“Ha, the devil! that’s what women are,” cried the count; “admiring your horse!”

Madeleine turned, came up to me, and I kissed her hand, looking at the countess, who colored.

“Madeleine seems much better,” I said.

“Poor little girl!” said the countess, kissing her on her forehead.

“Yes, for the time being they are all well,” answered the count.  “Except me, Felix; I am as battered as an old tower about to fall.”

“The general is still depressed,” I remarked to Madame de Mortsauf.

“We all have our blue devils—­is not that the English term?” she replied.

The whole party walked on towards the vineyard with the feeling that some serious event had happened.  She had no wish to be alone with me.  Still, I was her guest.

“But about your horse? why isn’t he attended to?” said the count.

“You see I am wrong if I think of him, and wrong if I do not,” remarked the countess.

“Well, yes,” said her husband; “there is a time to do things, and a time not to do them.”

“I will attend to him,” I said, finding this sort of greeting intolerable.  “No one but myself can put him into his stall; my groom is coming by the coach from Chinon; he will rub him down.”

“I suppose your groom is from England,” she said.

“That is where they all come from,” remarked the count, who grew cheerful in proportion as his wife seemed depressed.  Her coldness gave him an opportunity to oppose her, and he overwhelmed me with friendliness.

“My dear Felix,” he said, taking my hand, and pressing it affectionately, “pray forgive Madame de Mortsauf; women are so whimsical.  But it is owing to their weakness; they cannot have the evenness of temper we owe to our strength of character.  She really loves you, I know it; only—­”

While the count was speaking Madame de Mortsauf gradually moved away from us so as to leave us alone.

“Felix,” said the count, in a low voice, looking at his wife, who was now going up to the house with her two children, “I don’t know what is going on in Madame de Mortsauf’s mind, but for the last six weeks her disposition has completely changed.  She, so gentle, so devoted hitherto, is now extraordinarily peevish.”

Manette told me later that the countess had fallen into a state of depression which made her indifferent to the count’s provocations.  No longer finding a soft substance in which he could plant his arrows, the man became as uneasy as a child when the poor insect it is tormenting ceases to move.  He now needed a confidant, as the hangman needs a helper.