Twice in those fifty days the Countess went perhaps across the border line that limited our affection; but those two occasions were shrouded in a veil that was not lifted till our day of supreme avowals. One morning, in the early days of the Count’s illness, just when she was repenting of having treated me so severely by denying me the harmless privileges of a chastened affection, I sat waiting for her to take my place. I was overtired, and fell asleep, my head resting against the wall. I awoke with a start, feeling my forehead touched by something mysteriously cool, that gave me a sensation as if a rose had lain on it. I saw the Countess some steps away from me, saying:
“Here I am!”
I went away, but as I wished her good morning, I took her hand, and felt that it was moist and trembling.
“Are you ailing?” said I.
“Why do you ask?” she answered. I looked at her, coloring with confusion.
“I had been dreaming,” said I.
One evening, during the last visits paid by Origet, who had pronounced the Count certainly convalescent, I was in the garden with Jacques and Madeleine; we were all three lying on the steps absorbed in a game of spillikins that we had contrived with splinters of straw and hooks made of pins. Monsieur de Mortsauf was asleep. The doctor, while waiting for his horse to be put to, was talking in a low voice to the Countess in the drawing-room. Monsieur Origet presently left without my noticing his departure. After seeing him off, Henriette leaned against the window, whence she looked down on us for a long time though we did not know it. It was one of those hot evenings when the sky turns to copper color, when the country sends out a thousand confused voices to the echoes. A last gleam of sunshine lingered on the roofs, the flowers of the garden scented the air, the bells of the cattle being brought home to the byres, came from afar. And we, in sympathy with the stillness of this calm hour, stifled our laughter for fear of waking the Count.
Suddenly, above the flutter of a gown, I heard the guttural gasp of a strongly suppressed sob; I rushed into the drawing-room, I found the Countess sitting in the window recess, her handkerchief to her face; she knew my step, and, by an imperious gesture, desired me to leave her alone. I went up to her, heartsick with alarm, and wanted to force away her handkerchief; her face was drowned in tears. She fled to her own room, and did not come out till it was time for prayers. For the first time in those fifty days I led her to the terrace, and asked her the cause of her agitation; but she affected the most flippant cheerfulness, justifying it by Origet’s good news.
“Henriette, Henriette,” said I, “you knew that when I found you crying. Between us a lie is preposterous. Why would you not allow me to wipe away your tears? Can they have been for me?”
“I was thinking,” she answered, “that to me this illness has been a respite from misery. Now that there is nothing more to fear for Monsieur de Mortsauf, I must fear for myself.”
She was right. The Count’s returning health was marked by his grotesque moods; he began to declare that neither his wife, nor I, nor the doctor knew how to treat him; we were all ignorant of his complaint and of his constitution, of his sufferings, and of the suitable remedies. Origet, infatuated by heaven knows what quackery, thought it was a degeneracy of the secretions, while he ought only to have studied the disorder of the pylorus!
One day, looking at us mischievously, like a man who has spied out or guessed something, he said to his wife, with a smile:
“Well, my dear, and if I had died—you would have regretted me, no doubt, but, confess, you would have been resigned.”
“I should have worn Court mourning, red and black,” she said, laughing to silence him.
It was especially with regard to his food, which the doctor had carefully limited, forbidding that the patient’s craving should be satisfied, that we had the most violent scenes and outcries, with which nothing could be compared in the past, for the Count’s temper was all the more atrocious for having been to sleep, so to speak. Fortified by the physician’s orders and the faithfulness of the servants, and confirmed by me, for I saw in this contest a way of teaching her to govern her husband, the Countess was resolute in her resistance; she listened with a calm countenance to his frenzy and scolding; by thinking of him as a child—as he was—she accustomed herself to hear his abusive words. Thus at last I was so happy as to see her assert her authority over this disordered mind. The Count called out, but he obeyed; and he obeyed all the more after the greatest outcry.
In spite of the evidence of the results, Henriette would often shed tears at the sight of this feeble and haggard old man, his forehead yellower than a falling leaf, his eyes dim, his hands tremulous; she would blame herself for her sternness, and could seldom resist the delight she saw in the Count’s eyes when, as she doled out his meals, she exceeded the doctor’s restrictions. She was all the sweeter and milder to him for having been so to me; still, there were shades of difference which filled my heart with boundless joy. She was not indefatigable; she knew when to call the servants to wait on the Count if his whims were too many in rapid succession, and he began to complain of her misunderstanding him.
The Countess purposed an act of thanksgiving to God for Monsieur de Mortsauf’s recovery; she commanded a special mass, and bade me offer her my arm to
