“Yes, sometimes, in my chest. If I were in Paris I could rise to the honors of gastritis, the fashionable complaint.”
“My mother suffers a great deal, and often,” replied Madeleine.
“So my health really interests you?” said she to me.
Madeleine, astonished at the deep irony with which the words were spoken, looked at us by turns; my eyes were counting the pink flowers on the cushions of the gray and green furniture in the room.
“The situation is intolerable!” I said in her ear.
“Is it of my making?” she asked. “My dear boy,” she said aloud, affecting the cruel cheerfulness with which women give lightness to revenge, “do you know nothing of modern history? Are not France and England always foes? Why, Madeleine knows that; she knows that they are divided by a vast sea, a cold sea, a stormy sea.”
The vases on the chimney had been replaced by candelabra, no doubt to deprive me of the pleasure of filling them with flowers; I found them at a later day in her room. When my servant arrived, I went out to give my orders; he had brought me a few things that I wished to carry up to my room.
“Félix,” said the Countess, “make no mistake! My aunt’s old room is Madeleine’s now. Yours is over the Count’s.”
Guilty as I was, I had a heart, and all these speeches were poniard thrusts coldly directed to the tenderest spots, which they seemed chosen to hit. Mental suffering is not a fixed quantity; it is in proportion to the sensitiveness of the soul, and the Countess had bitterly gone through the whole scale of anguish; but for this very reason the best woman will always be cruel in proportion to what her kindness has been. I looked at her, but she kept her head down.
I went up to my new room, which was pretty—white and green. There I melted into tears. Henriette heard me; she came in, bringing me a bunch of flowers.
“Henriette,” said I, “have you come to such a point that you cannot forgive the most excusable fault?”
“Never call me Henriette,” she said. “She has ceased to exist, poor woman; but you will always find Madame de Mortsauf an attached friend who will listen to you and care for you. Félix, we will talk later. If you still have an affection for me, let me get accustomed to see you, and as soon as words are a less heartrending effort, as soon as I have recovered a little courage—then, and not till then. You see the valley?” and she pointed to the river, “It hurts me—but I love it still.”
“Oh, perish England and all its women! I shall send in my resignation to the King. I will die here, forgiven!”
“No, no; love her—love that woman! Henriette is no more; this is no jest, as you will see!”
She left the room; the tone of her last speech showed how deeply she was wounded.
I hurried after her; I stopped her, saying:
“Then you no longer love me?”
“You have pained me more than all the others put together. Today I am suffering less, and I love you less: but it is only in England that they say, ‘Neither never, nor forever.’—Here we only say, ‘forever.’ Be good; do not add to my pain; and if you too are hurt, remember that I can still live on.”
She withdrew her hand which I had taken; it was cold, inert but clammy, and she was off like an arrow along the passage where this really tragical scene had taken place.
In the course of dinner the Count had a torture in store for me of which I had not dreamed.
“Then the Marchioness of Dudley is not in Paris?” he said.
I colored crimson and replied, “No.”
“She is not at Tours,” he went on.
“She is not divorced; she may go to England. Her husband would be delighted if she would return to him,” I said excitedly.
“Has she any children?” asked Madame de Mortsauf in a husky voice.
“Two sons,” said I.
“Where are they?”
“In England with their father.”
“Now, Félix, be candid. Is she as lovely as people say?”
“Can you ask him such a question,” cried the Countess. “Is not the woman a man loves always the most beautiful of her sex?”
“Yes, always,” I replied with emphasis, and a flashing look that she could not meet.
“You are in luck,” the Count went on. “Yes, you are a lucky rascal! Ah! when I was young my head would have been turned by such a conquest—”
“That is enough!” said Madame de Mortsauf, glancing from Madeleine to her father.
“I am not a boy,” said the Count, who loved to think himself young again.
After dinner the Countess led the way down the terrace, and when we were there she exclaimed:
“What, there are women who can sacrifice their children for a man! Fortune and the world, yes—I understand that; eternity perhaps! But her children! To give up her children!”
“Yes, and such women would be glad to have more to sacrifice; they give everything—”
To the Countess the world seemed to be upside down; her ideas were in confusion. Startled by the magnitude of this idea, suspecting that happiness might justify this immolation, hearing within her the outcries of the rebellious flesh, she stood aghast, gazing at her spoilt life. Yes, she went through a minute of agonizing doubts. But she came out great and saintly, holding her head high.
“Love her truly, Félix; love that woman,” she said with tears in her eyes. “She will be my happier sister. I forgive her the ill she has done me if she can give you what you could never have found here, what you could never find in me. You are right; I never told you that I could love you as you of the world love—and I never did love you so.—Still, if she is not a true mother, how can she love?”
“Dear saint,” said I, “I should
