poken, that soul acts
and speaks. All that is good within me issues from that grave, as the
fragrance of a lily fills the air; sarcasm, bitterness, all that you
blame in me is mine. Natalie, when next my eyes are darkened by a cloud
or raised to heaven after long contemplation of earth, when my lips make
no reply to your words or your devotion, do not ask me again, "Of what
are you thinking?"

* * * * *

Dear Natalie, I ceased to write some days ago; these memories were too
bitter for me. Still, I owe you an account of the events which followed
this catastrophe; they need few words. When a life is made up of action
and movement it is soon told, but when it passes in the higher regions
of the soul its story becomes diffuse. Henriette's letter put the star
of hope before my eyes. In this great shipwreck I saw an isle on which
I might be rescued. To live at Clochegourde with Madeleine, consecrating
my life to hers, was a fate which satisfied the ideas of which my
heart was full. But it was necessary to know the truth as to her
real feelings. As I was bound to bid the count farewell, I went to
Clochegourde to see him, and met him on the terrace. We walked up and
down for some time. At first he spoke of the countess like a man who
knew the extent of his loss, and all the injury it was doing to his
inner self. But after the first outbreak of his grief was over he
seemed more concerned about the future than the present. He feared his
daughter, who, he told me, had not her mother's gentleness. Madeleine's
firm character, in which there was something heroic blending with her
mother's gracious nature, alarmed the old man, used to Henriette's
tenderness, and he now foresaw the power of a will that never yielded.
His only consolation for his irreparable loss, he said, was the
certainty of soon rejoining his wife; the agitations, the griefs of
these last few weeks had increased his illness and brought back all his
former pains; the struggle which he foresaw between his authority as a
father and that of his daughter, now mistress of the house, would end
his days in bitterness; for though he should have struggled against
his wife, he should, he knew, be forced to give way before his child.
Besides, his son was soon to leave him; his daughter would marry, and
what sort of son-in-law was he likely to have? Though he thus talked of
dying, his real distress was in feeling himself alone for many years to
com