ewhere,
though never ordered to do so; she invented excuses to serve my
breakfast herself--ah, with what sparkling pleasure in her movements,
what swallow-like rapidity, what lynx-eyed perception! and then! what
carnation on her cheeks, what quiverings in her voice!

Can such expansions of the soul be described in words?

Often she was wearied out; but if, at such moments of lassitude my
welfare came in question, for me, as for her children, she found fresh
strength and sprang up eagerly and joyfully. How she loved to shed her
tenderness like sunbeams in the air! Ah, Natalie, some women share
the privileges of angels here below; they diffuse that light which
Saint-Martin, the mysterious philosopher, declared to be intelligent,
melodious, and perfumed. Sure of my discretion, Henriette took pleasure
in raising the curtain which hid the future and in showing me two women
in her,--the woman bound hand and foot who had won me in spite of her
severity, and the woman freed, whose sweetness should make my love
eternal! What a difference. Madame de Mortsauf was the skylark of
Bengal, transported to our cold Europe, mournful on its perch, silent
and dying in the cage of a naturalist; Henriette was the singing bird of
oriental poems in groves beside the Ganges, flying from branch to branch
like a living jewel amid the roses of a volkameria that ever blooms. Her
beauty grew more beautiful, her mind recovered strength. The continual
sparkle of this happiness was a secret between ourselves, for she
dreaded the eye of the Abbe Dominis, the representative of the world;
she masked her contentment with playfulness, and covered the proofs of
her tenderness with the banner of gratitude.

"We have put your friendship to a severe test, Felix; we may give you
the same rights we give to Jacques, may we not, Monsieur l'abbe?" she
said one day.

The stern abbe answered with the smile of a man who can read the human
heart and see its purity; for the countess he always showed the respect
mingled with adoration which the angels inspire. Twice during those
fifty days the countess passed beyond the limits in which we held our
affection. But even these infringements were shrouded in a veil, never
lifted until the final hour when avowal came. One morning, during the
first days of the count's illness, when she repented her harsh treatment
in withdrawing the innocent privileges she had formerly granted me, I
was expecting her to relieve my watch. Muc