erect as a poplar, contrasted with Jacques, a fragile youth of seventeen, whose head had grown immensely, causing anxiety by the rapid expansion of the forehead, while his feverish, weary eyes were in keeping with a voice that was deep and sonorous.  The voice gave forth too strong a volume of tone, the eye too many thoughts.  It was Henriette’s intellect and soul and heart that were here devouring with swift flames a body without stamina; for Jacques had the milk-white skin and high color which characterize young English women doomed sooner or later to the consumptive curse,—­an appearance of health that deceives the eye.  Following a sign by which Henriette, after showing me Madeleine, made me look at Jacques drawing geometrical figures and algebraic calculations on a board before the Abbe Dominis, I shivered at the sight of death hidden beneath the roses, and was thankful for the self-deception of his mother.

“When I see my children thus, happiness stills my griefs—­just as those griefs are dumb, and even disappear, when I see them failing.  My friend,” she said, her eyes shining with maternal pleasure, “if other affections fail us, the feelings rewarded here, the duties done and crowned with success, are compensation enough for defeat elsewhere.  Jacques will be, like you, a man of the highest education, possessed of the worthiest knowledge; he will be, like you, an honor to his country, which he may assist in governing, helped by you, whose standing will be so high; but I will strive to make him faithful to his first affections.  Madeleine, dear creature, has a noble heart; she is pure as the snows on the highest Alps; she will have a woman’s devotion and a woman’s graceful intellect.  She is proud; she is worthy of being a Lenoncourt.  My motherhood, once so tried, so tortured, is happy now, happy with an infinite happiness, unmixed with pain.  Yes, my life is full, my life is rich.  You see, God makes my joy to blossom in the heart of these sanctified affections, and turns to bitterness those that might have led me astray—­”

“Good!” cried the abbe, joyfully.  “Monsieur le vicomte begins to know as much as I—­”

Just then Jacques coughed.

“Enough for to-day, my dear abbe,” said the countess, “above all, no chemistry.  Go for a ride on horseback, Jacques,” she added, letting her son kiss her with the tender and yet dignified pleasure of a mother.  “Go, dear, but take care of yourself.”

“But,” I said, as her eyes followed Jacques with a lingering look, “you have not answered me.  Do you feel ill?”

“Oh, sometimes, in my stomach.  If I were in Paris I should have the honors of gastritis, the fashionable disease.”

“My mother suffers very much and very often,” said Madeleine.

“Ah!” she said, “does my health interest you?”

Madeleine, astonished at the irony of these words, looked from one to the other; my eyes counted the roses on the cushion of the gray and green sofa which was in the salon.