ly I beheld the dear "mignonne" gathering the autumn flowers, no
doubt to make a bouquet at her mother's bidding. Thinking of all which
that signified, I was so convulsed within me that I staggered, my sight
was blurred, and the two abbes, between whom I walked, led me to the
wall of a terrace, where I sat for some time completely broken down but
not unconscious.

"Poor Felix," said the count, "she forbade me to write to you. She knew
how much you loved her."

Though prepared to suffer, I found I had no strength to bear a scene
which recalled my memories of past happiness. "Ah!" I thought, "I see
it still, that barren moor, dried like a skeleton, lit by a gray sky, in
the centre of which grew a single flowering bush, which again and again
I looked at with a shudder,--the forecast of this mournful hour!"

All was gloom in the little castle, once so animated, so full of life.
The servants were weeping; despair and desolation everywhere. The paths
were not raked, work was begun and left undone, the workmen standing
idly about the house. Though the grapes were being gathered in the
vineyard, not a sound reached us. The place seemed uninhabited, so deep
the silence! We walked about like men whose grief rejects all ordinary
topics, and we listened to the count, the only one of us who spoke.

After a few words prompted by the mechanical love he felt for his wife
he was led by the natural bent of his mind to complain of her. She had
never, he said, taken care of herself or listened to him when he gave
her good advice. He had been the first to notice the symptoms of her
illness, for he had studied them in his own case; he had fought them and
cured them without other assistance than careful diet and the avoidance
of all emotion. He could have cured the countess, but a husband ought
not to take so much responsibility upon himself, especially when he
has the misfortune of finding his experience, in this as in everything,
despised. In spite of all he could say, the countess insisted on seeing
Origet,--Origet, who had managed his case so ill, was now killing his
wife. If this disease was, as they said, the result of excessive grief,
surely he was the one who had been in a condition to have it. What
griefs could the countess have had? She was always happy; she had never
had troubles or annoyances. Their fortune, thanks to his care and to his
sound ideas, was now in a most satisfactory state; he had always allowed
Madame de Mortsauf