I read her mind, and answered to its secret thought by saying, "Am I

not allowed to be your faithful slave?"
She took my arm, left the count, the children, and the abbe, and led

me to a distance on the lawn, though still within sight of the others;
then, when sure that her voice could not be heard by them, she spoke.

"Felix, my dear friend," she said, "forgive my fears; I have but one
thread by which to guide me in the labyrinth of life, and I dread to

see it broken. Tell me that I am more than ever Henriette to you, that
you will never abandon me, that nothing shall prevail against me, that

you will ever be my devoted friend. I have suddenly had a glimpse into
my future, and you were not there, as hitherto, your eyes shining and

fixed upon me--"
"Henriette! idol whose worship is like that of the Divine,--lily,

flower of my life, how is it that you do not know, you who are my
conscience, that my being is so fused with yours that my soul is here

when my body is in Paris? Must I tell you that I have come in
seventeen hours, that each turn of the wheels gathered thoughts and

desires in my breast, which burst forth like a tempest when I saw
you?"

"Yes, tell me! tell me!" she cried; "I am so sure of myself that I can
hear you without wrong. God does not will my death. He sends you to me

as he sends his breath to his creatures; as he pours the rain of his
clouds upon a parched earth,--tell me! tell me! Do you love me

sacredly?"
"Sacredly."

"For ever?"
"For ever."

"As a virgin Mary, hidden behind her veil, beneath her white crown."
"As a virgin visible."

"As a sister?"
"As a sister too dearly loved."

"With chivalry and without hope?"
"With chivalry and with hope."

"As if you were still twenty years of age, and wearing that absurd
blue coat?"

"Oh better far! I love you thus, and I also love you"--she looked at
me with keen apprehension--"as you loved your aunt."

"I am happy! You dispel my terrors," she said, returning towards the
family, who were surprised at our private conference. "Be still a

child at Clochegourde--for you are one still. It may be your policy to
be a man with the king, but here, let me tell you, monsieur, your best

policy is to remain a child. As a child you shall be loved. I can
resist a man, but to a child I can refuse nothing, nothing! He can ask

for nothing I will not give him.--Our secrets are all told," she said,
looking at the count with a mischievous air, in which her girlish,

natural self reappeared. "I leave you now; I must go and dress."
Never for three years had I heard her voice so richly happy. For the

first time I heard those swallow cries, the infantile notes of which I
told you. I had brought Jacques a huntingoutfit, and for Madeleine a

work-box--which her mother afterwards used. The joy of the two
children, delighted to show their presents to each other, seemed to

annoy the count, always dissatisfied when attention was withdrawn from
himself. I made a sign to Madeleine and followed her father, who

wanted to talk to me of his ailments.
"My poor Felix," he said, "you see how happy and well they all are. I

am the shadow on the picture; all their ills are transferred to me,
and I bless God that it is so. Formerly I did not know what was the

matter with me; now I know. The orifice of my stomach is affected; I
can digest nothing."

"How do you come to be as wise as the professor of a medical school?"
I asked, laughing. "Is your doctor indiscreet enough to tell you such

things?"
"God forbid I should consult a doctor," he cried, showing the aversion

most imaginary invalids feel for the medical profession.
I now listened to much crazy talk, in the course of which he made the

most absurd confidences,--complained of his wife, of the servants, of
the children, of life, evidently pleased to repeat his daily speeches

to a friend who, not having heard them daily, might be alarmed, and
who at any rate was forced to listen out of politeness. He must have

been satisfied, for I paid him the utmost attention, trying to
penetrate his inconceivable nature, and to guess what new tortures he

had been inflicting on his wife, of which she had not written to me.
Henriette presently put an end to the monologue by appearing in the

portico. The count saw her, shook his head, and said to me: "You
listen to me, Felix; but here no one pities me."

He went away, as if aware of the constraint he imposed on my
intercourse with Henriette, or perhaps from a really chivalrous

consideration for her, knowing he could give her pleasure by leaving
us alone. His character exhibited contradictions that were often

inexplicable; he was jealous, like all weak beings, but his confidence
in his wife's sanctity was boundless. It may have been the sufferings

of his own self-esteem, wounded by the superiority of that lofty
virtue, which made him so eager to oppose every wish of the poor

woman, whom he braved as children brave their masters or their
mothers.

Jacques was taking his lessons, and Madeleine was being dressed; I had
therefore a whole hour to walk with the countess alone on the terrace.

"Dear angel!" I said, "the chains are heavier, the sands hotter, the
thorns grow apace."

"Hush!" she said, guessing the thoughts my conversation with the count
had suggested. "You are here, and all is forgotten! I don't suffer; I

have never suffered."
She made a few light steps as if to shake her dress and give to the

breeze its ruches of snowy tulle, its floating sleeves and fresh
ribbons, the laces of her pelerine, and the flowing curls of her

coiffure a la Sevigne; I saw her for the first time a young girl,--gay
with her natural gaiety, ready to frolic like a child. I knew then the

meaning of tears of happiness; I knew the joy a man feels in bringing
happiness to another.

"Sweet human flower, wooed by my thought, kissed by my soul, oh my
lily!" I cried, "untouched, untouchable upon thy stem, white, proud,

fragrant, and solitary--"
"Enough, enough," she said, smiling. "Speak to me of yourself; tell me

everything."
Then, beneath the swaying arch of quivering leaves, we had a long

conversation, filled with interminable parentheses, subjects taken,
dropped, and retaken, in which I told her my life and my occupations;

I even described my apartment in Paris, for she wished to know
everything; and (happiness then unappreciated) I had nothing to

conceal. Knowing thus my soul and all the details of a daily life full
of incessant toil, learning the full extent of my functions, which to

any one not sternlyupright offered opportunities for deception and
dishonest gains, but which I had exercised with such rigid honor that

the king, I told her, called me Mademoiselle de Vandenesse, she seized
my hand and kissed it, and dropped a tear, a tear of joy, upon it.

This sudden transposition of our roles, this homage, coupled with the
thought--swiftly expressed but as swiftly comprehended--"Here is the

master I have sought, here is my dream embodied!" all that there was
of avowal in the action, grand in its humility, where love betrayed

itself in a region forbidden to the senses,--this whirlwind of
celestial things fell on my heart and crushed it. I felt myself too

small; I wished to die at her feet.
"Ah!" I said, "you surpass us in all things. Can you doubt me?--for

you did doubt me just now, Henriette."
"Not now," she answered, looking at me with ineffable tenderness,

which, for a moment, veiled the light of her eyes. "But seeing you so
changed, so handsome, I said to myself, 'Our plans for Madeleine will

be defeated by some woman who will guess the treasures in his heart;
she will steal our Felix, and destroy all happiness here.'"

"Always Madeleine!" I replied. "Is it Madeleine to whom I am
faithful?"

We fell into a silence which Monsieur de Mortsauf inconveniently
interrupted. I was forced to keep up a conversation bristling with

difficulties, in which my honest replies as to the king's policy
jarred with the count's ideas, and he forced me to explain again and

again the king's intentions. In spite of all my questions as to his
horses, his agricultural affairs, whether he was satisfied with his

five farms, whether he meant to cut the timber of the old avenue, he
returned to the subject of politics with the pestering faculty of an