scenes--I, who would give my life without the slightest regret to save

that of the child."
"Jacques is better, my dear; he has gone to sleep," said a golden

voice. Madame de Mortsauf suddenly appeared at the end of the path.
She came forward, without bitterness or ill-will, and bowed to me.

"I am glad to see that you like Clochegourde," she said.
"My dear, should you like me to ride over and fetch Monsieur

Deslandes?" said the count, as if wishing her to forgive his
injustice.

"Don't be worried," she said. "Jacques did not sleep last night,
that's all. The child is very nervous; he had a bad dream, and I told

him stories all night to keep him quiet. His cough is purelynervous;
I have stilled it with a lozenge, and he has gone to sleep."

"Poor woman!" said her husband, taking her hand in his and giving her
a tearful look, "I knew nothing of it."

"Why should you be troubled when there is no occasion?" she replied.
"Now go and attend to the rye. You know if you are not there the men

will let the gleaners of the other villages get into the field before
the sheaves are carried away."

"I am going to take a first lesson in agriculture, madame," I said to
her.

"You have a very good master," she replied, motioning towards the
count, whose mouth screwed itself into that smile of satisfaction

which is vulgarly termed a "bouche en coeur."
Two months later I learned she had passed that night in great anxiety,

fearing that her son had the croup; while I was in the boat, rocked by
thoughts of love, imagined that she might see me from her window

adoring the gleam of the candle which was then lighting a forehead
furrowed by fears! The croup prevailed at Tours, and was often fatal.

When we were outside the gate, the count said in a voice of motion" target="_blank" title="n.感情；情绪；激动">emotion,
"Madame de Mortsauf is an angel!" The words staggered me. As yet I

knew but little of the family, and the natural conscience of a young
soul made me exclaim inwardly" target="_blank" title="ad.内向；独自地">inwardly: "What right have I to trouble this

perfect peace?"
Glad to find a listener in a young man over whom he could lord it so

easily, the count talked to me of the future which the return of the
Bourbons would secure to France. We had a desultory conversation, in

which I listened to much childishnonsense which positively" target="_blank" title="ad.确实；断然；绝对">positively amazed me.
He was ignorant of facts susceptible of proof that might be called

geometric; he feared persons of education; he rejected superiority,
and scoffed, perhaps with some reason, at progress. I discovered in

his nature a number of sensitive fibres which it required the utmost
caution not to wound; so that a conversation with him of any length

was a positivestrain upon the mind. When I had, as it were, felt of
his defects, I conformed to them with the same suppleness that his

wife showed in soothing him. Later in life I should certainly have
made him angry, but now, humble as a child, supposing that I knew

nothing and believing that men in their prime knew all, I was
genuinely amazed at the results obtained at Clochegourde by this

patient agriculturist. I listened admiringly to his plans; and with an
involuntary flattery which won his good-will, I envied him the estate

and its outlook--a terrestrial paradise, I called it, far superior to
Frapesle.

"Frapesle," I said, "is a massive piece of plate, but Clochegourde is
a jewel-case of gems,"--a speech which he often quoted, giving credit

to its author.
"Before we came here," he said, "it was desolation itself."

I was all ears when he told of his seed-fields and nurseries. New to
country life, I besieged him with questions about prices, means of

preparing and working the soil, etc., and he seemed glad to answer all
in detail.

"What in the world do they teach you in your colleges?" he exclaimed
at last in astonishment.

On this first day the count said to his wife when he reached home,
"Monsieur Felix is a charming young man."

That evening I wrote to my mother and asked her to send my clothes and
linen, saying that I should remain at Frapesle. Ignorant of the great

revolution which was just taking place, and not perceiving the
influence it was to have upon my fate, I expected to return to Paris

to resume my legal studies. The Law School did not open till the first
week in November; meantime I had two months and a half before me.

The first part of my stay, while I studied to understand the count,
was a period of painful impressions to me. I found him a man of

extreme irascibility without adequate cause; hasty in action in
hazardous cases to a degree that alarmed me. Sometimes he showed

glimpses of the brave gentleman of Conde's army, parabolic flashes of
will such as may, in times of emergency, tear through politics like

bomb-shells, and may also, by virtue of honesty and courage, make a
man condemned to live buried on his property an Elbee, a Bonchamp, or

a Charette. In presence of certain ideas his nostrilcontracted, his
forehead cleared, and his eyes shot lightnings, which were soon

quenched. Sometimes I feared he might detect the language of my eyes
and kill me. I was young then and merely tender. Will, that force that

alters men so strangely, had scarcely dawned within me. My passionate
desires shook me with an motion" target="_blank" title="n.感情；情绪；激动">emotion that was like the throes of fear.

Death I feared not, but I would not die until I knew the happiness of
mutual love--But how tell of what I felt! I was a prey to perplexity;

I hoped for some fortunate chance; I watched; I made the children love
me; I tried to identify myself with the family.

Little by little the count restrained himself less in my presence. I
came to know his sudden outbreaks of temper, his deep and ceaseless

melancholy, his flashes of brutality, his bitter, cutting complaints,
his cold hatreds, his impulses of latentmadness, his childish moans,

his cries of a man's despair, his unexpected fury. The moral nature
differs from the physical nature inasmuch as nothing is absolute in

it. The force of effects is in direct proportion to the characters or
the ideas which are grouped around some fact. My position at

Clochegourde, my future life, depended on this one eccentric will.
I cannot describe to you the distress that filled my soul (as quick in

those days to expand as to contract), whenever I entered Clochegourde,
and asked myself, "How will he receive me?" With what anxiety of heart

I saw the clouds collecting on that stormy brow. I lived in a
perpetual "qui-vive." I fell under the dominion of that man; and the

sufferings I endured taught me to understand those of Madame de
Mortsauf. We began by exchanging looks of comprehension; tried by the

same fire, how many discoveries I made during those first forty days!
--of actualbitterness, of tacit joys, of hopes alternately submerged

and buoyant. One evening I found her pensively watching a sunset which
reddened the summits with so ravishing a glow that it was impossible

not to listen to that voice of the eternal Song of Songs by which
Nature herself bids all her creatures love. Did the lost illusions of

her girlhood return to her? Did the woman suffer from an inward
comparison? I fancied I perceived a desolation in her attitude that

was favorable to my first appeal, and I said, "Some days are hard to
bear."

"You read my soul," she answered; "but how have you done so?"
"We touch at many points," I replied. "Surely we belong to the small

number of human beings born to the highest joys and the deepest
sorrows; whose feeling qualities vibrate in unison and echo each other

inwardly" target="_blank" title="ad.内向；独自地">inwardly; whose sensitive natures are in harmony with the principle of
things. Put such beings among surroundings where all is discord and

they suffer horribly, just as their happiness mounts to exaltation
when they meet ideas, or feelings, or other beings who are congenial

to them. But there is still a third condition, where sorrows are known
only to souls affected by the same distress; in this alone is the

highest fraternalcomprehension. It may happen that such souls find no
outlet either for good or evil. Then the organ within us endowed with

expression and motion is exercised in a void, expends its passion
without an object, utters sounds without melody, and cries that are

lost in solitude,--terrible defeat of a soul which revolts against the
inutility of nothingness. These are struggles in which our strength

oozes away without restraint, as blood from an inward wound. The
sensibilities flow to waste and the result is a horrible weakening of

the soul; an indescribablemelancholy for which the confessional
itself has no ears. Have I not expressed our mutual sufferings?"

She shuddered, and then without removing her eyes from the setting
sun, she said, "How is it that, young as you are, you know these

things? Were you once a woman?"
"Ah!" I replied, "my childhood was like a long illness--"

"I hear Madeleine coughing," she cried, leaving me abruptly.
The countess showed no displeasure at my constant visits, and for two