they. It is the chain of the galley-slave; it leaves an ineffaceable

brand upon the soul, filling it with disgust for pure and innocent
love decked with flowers only, which serves no alcohol in curiously

chased cups inlaid with jewels and sparkling with unquenchable fires.
Recalling my early dreams of pleasures I knew nothing of, expressed at

Clochegourde in my "selams," the voice of my flowers, pleasures which
the union of souls renders all the more ardent, I found many

sophistries by which I excused to myself the delight with which I
drained that jewelled cup. Often, when, lost in infinite lassitude, my

soul disengaged itself from the body and floated far from earth, I
thought that these pleasures might be the means of abolishing matter

and of rendering to the spirit its power to soar. Sometimes Lady
Dudley, like other women, profited by the exaltation in which I was to

bind me by promises; under the lash of a desire she wrung blasphemies
from my lips against the angel at Clochegourde. Once a traitor I

became a scoundrel. I continued to write to Madame de Mortsauf, in the
tone of the lad she had first known in his strange blue coat; but, I

admit it, her gift of second-sight terrified me when I thought what
ruin the indiscretion of a word might bring to the dear castle of my

hopes. Often, in the midst of my pleasure a sudden horror seized me; I
heard the name of Henriette uttered by a voice above me, like that in

the Scriptures, demanding: "Cain, where is thy brother Abel?"
At last my letters remained unanswered. I was seized with horrible

anxiety and wished to leave for Clochegourde. Arabella did not oppose
it, but she talked of accompanying me to Touraine. Her woman's wit

told her that the journey might be a means of finally detaching me
from her rival; while I, blind with fear and guilelessly unsuspicious,

did not see the trap she set for me. Lady Dudley herself proposed the
humblest concessions. She would stay near Tours, at a little country-

place, alone, disguised; she would refrain from going out in the day-
time, and only meet me in the evening when people were not likely to

be about. I left Tours on horseback. I had my reasons for this; my
evening excursions to meet her would require a horse, and mine was an

Arab which Lady Hester Stanhope had sent to the marchioness, and which
she had lately exchanged with me for that famous picture of Rembrandt

which I obtained in so singular a way, and which now hangs in her
drawing-room in London. I took the road I had traversed on foot six

years earlier and stopped beneath my walnut-tree. From there I saw
Madame de Mortsauf in a white dress standing at the edge of the

terrace. Instantly I rode towards her with the speed of lightning, in
a straight line and across country. She heard the stride of the

swallow of the desert and when I pulled him up suddenly at the
terrace, she said to me: "Oh, you here!"

Those three words blasted me. She knew my treachery. Who had told her?
her mother, whose hateful letter she afterwards showed me. The feeble,

indifferent voice, once so full of life, the dull pallor of its tones
revealed a settled grief, exhaling the breath of flowers cut and left

to wither. The tempest of infidelity, like those freshets of the Loire
which bury the meadows for all time in sand, had torn its way through

her soul, leaving a desert where once the verdure clothed the fields.
I led my horse through the little gate; he lay down on the grass at my

command and the countess, who came forward slowly, exclaimed, "What a
fine animal!" She stood with folded arms lest I should try to take her

hand; I guessed her meaning.
"I will let Monsieur de Mortsauf know you are here," she said, leaving

me.
I stood still, confounded, letting her go, watching her, always noble,

slow, and proud,--whiter than I had ever seen her; on her brow the
yellow imprint of bitterest melancholy, her head bent like a lily

heavy with rain.
"Henriette!" I cried in the agony of a man about to die.

She did not turn or pause; she disdained to say that she withdrew from
me that name, but she did not answer to it and continued on. I may

feel paltry and small in this dreadful vale of life where myriads of
human beings now dust make the surface of the globe, small indeed

among that crowd, hurrying beneath the luminous spaces which light
them; but what sense of humiliation could equal that with which I

watched her calm white figure inflexibly mounting with even steps the
terraces of her chateau of Clochegourde, the pride and the torture of

that Christian Dido? I cursed Arabella in a single imprecation which
might have killed her had she heard it, she who had left all for me as

some leave all for God. I remained lost in a world of thought,
conscious of utter misery on all sides. Presently I saw the whole

family coming down; Jacques, running with the eagerness of his age.
Madeleine, a gazelle with mournful eyes, walked with her mother.

Monsieur de Mortsauf came to me with open arms, pressed me to him and
kissed me on both cheeks crying out, "Felix, I know now that I owed

you my life."
Madame de Mortsauf stood with her back towards me during this little

scene, under pretext of showing the horse to Madeleine.
"Ha, the devil! that's what women are," cried the count; "admiring

your horse!"
Madeleine turned, came up to me, and I kissed her hand, looking at the

countess, who colored.
"Madeleine seems much better," I said.

"Poor little girl!" said the countess, kissing her on her forehead.
"Yes, for the time being they are all well," answered the count.

"Except me, Felix; I am as battered as an old tower about to fall."
"The general is still depressed," I remarked to Madame de Mortsauf.

"We all have our blue devils--is not that the English term?" she
replied.

The whole party walked on towards the vineyard with the feeling that
some serious event had happened. She had no wish to be alone with me.

Still, I was her guest.
"But about your horse? why isn't he attended to?" said the count.

"You see I am wrong if I think of him, and wrong if I do not,"
remarked the countess.

"Well, yes," said her husband; "there is a time to do things, and a
time not to do them."

"I will attend to him," I said, finding this sort of greeting
intolerable. "No one but myself can put him into his stall; my groom

is coming by the coach from Chinon; he will rub him down."
"I suppose your groom is from England," she said.

"That is where they all come from," remarked the count, who grew
cheerful in proportion as his wife seemed depressed. Her coldness gave

him an opportunity to oppose her, and he overwhelmed me with
friendliness.

"My dear Felix," he said, taking my hand, and pressing it
affectionately, "pray forgive Madame de Mortsauf; women are so

whimsical. But it is owing to their weakness; they cannot have the
evenness of temper we owe to our strength of character. She really

loves you, I know it; only--"
While the count was speaking Madame de Mortsauf gradually moved away

from us so as to leave us alone.
"Felix," said the count, in a low voice, looking at his wife, who was

now going up to the house with her two children, "I don't know what is
going on in Madame de Mortsauf's mind, but for the last six weeks her

disposition has completely changed. She, so gentle, so devoted
hitherto, is now extraordinarily peevish."

Manette told me later that the countess had fallen into a state of
depression which made her indifferent to the count's provocations. No

longer finding a soft substance in which he could plant his arrows,
the man became as uneasy as a child when the poor insect it is

tormenting ceases to move. He now needed a confidant, as the hangman
needs a helper.

"Try to question Madame de Mortsauf," he said after a pause, "and find
out what is the matter. A woman always has secrets from her husband;

but perhaps she will tell you what troubles her. I would sacrifice
everything to make her happy, even to half my remaining days or half

my fortune. She is necessary to my very life. If I have not that angel
at my side as I grow old I shall be the most wretched of men. I do

desire to die easy. Tell her I shall not be here long to trouble her.
Yes, Felix, my poor friend, I am going fast, I know it. I hide the

fatal truth from every one; why should I worry them beforehand? The
trouble is in the orifice of the stomach, my friend. I have at last