CHAPTER II

Firstlove

This scene took place on a Tuesday.  I waited until Sunday and did not cross the river.  During those five days great events were happening at Clochegourde.  The count received his brevet as general of brigade, the cross of Saint Louis, and a pension of four thousand francs.  The Duc de Lenoncourt-Givry, made peer of France, recovered possession of two forests, resumed his place at court, and his wife regained all her unsold property, which had been made part of the imperial crown lands.  The Comtesse de Mortsauf thus became an heiress.  Her mother had arrived at Clochegourde, bringing her a hundred thousand francs economized at Givry, the amount of her dowry, still unpaid and never asked for by the count in spite of his poverty.  In all such matters of external life the conduct of this man was proudly disinterested.  Adding to this sum his own few savings he was able to buy two neighboring estates, which would yield him some nine thousand francs a year.  His son would of course succeed to the grandfather’s peerage, and the count now saw his way to entail the estate upon him without injury to Madeleine, for whom the Duc de Lenoncourt would no doubt assist in promoting a good marriage.

These arrangements and this new happiness shed some balm upon the count’s sore mind.  The presence of the Duchesse de Lenoncourt at Clochegourde was a great event to the neighborhood.  I reflected gloomily that she was a great lady, and the thought made me conscious of the spirit of caste in the daughter which the nobility of her sentiments had hitherto hidden from me.  Who was I—­poor, insignificant, and with no future but my courage and my faculties?  I did not then think of the consequences of the Restoration either for me or for others.  On Sunday morning, from the private chapel where I sat with Monsieur and Madame de Chessel and the Abbe de Quelus, I cast an eager glance at another lateral chapel occupied by the duchess and her daughter, the count and his children.  The large straw hat which hid my idol from me did not tremble, and this unconsciousness of my presence seemed to bind me to her more than all the past.  This noble Henriette de Lenoncourt, my Henriette, whose life I longed to garland, was praying earnestly; faith gave to her figure an abandonment, a prosternation, the attitude of some religious statue, which moved me to the soul.

According to village custom, vespers were said soon after mass.  Coming out of church Madame de Chessel naturally proposed to her neighbors to pass the intermediate time at Frapesle instead of crossing the Indre and the meadows twice in the great heat.  The offer was accepted.  Monsieur de Chessel gave his arm to the duchess, Madame de Chessel took that of the count.  I offered mine to the countess, and felt, for the first time, that beautiful arm against my side.  As we walked from the church to Frapesle by the woods of Sache, where the light, filtering down through the foliage, made those pretty patterns on the path which seem like painted silk, such sensations of pride, such ideas took possession of me that my heart beat violently.