“So that poor devil of a Mortsauf persists in living?”

“Yes,” replied the duke.

“Madame de Mortsauf is an angel, whom I should like to see at my court,” continued the king; “but if I cannot manage it, my chancellor here,” turning to me, “may be more fortunate.  You are to have six months’ leave; I have decided on giving you the young man we spoke of yesterday as colleague.  Amuse yourself at Clochegourde, friend Cato!” and he laughed as he had himself wheeled out of the room.

I flew like a swallow to Touraine.  For the first time I was to show myself to my beloved, not merely a little less insignificant, but actually in the guise of an elegant young man, whose manners had been formed in the best salons, his education finished by gracious women; who had found at last a compensation for all his sufferings, and had put to use the experience given to him by the purest angel to whom heaven had ever committed the care of a child.  You know how my mother had equipped me for my three months’ visit at Frapesle.  When I reached Clochegourde after fulfilling my mission in Vendee, I was dressed like a huntsman; I wore a jacket with white and red buttons, striped trousers, leathern gaiters and shoes.  Tramping through underbrush had so injured my clothes that the count was obliged to lend me linen.  On the present occasion, two years’ residence in Paris, constant intercourse with the king, the habits of a life at ease, my completed growth, a youthful countenance, which derived a lustre from the placidity of the soul within magnetically united with the pure soul that beamed on me from Clochegourde,—­all these things combined had transformed me.  I was self-possessed without conceit, inwardly pleased to find myself, in spite of my years, at the summit of affairs; above all, I had the consciousness of being secretly the support and comfort of the dearest woman on earth, and her unuttered hope.  Perhaps I felt a flutter of vanity as the postilions cracked their whips along the new avenue leading from the main road to Clochegourde and through an iron gate I had never seen before, which opened into a circular enclosure recently constructed.  I had not written to the countess of my coming, wishing to surprise her.  For this I found myself doubly in fault:  first, she was overwhelmed with the excitement of a pleasure long desired, but supposed to be impossible; and secondly, she proved to me that all such deliberate surprises are in bad taste.

When Henriette saw a young man in him who had hitherto seemed but a child to her, she lowered her eyes with a sort of tragic slowness.  She allowed me to take and kiss her hand without betraying her inward pleasure, which I nevertheless felt in her sensitive shiver.  When she raised her face to look at me again, I saw that she was pale.

“Well, you don’t forget your old friends?” said Monsieur de Mortsauf, who had neither changed nor aged.

The children sprang upon me.  I saw them behind the grave face of the Abbe Dominis, Jacques’ tutor.