bury their internal dissensions with the utmost care, enter behind the scenes, and you will find in nearly all of them deep, incurable wounds, which lessen the natural affections.  Sometimes these wounds are given by passions real and most affecting, rendered eternal by the dignity of those who feel them; sometimes by latent hatreds which slowly freeze the heart and dry all tears when the hour of parting comes.  Tortured yesterday and to-day, wounded by all, even by the suffering children who were guiltless of the ills they endured, how could that poor soul fail to love the one human being who did not strike her, who would fain have built a wall of defence around her to guard her from storms, from harsh contacts and cruel blows?  Though I suffered from a knowledge of these debates, there were moments when I was happy in the sense that she rested upon my heart; for she told me of these new troubles.  Day by day I learned more fully the meaning of her words, —­“Love me as my aunt loved me.”

“Have you no ambition?” the duchess said to me at dinner, with a stern air.

“Madame,” I replied, giving her a serious look, “I have enough in me to conquer the world; but I am only twenty-one, and I am all alone.”

She looked at her daughter with some astonishment.  Evidently she believed that Henriette had crushed my ambition in order to keep me near her.  The visit of Madame de Lenoncourt was a period of unrelieved constraint.  The countess begged me to be cautious; she was frightened by the least kind word; to please her I wore the harness of deceit.  The great Thursday came; it was a day of wearisome ceremonial,—­one of those stiff days which lovers hate, when their chair is no longer in its place, and the mistress of the house cannot be with them.  Love has a horror of all that does not concern itself.  But the duchess returned at last to the pomps and vanities of the court, and Clochegourde recovered its accustomed order.

My little quarrel with the count resulted in making me more at home in the house than ever; I could go there at all times without hindrance; and the antecedents of my life inclined me to cling like a climbing plant to the beautiful soul which had opened to me the enchanting world of shared emotions.  Every hour, every minute, our fraternal marriage, founded on trust, became a surer thing; each of us settled firmly into our own position; the countess enfolded me with her nurturing care, with the white draperies of a love that was wholly maternal; while my love for her, seraphic in her presence, seared me as with hot irons when away from her.  I loved her with a double love which shot its arrows of desire, and then lost them in the sky, where they faded out of sight in the impermeable ether.  If you ask me why, young and ardent, I continued in the deluding dreams of Platonic love, I must own to you that I was not yet man enough to torture that woman, who was always in dread of some catastrophe to her