Nature's calm, indifferent to our struggles, has a magic gift of

consolation. The tumults of a love full of restrained desires
harmonize with the wash of the water; the flowers that the hand of man

has never wilted are the voice of his secret dreams; the voluptuous
swaying of the boat vaguely responds to the thoughts that are floating

in his soul. We felt the languid influence of this double poesy.
Words, tuned to the diapason of nature, disclosed mysterious graces;

looks were impassioned rays sharing the light shed broadcast by the
sun on the glowing meadows. The river was a path along which we flew.

Our spirit, no longer kept down by the measured tread of our
footsteps, took possession of the universe. The abounding joy of a

child at liberty, graceful in its motions, enticing in its play, is
the living expression of two freed souls, delighting themselves by

becoming ideally the wondrous being dreamed of by Plato and known to
all whose youth has been filled with a blessed love. To describe to

you that hour, not in its indescribable details but in its essence, I
must say to you that we loved each other in all the creations animate

and inanimate which surrounded us; we felt without us the happiness
our own hearts craved; it so penetrated our being that the countess

took off her gloves and let her hands float in the water as if to cool
an inward ardor. Her eyes spoke; but her mouth, opening like a rose to

the breeze, gave voice to no desire. You know the harmony of deep
tones mingling perfectly with high ones? Ever, when I hear it now, it

recalls to me the harmony of our two souls in this one hour, which
never came again.

"Where do you fish?" I asked, "if you can only do so from the banks
you own?"

"Near Pont-de-Ruan," she replied. "Ah! we now own the river from Pont-
de-Ruan to Clochegourde; Monsieur de Mortsauf has lately bought forty

acres of the meadow lands with the savings of two years and the
arrearage of his pension. Does that surprise you?"

"Surprise me?" I cried; "I would that all the valley were yours." She
answered me with a smile. Presently we came below the bridge to a

place where the Indre widens and where the fishing was going on.
"Well, Martineau?" she said.

"Ah, Madame la comtesse, such bad luck! We have fished up from the
mill the last three hours, and have taken nothing."

We landed near them to watch the drawing in of the last net, and all
three of us sat down in the shade of a "bouillard," a sort of poplar

with a white bark, which grows on the banks of the Danube and the
Loire (probably on those of other large rivers), and sheds, in the

spring of the year, a white and silky fluff, the covering of its
flower. The countess had recovered her august serenity; she half

regretted the unveiling of her griefs, and mourned that she had cried
aloud like Job, instead of weeping like the Magdalen,--a Magdalen

without loves, or galas, or prodigalities, but not without beauty and
fragrance. The net came in at her feet full of fish; tench, barbels,

pike, perch, and an enormous carp, which floundered about on the
grass.

"Madame brings luck!" exclaimed the keeper.
All the laborers opened their eyes as they looked with admiration at

the woman whose fairy wand seemed to have touched the nets. Just then
the huntsman was seen urging his horse over the meadows at a full

gallop. Fear took possession of her. Jacques was not with us, and the
mother's first thought, as Virgil so poetically says, is to press her

children to her breast when danger threatens.
"Jacques! Where is Jacques? What has happened to my boy?"

She did not love me! If she had loved me I should have seen upon her
face when confronted with my sufferings that expression of a lioness

in despair.
"Madame la comtesse, Monsieur le comte is worse."

She breathed more freely and started to run towards Clochegourde,
followed by me and by Madeleine.

"Follow me slowly," she said, looking back; "don't let the dear child
overheat herself. You see how it is; Monsieur de Mortsauf took that

walk in the sun which put him into a perspiration, and sitting under
the walnut-tree may be the cause of a great misfortune."

The words, said in the midst of her agitation, showed plainly the
purity of her soul. The death of the count a misfortune! She reached

Clochegourde with great rapidity, passing through a gap in the wall
and crossing the fields. I returned slowly. Henriette's words lighted

my mind, but as the lightning falls and blasts the gathered harvest.
On the river I had fancied I was her chosen one; now I felt bitterly

the sincerity of her words. The lover who is not everything is
nothing. I loved with the desire of a love that knows what it seeks;

which feeds in advance on coming transports, and is content with the
pleasures of the soul because it mingles with them others which the

future keeps in store. If Henriette loved, it was certain that she
knew neither the pleasures of love nor its tumults. She lived by

feelings only, like a saint with God. I was the object on which her
thoughts fastened as bees swarm upon the branch of a flowering tree.

In my mad jealousy I reproached myself that I had dared nothing, that
I had not tightened the bonds of a tenderness which seemed to me at

that moment more subtile than real, by the chains of positive
possession.

The count's illness, caused perhaps by a chill under the walnut-tree,
became alarming in a few hours. I went to Tours for a famous doctor

named Origet, but was unable to find him until evening. He spent that
night and the next day at Clochegourde. We had sent the huntsman in

quest of leeches, but the doctor, thinking the case urgent, wished to
bleed the count immediately, but had brought no lancet with him. I at

once started for Azay in the midst of a storm, roused a surgeon,
Monsieur Deslandes, and compelled him to come with the utmost celerity

to Clochegourde. Ten minutes later and the count would have died; the
bleeding saved him. But in spite of this preliminary success the

doctor predicted an inflammatory fever of the worst kind. The countess
was overcome by the fear that she was the secret cause of this crisis.

Two weak to thank me for my exertions, she merely gave me a few
smiles, the equivalent of the kiss she had once laid upon my hand.

Fain would I have seen in those haggard smiles the remorse of illicit
love; but no, they were only the act of contrition of an innocent

repentance, painful to see in one so pure, the expression of admiring
tenderness for me whom she regarded as noble while reproaching herself

for an imaginary wrong. Surely she loved as Laura loved Petrarch, and
not as Francesca da Rimini loved Paolo,--a terrible discovery for him

who had dreamed the union of the two loves.
The countess half lay, her body bent forwards, her arms hanging, in a

soiled armchair in a room that was like the lair of a wild boar. The
next evening before the doctor departed he said to the countess, who

had sat up the night before, that she must get a nurse, as the illness
would be a long one.

"A nurse!" she said; "no, no! We will take care of him," she added,
looking at me; "we owe it to ourselves to save him."

The doctor gave us both an observing look full of astonishment. The
words were of a nature to make him suspect an atonement. He promised

to come twice a week, left directions for the treatment with Monsieur
Deslandes, and pointed out the threatening symptoms that might oblige

us to send for him. I asked the countess to let me sit up the
alternate nights and then, not without difficulty, I persuaded her to

go to bed on the third night. When the house was still and the count
sleeping I heard a groan from Henriette's room. My anxiety was so keen

that I went to her. She was kneeling before the crucifix bathed in
tears. "My God!" she cried; "if this be the cost of a murmur, I will

never complain again."
"You have left him!" she said on seeing me.

"I heard you moaning, and I was frightened."
"Oh, I!" she said; "I am well."

Wishing to be certain that Monsieur de Mortsauf was asleep she came
down with me; by the light of the lamp we looked at him. The count was

weakened by the loss of blood and was more drowsy than asleep; his
hands picked the counterpane and tried to draw it over him.

"They say the dying do that," she whispered. "Ah! if he were to die of
this illness, that I have caused, never will I marry again, I swear