The Lily of the Valley, Honoré de Balzac [the little red hen read aloud TXT] 📗

the river. During those five days great events were happening at Clochegourde. The count received his brevet as general of brigade, the cross of Saint Louis, and a pension of four thousand francs. The Duc de Lenoncourt-Givry, made peer of France, recovered possession of two forests, resumed his place at court, and his wife regained all her unsold property, which had been made part of the imperial crown lands. The Comtesse de Mortsauf thus became an heiress. Her mother had arrived at Clochegourde, bringing her a hundred thousand francs economized at Givry, the amount of her dowry, still unpaid and never asked for by the count in spite of his poverty. In all such matters of external life the conduct of this man was proudly disinterested. Adding to this sum his own few savings he was able to buy two neighboring estates, which would yield him some nine thousand francs a year. His son would of course succeed to the grandfather's peerage, and the count now saw his way to entail the estate upon him without injury to Madeleine, for whom the Duc de Lenoncourt would no doubt assist in promoting a good marriage.

These arrangements and this new happiness shed some balm upon the count's sore mind. The presence of the Duchesse de Lenoncourt at Clochegourde was a great event to the neighborhood. I reflected gloomily that she was a great lady, and the thought made me conscious of the spirit of caste in the daughter which the nobility of her sentiments had hitherto hidden from me. Who was I--poor, insignificant, and with no future but my courage and my faculties? I did not then think of the consequences of the Restoration either for me or for others. On Sunday morning, from the private chapel where I sat with Monsieur and Madame de Chessel and the Abbe de Quelus, I cast an eager glance at another lateral chapel occupied by the duchess and her daughter, the count and his children. The large straw hat which hid my idol from me did not tremble, and this unconsciousness of my presence seemed to bind me to her more than all the past. This noble Henriette de Lenoncourt, my Henriette, whose life I longed to garland, was praying earnestly; faith gave to her figure an abandonment, a prosternation, the attitude of some religious statue, which moved me to the soul.

According to village custom, vespers were said soon after mass. Coming out of church Madame de Chessel naturally proposed to her neighbors to pass the intermediate time at Frapesle instead of crossing the Indre and the meadows twice in the great heat. The offer was accepted. Monsieur de Chessel gave his arm to the duchess, Madame de Chessel took that of the count. I offered mine to the countess, and felt, for the first time, that beautiful arm against my side. As we walked from the church to Frapesle by the woods of Sache, where the light, filtering down through the foliage, made those pretty patterns on the path which seem like painted silk, such sensations of pride, such ideas took possession of me that my heart beat violently.

"What is the matter?" she said, after walking a little way in a silence I dared not break. "Your heart beats too fast--"

"I have heard of your good fortune," I replied, "and, like all others who love truly, I am beset with vague fears. Will your new dignities change you and lessen your friendship?"

"Change me!" she said; "oh, fie! Another such idea and I shall--not despise you, but forget you forever."

I looked at her with an ecstasy which should have been contagious.

"We profit by the new laws which we have neither brought about nor demanded," she said; "but we are neither place-hunters nor beggars; besides, as you know very well, neither Monsieur de Mortsauf nor I can leave Clochegourde. By my advice he has declined the command to which his rank entitled him at the Maison Rouge. We are quite content that my father should have the place. This forced modesty," she added with some bitterness, "has already been of service to our son. The king, to whose household my father is appointed, said very graciously that he would show Jacques the favor we were not willing to accept. Jacques' education, which must now be thought of, is already being discussed. He will be the representative of two houses, the Lenoncourt and the Mortsauf families. I can have no ambition except for him, and therefore my anxieties seem to have increased. Not only must Jacques live, but he must be made worthy of his name; two necessities which, as you know, conflict. And then, later, what friend will keep him safe for me in Paris, where all things are pitfalls for the soul and dangers for the body? My friend," she said, in a broken voice, "who could not see upon your brow and in your eyes that you are one who will inhabit heights? Be some day the guardian and sponsor of our boy. Go to Paris; if your father and brother will not second you, our family, above all my mother, who has a genius for the management of life, will help you. Profit by our influence; you will never be without support in whatever career you choose; put the strength of your desires into a noble ambition--"

"I understand you," I said, interrupting her; "ambition is to be my mistress. I have no need of that to be wholly yours. No, I will not be rewarded for my obedience here by receiving favors there. I will go; I will make my own way; I will rise alone. From you I would accept everything, from others nothing."

"Child!" she murmured, ill-concealing a smile of pleasure.

"Besides, I have taken my vows," I went on. "Thinking over our situation I am resolved to bind myself to you by ties that never can be broken."

She trembled slightly and stopped short to look at me.

"What do you mean?" she asked, letting the couples who preceded us walk on, and keeping the children at her side.

"This," I said; "but first tell me frankly how you wish me to love you."

"Love me as my aunt loved me; I gave you her rights when I permitted you to call me by the name which she chose for her own among my others."

"Then I am to love without hope and with an absolute devotion. Well, yes; I will do for you what some men do for God. I shall feel that you have asked it. I will enter a seminary and make myself a priest, and then I will educate your son. Jacques shall be myself in his own form; political conceptions, thoughts, energy, patience, I will give him all. In that way I shall live near to you, and my love, enclosed in religion as a silver image in a crystal shrine, can never be suspected of evil. You will not have to fear the undisciplined passions which grasp a man and by which already I have allowed myself to be vanquished. I will consume my own being in the flame, and I will love you with a purified love."

She turned pale and said, hurrying her words: "Felix, do not put yourself in bonds that might prove an obstacle to our happiness. I should die of grief for having caused a suicide like that. Child, do you think despairing love a life's vocation? Wait for life's trials before you judge of life; I command it. Marry neither the Church nor a woman; marry not at all,--I forbid it. Remain free. You are twenty-one years old--My God! can I have mistaken him? I thought two months sufficed to know some souls."

"What hope have you?" I cried, with fire in my eyes.

"My friend, accept our help, rise in life, make your way and your fortune and you shall know my hope. And," she added, as if she were whispering a secret, "never release the hand you are holding at this moment."

She bent to my ear as she said these words which proved her deep solicitude for my future.

"Madeleine!" I exclaimed "never!"

We were close to a wooden gate which opened into the park of Frapesle; I still seem to see its ruined posts overgrown with climbing plants and briers and mosses. Suddenly an idea, that of the count's death, flashed through my brain, and I said, "I understand you."

"I am glad of it," she answered in a tone which made me know I had supposed her capable of a thought that could never be hers.

Her purity drew tears of admiration from my eyes which the selfishness of passion made bitter indeed. My mind reacted and I felt that she did not love me enough even to wish for liberty. So long as love recoils from a crime it seems to have its limits, and love should be infinite. A spasm shook my heart.

"She does not love me," I thought.

To hide what was in my soul I stooped over Madeleine and kissed her hair.

"I am afraid of your mother," I said to the countess presently, to renew the conversation.

"So am I," she answered with a gesture full of childlike gaiety. "Don't forget to call her Madame la duchesse, and to speak to her in the third person. The young people of the present day have lost these polite manners; you must learn them; do that for my sake. Besides, it is such good taste to respect women, no matter what their age may be, and to recognize social distinctions without disputing them. The respect shown to established superiority is guarantee for that which is due to you. Solidarity is the basis of society. Cardinal Della Rovere and Raffaelle were two powers equally revered. You have sucked the milk of the Revolution in your academy and your political ideas may be influenced by it; but as you advance in life you will find that crude and ill-defined principles of liberty are powerless to create the happiness of the people. Before considering, as a Lenoncourt, what an aristocracy ought to be, my common-sense as a woman of the people tells me that societies can exist only through a hierarchy. You are now at a turning-point in your life, when you must choose wisely. Be on our side,--especially now," she added, laughing, "when it triumphs."

I was keenly touched by these words, in which the depth of her political feeling mingled with the warmth of affection,--a combination which gives to women so great a power of persuasion; they know how to give to the keenest arguments a tone of feeling. In her desire to justify all her husband's actions Henriette had foreseen the criticisms that would rise in my mind as soon as I saw the servile effects of a courtier's life upon him. Monsieur de Mortsauf, king in his own castle and surrounded by an historic halo, had, to my eyes, a certain grandiose dignity. I was therefore greatly astonished at the distance he placed between the duchess and himself by manners that were nothing less than obsequious. A slave has his pride and will only serve the greatest despots. I confess I was humiliated at the degradation of one before whom I trembled as the power that ruled my love. This inward repulsion made me understand the martyrdom of women of generous souls yoked to men whose meannesses they bury daily. Respect is a safeguard which protects both great and small alike; each side can hold its own. I was respectful to the duchess because of my youth; but where others saw only a duchess I saw the mother of my Henriette, and