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