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The Lily of the Valley-Part14_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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But if I enjoyed the delightful benefits of naturalization in a family



where I found relations after my own heart, I had also to pay some

costs for it. Until then Monsieur de Mortsauf had more or less



restrained himself before me. I had only seen his failings in the

mass; I was now to see the full extent of their application and



discover how nobly charitable the countess had been in the account she

had given me of these daily struggles. I learned now all the angles of



her husband's intolerable nature; I heard his perpetual scolding about

nothing, complaints of evils of which not a sign existed; I saw the



inward dissatisfaction which poisoned his life, and the incessant need

of his tyrannical spirit for new victims. When we went to walk in the



evenings he selected the way; but whichever direction we took he was

always bored; when we reached home he blamed others; his wife had



insisted on going where she wanted; why was he governed by her in all

the trifling things of life? was he to have no will, no thought of his



own? must he consent to be a cipher in his own house? If his harshness

was to be received in patient silence he was angry because he felt a



limit to his power; he asked sharply if religion did not require a

wife to please her husband, and whether it was proper to despise the



father of her children? He always ended by touching some sensitive

chord in his wife's mind; and he seemed to find a domineering pleasure



in making it sound. Sometimes he tried gloomy silence and a morbid

depression, which always alarmed his wife and made her pay him the



most tender attentions. Like petted children, who exercise their power

without thinking of the distress of their mother, he would let her



wait upon him as upon Jacques and Madeleine, of whom he was jealous.

I discovered at last that in small things as well as in great ones the



count acted towards his servants, his children, his wife, precisely as

he had acted to me about the backgammon. The day when I understood,



root and branch, these difficulties, which like a rampant overgrowth

repressed the actions and stifled the breathing of the whole family,



hindered the management of the household and retarded the improvement

of the estate by complicating the most necessary acts, I felt an



admiring awe which rose higher than my love and drove it back into my

heart. Good God! what was I? Those tears that I had taken on my lips



solemnized my spirit; I found happiness in wedding the sufferings of

that woman. Hitherto I had yielded to the count's despotism as the



smuggler pays his fine; henceforth I was a voluntaryvictim that I

might come the nearer to her. The countess understood me, allowed me a



place beside her, and gave me permission to share her sorrows; like

the repentant apostate, eager to rise to heaven with his brethren, I



obtained the favor of dying in the arena.

"Were it not for you I must have succumbed under this life," Henriette



said to me one evening when the count had been, like the flies on a

hot day, more stinging, venomous, and persistent than usual.



He had gone to bed. Henriette and I remained under the acacias; the

children were playing about us, bathed in the setting sun. Our few



exclamatory words revealed the mutuality of the thoughts in which we

rested from our common sufferings. When language failed silence as



faithfully served our souls, which seemed to enter one another without

hindrance; together they luxuriated in the charms of pensive languor,



they met in the undulations of the same dream, they plunged as one

into the river and came out refreshed like two nymphs as closely



united as their souls could wish, but with no earthly tie to bind

them. We entered the unfathomable gulf, we returned to the surface



with empty hands, asking each other by a look, "Among all our days on

earth will there be one for us?"



In spite of the tranquilpoetry of evening which gave to the bricks of

the balustrade their orange tones, so soothing and so pure; in spite



of the religious atmosphere of the hour, which softened the voices of

the children and wafted them towards us, desire crept through my veins



like the match to the bonfire. After three months of repression I was

unable to content myself with the fate assigned me. I took Henriette's



hand and softly caressed it, trying to convey to her the ardor that




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