showing the horse to Madeleine.

"Ha, the devil! that's what women are," cried the count; "admiring your
horse!"

Madeleine turned, came up to me, and I kissed her hand, looking at the
countess, who colored.

"Madeleine seems much better," I said.

"Poor little girl!" said the countess, kissing her on her forehead.

"Yes, for the time being they are all well," answered the count. "Except
me, Felix; I am as battered as an old tower about to fall."

"The general is still depressed," I remarked to Madame de Mortsauf.

"We all have our blue devils--is not that the English term?" she
replied.

The whole party walked on towards the vineyard with the feeling that
some serious event had happened. She had no wish to be alone with me.
Still, I was her guest.

"But about your horse? why isn't he attended to?" said the count.

"You see I am wrong if I think of him, and wrong if I do not," remarked
the countess.

"Well, yes," said her husband; "there is a time to do things, and a time
not to do them."

"I will attend to him," I said, finding this sort of greeting
intolerable. "No one but myself can put him into his stall; my groom is
coming by the coach from Chinon; he will rub him down."

"I suppose your groom is from England," she said.

"That is where they all come from," remarked the count, who grew
cheerful in proportion as his wife seemed depressed. Her coldness
gave him an opportunity to oppose her, and he overwhelmed me with
friendliness.

"My dear Felix," he said, taking my hand, and pressing it
affectionately, "pray forgive Madame de Mortsauf; women are so
whimsical. But it is owing to their weakness; they cannot have the
evenness of temper we owe to our strength of character. She really loves
you, I know it; only--"

While the count was speaking Madame de Mortsauf gradually moved away
from us so as to leave us alone.

"Felix," said the count, in a low voice, looking at his wife, who was
now going up to the house with her two children, "I don't know what is
going on in Madame de Mortsauf's mind, but for the last six weeks her
disposition has completely changed. She, so gentle, so devoted hitherto,
is now extraordinarily peevish."

Manette told me later that the countess had fallen into a state of
depression which made her indifferent to the count's provocations. No
longer finding a soft substance in which he could plant his arrows, the
man became as uneasy as a child when the poor insect it is torm