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

conscience. When the doctor came again, I revealed to him the nature of my pure Henriette's self-reproach. This confidence, made discreetly, removed Monsieur Origet's suspicions, and enabled him to quiet the distress of that noble soul by telling her that in any case the count had to pass through this crisis, and that as for the nut-tree, his remaining there had done more good than harm by developing the disease.

For fifty-two days the count hovered between life and death. Henriette and I each watched twenty-six nights. Undoubtedly, Monsieur de Mortsauf owed his life to our nursing and to the careful exactitude with which we carried out the orders of Monsieur Origet. Like all philosophical physicians, whose sagacious observation of what passes before them justifies many a doubt of noble actions when they are only the accomplishment of a duty, this man, while assisting the countess and me in our rivalry of devotion, could not help watching us, with scrutinizing glances, so afraid was he of being deceived in his admiration.

"In diseases of this nature," he said to me at his third visit, "death has a powerful auxiliary in the moral nature when that is seriously disturbed, as it is in this case. The doctor, the family, the nurses hold the patient's life in their hands; sometimes a single word, a fear expressed by a gesture, has the effect of poison."

As he spoke Origet studied my face and expression; but he saw in my eyes the clear look of an honest soul. In fact during the whole course of this distressing illness there never passed through my mind a single one of the involuntary evil thoughts which do sometimes sear the consciences of the innocent. To those who study nature in its grandeur as a whole all tends to unity through assimilation. The moral world must undoubtedly be ruled by an analogous principle. In an pure sphere all is pure. The atmosphere of heaven was around my Henriette; it seemed as though an evil desire must forever part me from her. Thus she not only stood for happiness, but for virtue; she _was_ virtue. Finding us always equally careful and attentive, the doctor's words and manners took a tone of respect and even pity; he seemed to say to himself, "Here are the real sufferers; they hide their ills, and forget them." By a fortunate change, which, according to our excellent doctor, is common enough in men who are completely shattered, Monsieur de Mortsauf was patient, obedient, complained little, and showed surprising docility,--he, who when well never did the simplest thing without discussion. The secret of this submission to medical care, which he formerly so derided, was an innate dread of death; another contradiction in a man of tried courage. This dread may perhaps explain several other peculiarities in the character which the cruel years of exile had developed.

Shall I admit to you, Natalie, and will you believe me? these fifty days and the month that followed them were the happiest moments of my life. Love, in the celestial spaces of the soul is like a noble river flowing through a valley; the rains, the brooks, the torrents hie to it, the trees fall upon its surface, so do the flowers, the gravel of its shores, the rocks of the summits; storms and the loitering tribute of the crystal streams alike increase it. Yes, when love comes all comes to love!

The first great danger over, the countess and I grew accustomed to illness. In spite of the confusion which the care of the sick entails, the count's room, once so untidy, was now clean and inviting. Soon we were like two beings flung upon a desert island, for not only do anxieties isolate, but they brush aside as petty the conventions of the world. The welfare of the sick man obliged us to have points of contact which no other circumstances would have authorized. Many a time our hands, shy or timid formerly, met in some service that we rendered to the count--was I not there to sustain and help my Henriette? Absorbed in a duty comparable to that of a soldier at the pickets, she forgot to eat; then I served her, sometimes on her lap, a hasty meal which necessitated a thousand little attentions. We were like children at a grave. She would order me sharply to prepare whatever might ease the sick man's suffering; she employed me in a hundred petty ways. During the time when actual danger obscured, as it does during the battle, the subtile distinctions which characterize the facts of ordinary life, she necessarily laid aside the reserve which all women, even the most unconventional, preserve in their looks and words and actions before the world or their own family. At the first chirping of the birds she would come to relieve my watch, wearing a morning garment which revealed to me once more the dazzling treasures that in my folly I had treated as my own. Always dignified, nay imposing, she could still be familiar.

Thus it came to pass that we found ourselves unconsciously intimate, half-married as it were. She showed herself nobly confiding, as sure of me as she was of herself. I was thus taken deeper and deeper into her heart. The countess became once more my Henriette, Henriette constrained to love with increasing strength the friend who endeavored to be her second soul. Her hand unresistingly met mine at the least solicitation; my eyes were permitted to follow with delight the lines of her beauty during the long hours when we listened to the count's breathing, without driving her from their sight. The meagre pleasures which we allowed ourselves--sympathizing looks, words spoken in whispers not to wake the count, hopes and fears repeated and again repeated, in short, the thousand incidents of the fusion of two hearts long separated--stand out in bright array upon the sombre background of the actual scene. Our souls knew each other to their depths under this test, which many a warm affection is unable to bear, finding life too heavy or too flimsy in the close bonds of hourly intercourse.

You know what disturbance follows the illness of a master; how the affairs of life seem to come to a standstill. Though the real care of the family and estate fell upon Madame de Mortsauf, the count was useful in his way; he talked with the farmers, transacted business with his bailiff, and received the rents; if she was the soul, he was the body. I now made myself her steward so that she could nurse the count without neglecting the property. She accepted this as a matter of course, in fact without thanking me. It was another sweet communion to share her family cares, to transmit her orders. In the evenings we often met in her room to discuss these interests and those of her children. Such conversations gave one semblance the more to our transitory marriage. With what delight she encouraged me to take a husband's place, giving me his seat at table, sending me to talk with the bailiff,--all in perfect innocence, yet not without that inward pleasure the most virtuous woman in the world will feel when she finds a course where strict obedience to duty and the satisfaction of her wishes are combined.

Nullified, as it were, by illness, the count no longer oppressed his wife or his household, the countess then became her natural self; she busied herself with my affairs and showed me a thousand kindnesses. With what joy I discovered in her mind a thought, vaguely conceived perhaps, but exquisitely expressed, namely, to show me the full value of her person and her qualities and make me see the change that would come over her if she lived understood. This flower, kept in the cold atmosphere of such a home, opened to my gaze, and to mine only; she took as much delight in letting me comprehend her as I felt in studying her with the searching eyes of love. She proved to me in all the trifling things of daily life how much I was in her thoughts. When, after my turn of watching, I went to bed and slept late, Henriette would keep the house absolutely silent near me; Jacques and Madeleine played elsewhere, though never ordered to do so; she invented excuses to serve my breakfast herself--ah, with what sparkling pleasure in her movements, what swallow-like rapidity, what lynx-eyed perception! and then! what carnation on her cheeks, what quiverings in her voice!

Can such expansions of the soul be described in words?

Often she was wearied out; but if, at such moments of lassitude my welfare came in question, for me, as for her children, she found fresh strength and sprang up eagerly and joyfully. How she loved to shed her tenderness like sunbeams in the air! Ah, Natalie, some women share the privileges of angels here below; they diffuse that light which Saint-Martin, the mysterious philosopher, declared to be intelligent, melodious, and perfumed. Sure of my discretion, Henriette took pleasure in raising the curtain which hid the future and in showing me two women in her,--the woman bound hand and foot who had won me in spite of her severity, and the woman freed, whose sweetness should make my love eternal! What a difference. Madame de Mortsauf was the skylark of Bengal, transported to our cold Europe, mournful on its perch, silent and dying in the cage of a naturalist; Henriette was the singing bird of oriental poems in groves beside the Ganges, flying from branch to branch like a living jewel amid the roses of a volkameria that ever blooms. Her beauty grew more beautiful, her mind recovered strength. The continual sparkle of this happiness was a secret between ourselves, for she dreaded the eye of the Abbe Dominis, the representative of the world; she masked her contentment with playfulness, and covered the proofs of her tenderness with the banner of gratitude.

"We have put your friendship to a severe test, Felix; we may give you the same rights we give to Jacques, may we not, Monsieur l'abbe?" she said one day.

The stern abbe answered with the smile of a man who can read the human heart and see its purity; for the countess he always showed the respect mingled with adoration which the angels inspire. Twice during those fifty days the countess passed beyond the limits in which we held our affection. But even these infringements were shrouded in a veil, never lifted until the final hour when avowal came. One morning, during the first days of the count's illness, when she repented her harsh treatment in withdrawing the innocent privileges she had formerly granted me, I was expecting her to relieve my watch. Much fatigued, I fell asleep, my head against the wall. I wakened suddenly at the touch of something cool upon my forehead which gave me a sensation as if a rose had rested there. I opened my eyes and saw the countess, standing a few steps distant, who said, "I have just come." I rose to leave the room, but as I bade her good-bye I took her hand; it was moist and trembling.

"Are you ill?" I said.

"Why do you ask that question?" she replied.

I looked at her blushing and confused. "I was dreaming," I replied.

Another time, when Monsieur Origet had announced positively that the count was convalescent, I was lying with Jacques and Madeleine on the step of the portico intent on a game of spillikins which we were playing with bits of straw and hooks made of pins; Monsieur de Mortsauf was asleep. The doctor, while waiting for his horse to be harnessed, was talking with the countess in the salon. Monsieur Origet went away without my noticing his