“The General still suffers from his black dragons, it would seem,” said I, looking at Madame de Mortsauf.
“We all have our blue devils,” she replied. “That, I think, is the English word?”
We went up to the house, all walking together, all feeling that something serious had happened. She had no wish to be alone with me; in short, I was a visitor.
“By the way, what about your horse?” said the Count, when we went out.
“You see,” retorted the Countess, “I was wrong to think about it, and equally wrong not to think about it.”
“Why, yes,” said he; “there is a time for everything.”
“I will go to him,” said I, finding this cold reception unendurable. “I alone can unsaddle him and put him up properly. My groom is coming from Chinon by coach, and he will rub him down.”
“Is the groom from England too?” said she.
“They are only made there,” replied the Count, becoming cheerful as he saw his wife depressed.
His wife’s coolness was an opportunity for tacit opposition; he loaded me with kindness. I learned what a burden a husband’s friendship can be. Do not suppose that it is when the wife lavishes an affection of which she seems to be robbed, that her husband’s attentions are overpowering to a noble soul! No. It is when that love has fled that they are odious and unendurable. A friendly understanding, which is the indispensable condition of such attachments, is then seen as a mere means; it then is a burden, and as horrible as all means are when no longer justified by the ends.
“My dear Félix,” said the Count, taking my hands, and pressing them affectionately, “you must forgive Madame de Mortsauf. Women must be fractious, their weakness is their excuse; they cannot possibly have the equable temper which gives us strength of character. She has the greatest regard for you. I know it; but—”
While the Count was speaking, Madame de Mortsauf moved gradually away from us so as to leave us together.
“Félix,” said he in an undertone, as he looked at his wife returning to the house with her two children, “I cannot think what has been going on in Madame de Mortsauf’s mind, but within the last six weeks her temper has completely altered. She who used to be so gentle, so devoted, has become incredibly sulky.”
Manette afterwards told me that the Countess had fallen into a state of dejection which left her insensible to the Count’s aggravations. Finding no tender spot into which to thrust his darts, the man had become as fidgety as a boy when the insect he is torturing ceases to wriggle. At this moment he needed a confidant, as an executioner needs a mate.
“Try to question Madame de Mortsauf,” he went on after a pause. “A woman always has secrets from her husband, but to you she will perhaps confide the secret of her trouble. If it should cost me half my remaining days of life, and half my fortune, I would sacrifice everything to make her happy. She is so indispensable to my existence. If in my old age I should miss that angel from my side, I should be the most miserable of men! I would hope to die easy. Tell her she will not have to put up with me for long. I, Félix, my poor friend—I am going fast; I know it. I hide the dreadful truth from all the world; why distress them before the time? Still the pylorus, my good friend. I have at last mastered the causes of the malady: my sensitive feelings are killing me. In fact, all our emotions converge on the gastric centres—”
“So that people of strong feeling die of indigestion,” said I with a smile.
“Do not laugh, Félix; nothing is truer. Too great a grief over-excites the great sympathetic nerve. This excessive sensibility keeps up a constant irritation of the mucous membrane of the stomach. If this condition continues, it leads to disturbance of the digestive functions, at first imperceptible; the secretions are vitiated, the appetite is morbid, and digestion becomes uncertain; ere long acute suffering supervenes, worse and more frequent every day. Finally the organic mischief reaches a climax; it is as though some poison were lurking in every bowl. The mucous membrane thickens, the valve of the pylorus hardens, and a scirrhus forms there of which the patient must die. Well, that is my case, my dear boy. The induration is progressing; nothing can stop it. Look at my straw-colored skin, my dry, bright eye, my excessive emaciation? I am withering up. What can you expect? I brought the germ of the complaint in me from exile: I went through so much at that time.
“And my marriage, which might have repaired the mischief done during the emigration, far from soothing my ulcerated soul, only reopened the wound. What have I found here? Eternal alarms on account of my children, domestic trials, a fortune to be patched up, economy which entailed a thousand privations I had to inflict on my wife, while I was the first to suffer from them.
“And, above all, to you alone can I confide the secret—this is my greatest trouble. Though Blanche is an angel, she does not understand me; she knows nothing of my sufferings, she only frets them. I forgive her. It is a terrible thing to say, my friend, but a less virtuous woman would have made me happier by little soothing ways which never occur to Blanche, for she is as great a simpleton as a baby! Add to this that the servants do nothing but plague me. They are perfect owls! I speak French, and they hear Greek.
“When our fortune was somewhat amended by hook and by crook, when I began to be less worried, the mischief was done; I had reached the stage of morbid appetite. Then I had that bad illness
