when we went to the vineyard, and we stayed there half the day.  How we disputed as to who had the finest grapes and who could fill his basket quickest!  The little human shoots ran to and fro from the vines to their mother; not a bunch could be cut without showing it to her.  She laughed with the good, gay laugh of her girlhood when I, running up with my basket after Madeleine, cried out, “Mine too!  See mine, mamma!” To which she answered:  “Don’t get overheated, dear child.”  Then passing her hand round my neck and through my hair, she added, giving me a little tap on the cheek, “You are melting away.”  It was the only caress she ever gave me.  I looked at the pretty line of purple clusters, the hedges full of haws and blackberries; I heard the voices of the children; I watched the trooping girls, the cart loaded with barrels, the men with the panniers.  Ah, it is all engraved on my memory, even to the almond-tree beside which she stood, girlish, rosy, smiling, beneath the sunshade held open in her hand.  Then I busied myself in cutting the bunches and filling my basket, going forward to empty it in the vat, silently, with measured bodily movement and slow steps that left my spirit free.  I discovered then the ineffable pleasure of an external labor which carries life along, and thus regulates the rush of passion, often so near, but for this mechanical motion, to kindle into flame.  I learned how much wisdom is contained in uniform labor; I understood monastic discipline.

For the first time in many days the count was neither surly nor cruel.  His son was so well; the future Duc de Lenoncourt-Mortsauf, fair and rosy and stained with grape-juice, rejoiced his heart.  This day being the last of the vintage, he had promised a dance in front of Clochegourde in honor of the return of the Bourbons, so that our festival gratified everybody.  As we returned to the house, the countess took my arm and leaned upon it, as if to let my heart feel the weight of hers,—­the instinctive movement of a mother who seeks to convey her joy.  Then she whispered in my ear, “You bring us happiness.”

Ah, to me, who knew her sleepless nights, her cares, her fears, her former existence, in which, although the hand of God sustained her, all was barren and wearisome, those words uttered by that rich voice brought pleasures no other woman in the world could give me.

“The terrible monotony of my life is broken, all things are radiant with hope,” she said after a pause.  “Oh, never leave me!  Do not despise my harmless superstitions; be the elder son, the protector of the younger.”

In this, Natalie, there is nothing romantic.  To know the infinite of our deepest feelings, we must in youth cast our lead into those great lakes upon whose shores we live.  Though to many souls passions are lava torrents flowing among arid rocks, other souls there be in whom passion, restrained by insurmountable obstacles, fills with purest water the crater of the volcano.