So far the contrast is based on feelings, but it was equally great with regard to externals. In France luxury is the expression of the man, the reproduction of his ideas, of his personal poetry; it represents the character, and, between lovers, gives value to the most trifling attentions by drawing out the ruling idea of the one we love; but English luxury, which had bewitched me by its selectness and refinement, was as mechanical as the rest. Lady Dudley infused nothing of herself into it; it was the work of her servants—bought, paid for. The thousand comforting attentions at Clochegourde were in Arabella’s eyes the concern of the servants; each had his duty and special function. The choice of good footmen was her steward’s business, just as if they were horses. This woman felt no attachment to those about her; the death of the best of them would not have affected her; another, equally well trained, was to be had for money. As to her fellows, I never saw a tear in her eye for the woes of others; indeed, there was a frank selfishness about her which it was impossible not to laugh at.
The crimson robe of a great lady covered this iron soul. The exquisite almée who, in the evening, lounged on her rugs and rang all the tinkling bells of amorous folly, could quickly reconcile a young man to the hard and unfeeling Englishwoman; indeed, it was only step by step that I discerned the volcanic rock on which I was wasting my labors, since it could never yield a harvest.
Madame de Mortsauf had read this nature at a glance in their brief meeting; I remembered her prophetic words. Henriette was right throughout: Arabella’s love was becoming intolerable. I have since noticed that women who ride well are never tender; like the Amazons they have lost a breast, and their hearts are petrified in one spot, I know not which.
Just when I was beginning to feel the weight of this yoke, when weariness was stealing over me, body and soul, when I understood how great a sanctity true feeling can give to love, and when the memories of Clochegourde were too much for me as, in spite of the distance, I smelt the perfume of its roses, heard the song of its nightingales—at the moment when I first perceived the stony bed of the torrent under its diminished flood, I had a blow which still echoes in my life, for it is repeated every hour.
I was writing in the King’s private room; he was to go out at four o’clock; the Duc de Lenoncourt was in waiting. As he came into the room the King asked for news of the Countess. I looked up hastily with a too significant gesture, and the King, startled by my eagerness, gave me the look which commonly introduced the stern words he could speak on occasion.
“Sir, my poor daughter is dying,” replied the Duke.
“Will your Majesty condescend to grant me leave of absence?” said I, with tears in my eyes, and risking an outburst of wrath.
“Fly, my lord!” replied he, smiling at the irony he had infused into the words, and letting me off a reprimand in honor of his own wit.
The Duke, more a courtier than a father, asked for no leave, but got into the carriage with the King. I went off, without saying goodbye to Lady Dudley, who by good luck was not at home, and for whom I left a note saying that I was called away on the King’s service. At La Croix de Berny I met His Majesty returning from Verrières. As he accepted a bouquet which he dropped at his feet, the King gave me a look full of the royal irony that is so crushingly piercing, and which was as much as to say: “If you mean to become a somebody in political life, come back. Do not amuse yourself with interviewing the dead!”
The Duke waved me a melancholy signal with his hand.
The two gorgeous coaches, drawn by eight horses, the Colonels in gold lace, the mounted escort, and the clouds of dust whirled swiftly past to cries of “Vive le roi!” And to me it was as though the Court had trampled the body of Madame de Mortsauf under foot, with the indifference of nature herself to human disaster. Though he was an excellent good fellow, the Duke, I make no doubt, went off to play whist with Monsieur after the King had retired. As to the Duchess, it was she, and she alone, who long since had dealt her daughter the first deathblow by telling her about Lady Dudley.
My hasty journey was like a dream, but it was the dream of the ruined gambler; I was in despair at having had no news. Had her confessor carried severity to the point of forbidding my entering Clochegourde? I accused Madeleine, Jacques, the Abbé de Dominis, everybody, even to Monsieur de Mortsauf.
After passing Tours, as I turned off to the bridges of Saint-Sauveur, to go down the road that leads to Poncher between poplars—those poplars I had admired when I set out in search of my unknown fair—I met Monsieur Origet. He guessed that I was going to Clochegourde, I guessed that he was coming from it; we stopped our chaises and got out, I to ask news and he to give it.
“Well,” said I, “How is Madame de Mortsauf?”
“I doubt if you will find her alive,” said he. “She is enduring a terrible death from inanition. When she sent for me, in the month of June last, no medical power could control the malady; she had all the symptoms which Monsieur de Mortsauf must have described to you, since he fancied he was suffering from them.
