ated, like the mournful burden
of a song. "I would you had heard her say to me when you came: 'Mother,
you are not kind to Felix!' Dear creature!"

She looked at me in the warm rays of the setting sun as they glided
through the foliage. Seized with compassion for the shipwreck of
our lives she turned back to memories of our pure past, yielding to
meditations which were mutual. We were silent, recalling past scenes;
our eyes went from the valley to the fields, from the windows of
Clochegourde to those of Frapesle, peopling the dream with my bouquets,
the fragrant language of our desires. It was her last hour of pleasure,
enjoyed with the purity of her Catholic soul. This scene, so grand to
each of us, cast its melancholy on both. She believed my words, and saw
where I placed her--in the skies.

"My friend," she said, "I obey God, for his hand is in all this."

I did not know until much later the deep meaning of her words. We slowly
returned up the terraces. She took my arm and leaned upon it resignedly,
bleeding still, but with a bandage on her wound.

"Human life is thus," she said. "What had Monsieur de Mortsauf done to
deserve his fate? It proves the existence of a better world. Alas, for
those who walk in happier ways!"

She went on, estimating life so truly, considering its diverse aspects
so profoundly that these cold judgments revealed to me the disgust that
had come upon her for all things here below. When we reached the portico
she dropped my arm and said these last words: "If God has given us
the sentiment and the desire for happiness ought he not to take charge
himself of innocent souls who have found sorrow only in this low world?
Either that must be so, or God is not, and our life is no more than a
cruel jest."

She entered and turned the house quickly; I found her on the sofa,
crouching, as though blasted by the voice which flung Saul to the
ground.

"What is the matter?" I asked.

"I no longer know what is virtue," she replied; "I have no consciousness
of my own."

We were silent, petrified, listening to the echo of those words which
fell like a stone cast into a gulf.

"If I am mistaken in my life _she_ is right in _hers_," Henriette said
at last.

Thus her last struggle followed her last happiness. When the count came
in she complained of illness, she who never complained. I conjured her
to tell me exactly where she suffered; but she refused to explain and
went to bed, leaving me a prey to