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The Lily of the Valley-Part42_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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seductions that encompassed me. The Lord will behold me trembling

when I enter His presence as though I had succumbed. Farewell



again, a long farewell like that I gave last night to our dear

valley, where I soon shall rest and where you will often--will you



not?--return.

Henriette.



I fell into an abyss of terrible reflections, as I perceived the

depths unknown of the life now lighted up by this expiring flame. The



clouds of my egotism rolled away. She had suffered as much as I--more

than I, for she was dead. She believed that others would be kind to



her friend; she was so blinded by love that she had never so much as

suspected the enmity of her daughter. That last proof of her



tenderness pained me terribly. Poor Henriette wished to give me

Clochegourde and her daughter.



Natalie, from that dread day when first I entered a graveyard

following the remains of my noble Henriette, whom now you know, the



sun has been less warm, less luminous, the nights more gloomy,

movement less agile, thought more dull. There are some departed whom



we bury in the earth, but there are others more deeply loved for whom

our souls are winding-sheets, whose memory mingles daily with our



heart-beats; we think of them as we breathe; they are in us by the

tender law of a metempsychosis special to love. A soul is within my



soul. When some good thing is done by me, when some true word is

spoken, that soul acts and speaks. All that is good within me issues



from that grave, as the fragrance of a lily fills the air; sarcasm,

bitterness, all that you blame in me is mine. Natalie, when next my



eyes are darkened by a cloud or raised to heaven after long

contemplation of earth, when my lips make no reply to your words or



your devotion, do not ask me again, "Of what are you thinking?"

*****



Dear Natalie, I ceased to write some days ago; these memories were too

bitter for me. Still, I owe you an account of the events which



followed this catastrophe; they need few words. When a life is made up

of action and movement it is soon told, but when it passes in the



higher regions of the soul its story becomes diffuse. Henriette's

letter put the star of hope before my eyes. In this great shipwreck I



saw an isle on which I might be rescued. To live at Clochegourde with

Madeleine, consecrating my life to hers, was a fate which satisfied



the ideas of which my heart was full. But it was necessary to know the

truth as to her real feelings. As I was bound to bid the count



farewell, I went to Clochegourde to see him, and met him on the

terrace. We walked up and down for some time. At first he spoke of the



countess like a man who knew the extent of his loss, and all the

injury it was doing to his inner self. But after the first outbreak of



his grief was over he seemed more concerned about the future than the

present. He feared his daughter, who, he told me, had not her mother's



gentleness. Madeleine's firm character, in which there was something

heroic blending with her mother's gracious nature, alarmed the old



man, used to Henriette's tenderness, and he now foresaw the power of a

will that never yielded. His only consolation for his irreparable



loss, he said, was the certainty of soon rejoining his wife; the

agitations, the griefs of these last few weeks had increased his



illness and brought back all his former pains; the struggle which he

foresaw between his authority as a father and that of his daughter,



now mistress of the house, would end his days in bitterness; for

though he should have struggled against his wife, he should, he knew,



be forced to give way before his child. Besides, his son was soon to

leave him; his daughter would marry, and what sort of son-in-law was



he likely to have? Though he thus talked of dying, his real distress

was in feeling himself alone for many years to come without sympathy.



During this hour when he spoke only of himself, and asked for my

friendship in his wife's name, he completed a picture in my mind of



the remarkable figure of the Emigre,--one of the most imposing types

of our period. In appearance he was frail and broken, but life seemed



persistent in him because of his sober habits and his country




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