Five months after leaving Clochegourde my good angel wrote me, in the middle of the winter, a despairing letter, telling me of the serious illness of her son.  He was then out of danger, but there were many fears for the future; the doctor said that precautions were necessary for his lungs—­the suggestion of a terrible idea which had put the mother’s heart in mourning.  Hardly had Jacques begun to convalesce, and she could breathe again, when Madeleine made them all uneasy.  That pretty plant, whose bloom had lately rewarded the mother’s culture, was now frail and pallid and anemic.  The countess, worn-out by Jacques’ long illness, found no courage, she said, to bear this additional blow, and the ever present spectacle of these two dear failing creatures made her insensible to the redoubled torment of her husband’s temper.  Thus the storms were again raging; tearing up by the roots the hopes that were planted deepest in her bosom.  She was now at the mercy of the count; weary of the struggle, she allowed him to regain all the ground he had lost.

“When all my strength is employed in caring for my children,” she wrote, “how is it possible to employ it against Monsieur de Mortsauf; how can I struggle against his aggressions when I am fighting against death?  Standing here to-day, alone and much enfeebled, between these two young images of mournful fate, I am overpowered with disgust, invincible disgust for life.  What blow can I feel, to what affection can I answer, when I see Jacques motionless on the terrace, scarcely a sign of life about him, except in those dear eyes, large by emaciation, hollow as those of an old man and, oh, fatal sign, full of precocious intelligence contrasting with his physical debility.  When I look at my pretty Madeleine, once so gay, so caressing, so blooming, now white as death, her very hair and eyes seem to me to have paled; she turns a languishing look upon me as if bidding me farewell; nothing rouses her, nothing tempts her.  In spite of all my efforts I cannot amuse my children; they smile at me, but their smile is only in answer to my endearments, it does not come from them.  They weep because they have no strength to play with me.  Suffering has enfeebled their whole being, it has loosened even the ties that bound them to me.

“Thus you can well believe that Clochegourde is very sad.  Monsieur de Mortsauf now rules everything—­Oh my friend! you, my glory!” she wrote, farther on, “you must indeed love me well to love me still; to love me callous, ungrateful, turned to stone by grief.”

CHAPTER III

Thetwo women