly smile of a pious man who reads hearts and finds them pure; indeed, he always treated the
