I had perceived, during the day which followed the fatal night, how unwelcome my presence might be at Clochegourde.  The count had gone through violent emotions at the death of his wife; but he had expected the event; his mind was made up to it in a way that was something like indifference.  I had noticed this several times, and when the countess gave me that letter (which I still dared not read) and when she spoke of her affection for me, I remarked that the count, usually so quick to take offence, made no sign of feeling any.  He attributed Henriette’s wording to the extreme sensitiveness of a conscience which he knew to be pure.  This selfish insensibility was natural to him.  The souls of these two beings were no more married than their bodies; they had never had the intimate communion which keeps feeling alive; they had shared neither pains nor pleasures, those strong links which tear us by a thousand edges when broken, because they touch on all our fibers, and are fastened to the inmost recesses of our hearts.

Another consideration forbade my return to Clochegourde,—­Madeleine’s hostility.  That hard young girl was not disposed to modify her hatred beside her mother’s coffin.  Between the count, who would have talked to me incessantly of himself, and the new mistress of the house, who would have shown me invincible dislike, I should have found myself horribly annoyed.  To be treated thus where once the very flowers welcomed me, where the steps of the portico had a voice, where my memory clothed with poetry the balconies, the fountains, the balustrades, the trees, the glimpses of the valleys! to be hated where I once was loved—­the thought was intolerable to me.  So, from the first, my mind was made up.

Alas! alas! was this the end of the keenest love that ever entered the heart of man?  To the eyes of strangers my conduct might be reprehensible, but it had the sanction of my own conscience.  It is thus that the noblest feelings, the sublimest dramas of our youth must end.  We start at dawn, as I from Tours to Clochegourde, we clutch the world, our hearts hungry for love; then, when our treasure is in the crucible, when we mingle with men and circumstances, all becomes gradually debased and we find but little gold among the ashes.  Such is life! life as it is; great pretensions, small realities.  I meditated long about myself, debating what I could do after a blow like this which had mown down every flower of my soul.  I resolved to rush into the science of politics, into the labyrinth of ambition, to cast woman from my life and to make myself a statesman, cold and passionless, and so remain true to the saint I loved.  My thoughts wandered into far-off regions while my eyes were fastened on the splendid tapestry of the yellowing oaks, the stern summits, the bronzed foothills.  I asked myself if Henriette’s virtue were not, after all, that of ignorance, and if I were indeed guilty of her death.  I fought against remorse.  At last, in the sweetness of an autumn midday, one of those last smiles of heaven which are so beautiful in Touraine, I read the letter which at her request I was not to open before her death.  Judge of my feelings as I read it.