“Henriette,” said I, “I am incapable of deceit. I can throw myself into the water to rescue my enemy when he is drowning, I can lend him my cloak to warm him—in short, I can forgive, but I cannot forget.”
She said nothing, but pressed my arm to her heart.
“You are an angel; you were, no doubt, sincere in your thanksgiving,” I went on. “The mother of the Prince of the Peace was snatched from the hands of a mob who wanted to kill her, and when the Queen asked her, ‘What did you do?’—‘I prayed for them,’ said she. Women are all like that: I am a man, and necessarily imperfect.”
“Do not slander yourself,” said she, shaking my arm sharply. “Perhaps you are better than I am.”
“Yes,” replied I, “for I would give eternity for a single day of happiness, while to you!—”
“Me!” she cried, with a haughty glance.
I was silent, and my eyes fell under the lightning of her eyes.
“Me!” she went on. “Of what me are you speaking? There are in me many me’s. Those children,” and she pointed to Jacques and Madeleine, “are part of me.—Félix,” she said in a heartrending tone, “do you think me selfish? Do you think that I would sacrifice eternity to recompense him who is sacrificing this life for me? The thought is a shocking one; it is contrary to every sentiment of religion. Can a woman who falls so low rise again? Can her happiness absolve her?—You will drive me soon to decide the question! Yes, I am betraying at last a secret of my conscience; the idea has often crossed my mind, I have expiated it by bitter penance; it was the cause of the tears you wanted me to account for the other day—”
“Are you not attributing too great importance to certain things on which ordinary women set a high value, and which you ought to—”
“Oh,” cried she, interrupting me, “do you value them less?”
Such an argument put an end to all reasoning.
“Well,” she went on, “I will tell you!—Yes, I could be so mean as to desert the poor old man whose life is in my hands. But, dear friend, those two poor, feeble little creatures you see before us, Jacques and Madeleine—would not they be left with their father? And do you think, I ask you, do you believe that they could survive three months under that man’s insensate tyranny? If by failing in my duty, I alone”—she smiled loftily. “But should I not be killing my two children? Their doom would be certain.—Great God!” she exclaimed, “how can we talk of such things? Go and marry, and leave me to die.”
She spoke in a tone of such concentrated bitterness, that she stifled the outburst of my passion.
“You cried out up there, under the walnut-tree. I have just cried out here, under these alders. That is all. Henceforth I am silent.”
“Your generosity overwhelms me,” said she, looking up to heaven.
We had by this time reached the terrace, and found the Count seated there in a chair, in the sunshine. The sight of that shrunken face, hardly animated by a faint smile, extinguished the flames that had flared up from the ashes. I leaned against the parapet, contemplating the picture before me: the infirm man with his two still delicate children; his wife, pale with watching, and grown thin from excess of work, from the alarms, and perhaps from the joys, of these two dreadful months, though at this moment she was deeply flushed from the emotions of the scene she had gone through. At the sight of this suffering family, shrouded under the tremulous foliage through which fell the gray light of a dull autumn day, I felt the ties relax which hold body and soul together. I experienced for the first time that moral revulsion which, it is said, the stoutest fighters feel in the fury of the fray, a sort of chilling madness that makes a coward of the bravest, a bigot of a disbeliever, which induces total indifference to everything, even to the most vital sentiments—to honor, to love; for doubt robs us of all knowledge of ourselves, and disgusts us with life. Poor nervous creatures, who, by your high-strung organization, are delivered over defenceless to I know not what fatality, who shall be your peers and judges? I understood how the bold youth who had erewhile put out a hand to grasp the Marshal’s baton, who had been no less skilled in diplomacy than intrepid as a captain, had become the unconscious murderer I saw before me! Could my own desires, at this moment wreathed with roses, bring me to such an end? Appalled alike by the cause and the effect, asking, like the impious, where in all this was Providence, I could not restrain two tears that fell down my cheeks.
“What is the matter, dear, good Félix?” asked Madeleine in her childish voice.
Then Henriette dispelled those black vapors and gloom by an anxious look, which shone on my soul like the sun.
At this moment the old groom from Tours brought me a letter, at the sight of which I could not help uttering a cry of surprise, and Madame de Mortsauf trembled at my dismay. I saw the seal of the Cabinet. The King ordered me back. I held the letter out to her; she read it in a flash.
“He is going away!” said the Count.
“What will become of me?” she said to me, for the first time contemplating her desert without sunshine.
We paused in a stupefied frame of mind, which oppressed us all equally, for we had never before so acutely felt that we were all indispensable to each other. The Countess, as she talked even of the most indifferent matters, spoke in an altered voice, as though the instrument had lost
