Don't be worried," she said. "Jacques did not sleep last night, that's
all. The child is very nervous; he had a bad dream, and I told him
stories all night to keep him quiet. His cough is purely nervous; I have
stilled it with a lozenge, and he has gone to sleep."

"Poor woman!" said her husband, taking her hand in his and giving her a
tearful look, "I knew nothing of it."

"Why should you be troubled when there is no occasion?" she replied.
"Now go and attend to the rye. You know if you are not there the men
will let the gleaners of the other villages get into the field before
the sheaves are carried away."

"I am going to take a first lesson in agriculture, madame," I said to
her.

"You have a very good master," she replied, motioning towards the count,
whose mouth screwed itself into that smile of satisfaction which is
vulgarly termed a "bouche en coeur."

Two months later I learned she had passed that night in great anxiety,
fearing that her son had the croup; while I was in the boat, rocked by
thoughts of love, imagined that she might see me from her window adoring
the gleam of the candle which was then lighting a forehead furrowed by
fears! The croup prevailed at Tours, and was often fatal. When we were
outside the gate, the count said in a voice of emotion, "Madame de
Mortsauf is an angel!" The words staggered me. As yet I knew but little
of the family, and the natural conscience of a young soul made me
exclaim inwardly: "What right have I to trouble this perfect peace?"

Glad to find a listener in a young man over whom he could lord it so
easily, the count talked to me of the future which the return of the
Bourbons would secure to France. We had a desultory conversation, in
which I listened to much childish nonsense which positively amazed
me. He was ignorant of facts susceptible of proof that might be called
geometric; he feared persons of education; he rejected superiority,
and scoffed, perhaps with some reason, at progress. I discovered in his
nature a number of sensitive fibres which it required the utmost caution
not to wound; so that a conversation with him of any length was a
positive strain upon the mind. When I had, as it were, felt of his
defects, I conformed to them with the same suppleness that his wife
showed in soothing him. Later in life I should certainly have made him
angry, but now, humble as a child, supposing that I knew nothing and
believing that men in their prime knew all, I was genu