The Lily of the Valley p.58

as if to tell me by a look
that she wished to be still and silent; then suddenly, for an instant,
there seemed a change; she rose on her elbow and whispered, "Unhappy
man!--ah! if you did but know--"

She fell back upon the pillow. The remembrance of her past sufferings,
joined to the present shock, threw her again into the nervous
convulsions I had just calmed by the magnetism of love,--a power then
unknown to me, but which I used instinctively. I held her with gentle
force, and she gave me a look which made me weep. When the nervous
motions ceased I smoothed her disordered hair, the first and only time
that I ever touched it; then I again took her hand and sat looking
at the room, all brown and gray, at the bed with its simple chintz
curtains, at the toilet table draped in a fashion now discarded, at the
commonplace sofa with its quilted mattress. What poetry I could read
in that room! What renunciations of luxury for herself; the only luxury
being its spotless cleanliness. Sacred cell of a married nun, filled
with holy resignation; its sole adornments were the crucifix of her bed,
and above it the portrait of her aunt; then, on each side of the holy
water basin, two drawings of the children made by herself, with locks
of their hair when they were little. What a retreat for a woman whose
appearance in the great world of fashion would have made the handsomest
of her sex jealous! Such was the chamber where the daughter of an
illustrious family wept out her days, sunken at this moment in anguish,
and denying herself the love that might have comforted her. Hidden,
irreparable woe! Tears of the victim for her slayer, tears of the slayer
for his victim! When the children and waiting-woman came at length into
the room I left it. The count was waiting for me; he seemed to seek me
as a mediating power between himself and his wife. He caught my hands,
exclaiming, "Stay, stay with us, Felix!"

"Unfortunately," I said, "Monsieur de Chessel has a party, and my
absence would cause remark. But after dinner I will return."

He left the house when I did, and took me to the lower gate without
speaking; then he accompanied me to Frapesle, seeming not to know what
he was doing. At last I said to him, "For heaven's sake, Monsieur le
comte, let her manage your affairs if it pleases her, and don't torment
her."

"I have not long to live," he said gravely; "she will not suffer long
through me; my head is giving way."

He left me in a spasm of involuntary self-pity. After dinner I returned
for news of Madame de Mortsauf, who was already better. If such were the
joys of marriage, if such scenes were frequent, how could she survive
them long? What slow, unpunished murder was this? During that day I
understood the tortures by which the count was wearing out his wife.
Before what tribunal can we arraign such crimes? These thoughts stunned
me; I could say nothing to Henriette by word of mouth, but I spent the
night in writing to her. Of the three or four letters that I wrote I
have kept only the beginning of one, with which I was not satisfied.
Here it is, for though it seems to me to express nothing, and to speak
too much of myself when I ought only to have thought of her, it will
serve to show you the state my soul was in:--

  To Madame de Mortsauf:

  How many things I had to say to you when I reached the house! I
  thought of them on the way, but I forgot them in your presence.
  Yes, when I see you, dear Henriette, I find my thoughts no longer
  in keeping with the light from your soul which heightens your
  beauty; then, too, the happiness of being near you is so ineffable
  as to efface all other feelings. Each time we meet I am born into
  a broader life; I am like the traveller who climbs a rock and sees
  before him a new horizon. Each time you talk with me I add new
  treasures to my treasury. There lies, I think, the secret of long
  and inexhaustible affections. I can only speak to you of yourself
  when away from you. In your presence I am too dazzled to see, too
  happy to question my happiness, too full of you to be myself, too
  eloquent through you to speak, too eager in seizing the present
  moment to remember the past. You must think of this state of
  intoxication and forgive me its consequent mistakes.