“You have grown,” she said, as we went up the steps.  When we reached the portico she shook my arm a little, as if my looks were importunate; for though her eyes were lowered she knew that I saw only her.  Then she said, with a charming air of pretended impatience, full of grace and coquetry, “Come, why don’t you look at our dear valley?”

She turned, held her white silk sun-shade over our heads and drew Jacques closely to her side.  The motion of her head as she looked towards the Indre, the punt, the meadows, showed me that in my absence she had come to many an understanding with those misty horizons and their vaporous outline.  Nature was a mantle which sheltered her thoughts.  She now knew what the nightingale was sighing the livelong night, what the songster of the sedges hymned with his plaintive note.

At eight o’clock that evening I was witness of a scene which touched me deeply, and which I had never yet witnessed, for in my former visits I had played backgammon with the count while his wife took the children into the dining-room before their bedtime.  The bell rang twice, and all the servants of the household entered the room.

“You are now our guest and must submit to convent rule,” said the countess, leading me by the hand with that air of innocent gaiety which distinguishes women who are naturally pious.

The count followed.  Masters, children, and servants knelt down, all taking their regular places.  It was Madeleine’s turn to read the prayers.  The dear child said them in her childish voice, the ingenuous tones of which rose clear in the harmonious silence of the country, and gave to the words the candor of holy innocence, the grace of angels.  It was the most affecting prayer I ever heard.  Nature replied to the child’s voice with the myriad murmurs of the coming night, like the low accompaniment of an organ lightly touched, Madeleine was on the right of the countess, Jacques on her left.  The graceful curly heads, between which rose the smooth braids of the mother, and above all three the perfectly white hair and yellow cranium of the father, made a picture which repeated, in some sort, the ideas aroused by the melody of the prayer.  As if to fulfil all conditions of the unity which marks the sublime, this calm and collected group were bathed in the fading light of the setting sun; its red tints coloring the room, impelling the soul—­be it poetic or superstitious—­to believe that the fires of heaven were visiting these faithful servants of God as they knelt there without distinction of rank, in the equality which heaven demands.  Thinking back to the days of the patriarchs my mind still further magnified this scene, so grand in its simplicity.

The children said good-night, the servants bowed, the countess went away holding a child by each hand, and I returned to the salon with the count.

“We provide you with salvation there, and hell here,” he said, pointing to the backgammon-board.