ST LOVE

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 C