Oh, Natalie! this dreadful outcry, which the materialism of the senses makes so cold at a distance, made our ears tingle—the old priest’s and mine; the tones of that beautiful voice represented the struggles of a whole life, the anguish of a true love always balked.
The Countess stood up with an impatient effort, like a child that wants a toy. When the confessor saw his penitent in this mood, the poor man fell on his knees, clasped his hands, and began to pray.
“Yes, I will live!” she cried, making me stand too, and leaning on me; “live on realities and not on lies. My whole life has been one of lies; I have been counting them over these last days. Is it possible that I should die, I who have not lived? I who have never been to meet anyone on a heath?” She paused, seemed to listen, and smelt something through the very walls.
“Félix, the vintagers are going to dinner, and I, the mistress, am starving,” she said in a childish tone. “It is the same with love; they are happy!”
“Kyrie eleison!” said the poor Abbé, who, with clasped hands and eyes raised to Heaven, was repeating litanies.
She threw her arms round my neck, clasping me with vehemence as she said:
“You shall escape me no more! I mean to be loved, I will be as mad as Lady Dudley, I will learn English to say My Dee very prettily.” She gave me a little nod, as she had been wont to do when leaving me, to assure me that she would return immediately. “We will dine together,” said she. “I will go and tell Manette—” But she stopped, overcome by weakness, and I laid her, dressed as she was, on her bed.
“Once before you carried me just so,” she said, opening her eyes.
She was very light, but very hot; as I held her I felt her whole body burning. Monsieur Deslandes came in, and was astonished to find the room dressed out; on seeing me he understood everything.
“We suffer much before we die, monsieur,” said she in a husky voice.
He sat down, felt her pulse, rose hastily, spoke a few words to the priest in an undertone, and left the room; I followed him.
“What are you going to do?” I asked him.
“To spare her intolerable torments,” said he. “Who could have conceived of so much vitality? We cannot understand how she is still living. This is the forty-second day that the Countess has neither eaten, drunk, nor slept.”
Monsieur Deslandes sent for Manette. The Abbé led me into the gardens.
“Let us leave the doctor free,” said he. “With Manette’s help he will wrap her in opium.—Well, you have heard her,” he said, “if indeed it is she who yields to these mad impulses—”
“No,” said I, “it is she no more.”
I was stupefied with grief. As I walked on, every detail of this brief scene gained importance. I hastily went out of the little gate of the lower terrace and seated myself in the punt, where I ensconced myself to be left alone with my thoughts. I tried to tear myself away from the power by which I lived; a torture like that by which the Tartars were wont to punish adultery by wedging a limb of the guilty person into a cleft block, and giving him a knife wherewith to free himself if he did not wish to starve; a fearful penance through which my soul was passing, since I had to amputate its nobler half. My life, too, was a failure!
Despair suggested strange ideas. Now, I would die with her; again, I would cloister myself at La Meilleraye where the Trappists had just established a retreat. My clouded eyes no longer saw external objects. I gazed at the windows of the room where Henriette lay suffering, fancying I saw the light that burned there that night when I had dedicated myself to her. Ought I not to have obeyed the simple rule of life she had laid down for me, preserving myself hers in the toil of business? Had she not enjoined on me to become a great man, so as to preserve myself from the base and degrading passions to which I had given way like every other man? Was not chastity a sublime distinction which I had failed to keep? Love, as Arabella conceived of it, suddenly filled me with a disgust.
Just as I raised my stricken head, wondering whence henceforth I was to derive light and hope, a slight rustle disturbed the air; I looked towards the terrace and saw Madeleine slowly walking there, alone. While I made my way up to the terrace, intending to ask the dear child the reason of the cold look she had given me at the foot of the cross, she had seated herself on the bench; as she saw me coming she rose, affecting not to have perceived me, so as not to be alone with me; her step was rapid and significant. She hated me. She was flying from her mother’s murderer. Returning to the house up the flight of steps I saw Madeleine standing motionless, listening to my approach. Jacques was sitting on a step, and his attitude was expressive of the same insensibility as had struck me when we were walking together, leaving me possessed by such ideas as we bury in
