Madame de Mortsauf

“ You have followed the advice of your good angel about young women too closely; you have avoided them so carefully that now you know nothing about them. Madame de Mortsauf was right to place you high in life at the start; otherwise all women would have been against you, and you never would have risen in society. It is too late now to begin your training over again; too late to learn to tell us what we long to hear; to be superior to us at the right moment, or to worship our pettiness when it pleases us to be petty. We are not so silly as you think us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She lowered her eyes, remembering the moment to which I alluded, yet her glance turned to me beneath her eyelids, expressing the joy of a woman who finds the mere passing tones from her heart preferred to the delights of another love. The count was losing the game; he said he was tired, as an excuse to give it up, and we went to walk on the lawn while waiting for the carriage. When the count left us, such pleasure shone on my face that Madame de Mortsauf questioned me by a look of surprise and curiosity.
"Henriette does exist," I said. "You love me still. ”

“ The least word or gesture from Madame de Mortsauf were the sole events to which I attached importance. I was ignorant of what the privy council was, and knew as little of politics as of social life; my sole ambition was to love Henriette better than Petrarch loved Laura. This indifference made the duchess take me for a child. A large company assembled at Frapesle and we were thirty at table. What intoxication it is for a young man unused to the world to see the woman he loves more beautiful than all others around her, the centre of admiring looks ”

“ He now needed a confidant, as the hangman needs a helper.
"Try to question Madame de Mortsauf," he said after a pause, "and find out what is the matter. A woman always has secrets from her husband; but perhaps she will tell you what troubles her. I would sacrifice everything to make her happy, even to half my remaining days or half my fortune. She is necessary to my very life. If I have not that angel at my side as I grow old I shall be the most wretched of men. I do desire to die easy. Tell her I shall not be here long to trouble her. Yes, Felix, my poor friend, I am going fast, I know it. ”

“ Yet, had I refused to return I should have given Lady Dudley a triumph over Henriette. Arabella would then have taken me to Paris. To go now to Clochegourde was an open insult to Madame de Mortsauf; in that case Arabella was sure of me. Did any woman ever pardon such crimes against love? Unless she were an angel descended from the skies, instead of a purified spirit ascending to them, a loving woman would rather see her lover die than know him happy with another. ”

“ Who does not remember that poor young woman who poisoned herself, overcome by jealousy, which was perhaps killing Madame de Mortsauf? Who has not shuddered at the fate of that enchanting young girl who perished after two years of marriage, like a flower torn by the wind, the victim of her chaste ignorance, the victim of a villain with whom Ronquerolles, Montriveau, and de Marsay shake hands because he is useful to their political projects? ”

“ After three months of repression I was unable to content myself with the fate assigned me. I took Henriette’s hand and softly caressed it, trying to convey to her the ardor that invaded me. She became at once Madame de Mortsauf, and withdrew her hand; tears rolled from my eyes, she saw them and gave me a chilling look, as she offered her hand to my lips.
“You must know,” she said, “that this will cause me grief. A friendship that asks so great a favor is dangerous.”
Then I lost my self-control; I reproached her, I spoke of my sufferings, and the slight alleviation that I asked for them. ”

“ If she had loved me I should have seen upon her face when confronted with my sufferings that expression of a lioness in despair.
“Madame la comtesse, Monsieur le comte is worse.”
She breathed more freely and started to run towards Clochegourde, followed by me and by Madeleine.
“Follow me slowly,” she said, looking back; “don’t let the dear child overheat herself. You see how it is; Monsieur de Mortsauf took that walk in the sun which put him into a perspiration, and sitting under the walnut-tree may be the cause of a great misfortune.” ”

“ Three years later he died a very old man. (The Lily of the Valley, Cesar Birotteau, Jealousies of a Country Town, The Gondreville Mystery, Beatrix)
LENONCOURT (Duchesse de) , wife of the preceding, born in 1758, of a cold, severe, insincere, ambitious nature, was almost always unkind to her daughter, Madame de Mortsauf. ”

“ On his return to France from a journey to Italy with Madame Marbouty, he was overcome with grief at the news of the death of Madame de Berny. He found on his table a letter from her son Alexandre briefly announcing his mother's death.
But the novelist did not cease to respect her criticism:
"I resumed my work this morning; I am obeying the last words that Madame de Berny wrote me; 'I can die; I am sure that you have upon your brow the crown I wished there. The /Lys/ is a sublime work, without spot or flaw. Only, the death of Madame de Mortsauf does not need those horrible regrets ”

“ After due experience of married life, she came to the resolution of never leaving Clochegourde; for she saw the hysterical tendencies of the count’s nature, and feared the outbreaks which might be talked of in that gossipping and jealous neighborhood to the injury of her children. Thus, thanks to her, no one suspected Monsieur de Mortsauf’s real incapacity, for she wrapped his ruins in a mantle of ivy. The fickle, not merely discontented but embittered nature of the man found rest and ease in his wife; his secret anguish was lessened by the balm she shed upon it. ”

“ But I am a mother; I should make a poor jailer. Yes, I can suffer, but I cannot make others suffer. Never!" she said, "never! not even to obtain some great and honorable result. Besides, I should have to lie in my heart, disguise my voice, lower my head, degrade my gesture—do not ask of me such falsehoods. I can stand between Monsieur de Mortsauf and his children, I willingly receive his blows that they may not fall on others ”

“ Angry reproaches and contentions began once more; the count found a text for his continual complaints in the base ingratitude of women; he flung the carriage, horses, and liveries in his wife’s face twenty times a day. At last a circumstance occurred on which a man with his nature and his disease naturally fastened eagerly. The cost of the buildings at the Cassine and the Rhetoriere proved to be half as much again as the estimate. This news was unfortunately given in the first instance to Monsieur de Mortsauf instead of to his wife. ”

“ As La Godegrand had a very big basket of crowns, they founded a good family in Touraine, which still exists and is much respected, since M. de Mortsauf faithfully served Louis the Eleventh on different occasions. Only he never liked to come across gibbets or old women, and never again made amorous assignations in the night.
This teaches us to thoroughly verify and recognise women, and not to deceive ourselves in the local difference which exists between the old and the young, for if we are not hanged for our errors of love, there are always great risks to run. ”

“ MANETTE, under the Restoration at Clochegourde in Touraine, the Comtesse de Mortsauf's housekeeper, taking her mother's place in the care of her young master and mistress, Jacques and Madeleine de Mortsauf. ”

“ Then, I'll probably marry somebody who will beat me, and I shall like it, and it will make Morty so mad he won't be able to come around any more. Then we'll each think how nice the other one was all our lives."
"I can't marry a boy," Morton protested. "And if any one tried to beat Victoria, it wouldn't be Victoria who would go to the hospital. The fact of the matter is, the only thing for her is a nice, slender, yellow, fuzzy-haired pet from Madame Despard's kennels. She could ruffle it and love it, and go right on her rejoiceful way without worrying it or herself or any one else." ”

“ I read it calmly and with reflection, and afterwards said to the Abbess:
“What! You, sister, whose distress and horror I witnessed when our stern parents shut you up in a cloister,—are you now going to impose like fetters upon a young and interesting person, who dreads them, and rejects them as once you rejected them?”
Madame de Mortemart replied, “I was young then, and without experience, when I showed such childish repugnance as that of which you speak. At that age one knows nothing of religion nor of the eternal verities. ”

“ Be to Monsieur de Mortsauf what a sister of charity is to a sick man; listen to him, love him—no one loves him. Interpose between him and his children as I have done. Your task will not be a long one. Jacques will soon leave home to be in Paris near his grandfather, and you have long promised me to guide him through the dangers of that life. As for Madeleine, she will marry; I pray that you may please her. She is all myself, but stronger; she has the will in which I am lacking; the energy necessary for the companion of a man whose career destines him to the storms of political life ”

“ MARTIN, a woman of a Dauphine village, of which Doctor Benassis was mayor, kept the hospital children for three francs and a bar of soap each month. She was, possibly, the first person in the country seen by Genestas-Bluteau, and also the first to impart knowledge to him. (The Country Doctor)
MARTINEAU, name of two brothers employed by M. de Mortsauf in connection with his farms in Touraine. The elder was at first a farm-hand, then a steward; the younger, a warden. ”

“ She at once became gentle, sycophantic, almost caressing in manner, and assured me that the ceremony of taking the vow would be indefinitely postponed, although the Bishop of Lugon had already prepared his homily, and invitations had been issued to the nobility.
Madame de Mortemart is the very embodiment of subtlety and cunning. ”

“ MORTSAUF (Comte de) , head of a Touraine family, which owed to an ancestor of Louis XI.'s reign—a man who had escaped the gibbet—its fortune, coat-of-arms and position. The count was the incarnation of the "refugee." Exiled, either willingly or unwillingly, his banishment made him weak of mind and body. He married Blanche-Henriette de Lenoncourt, by whom he had two children, Jacques and Madeleine. On the accession of the Bourbons he was breveted field-marshal, but did not leave Clochegourde, a castle brought to him in his wife's dowry and situated on the banks of the Indre and the Cher. ”

“ Bertha Morton presented her husband with a fine boy, and scarcely had the young gentleman—Ronald Morton he was to be called—given notice of his arrival in the world by a lusty fit of crying, and had been exhibited in due form to his father, than the wise woman who attended on such occasions was now moving in hot haste to the castle of Lunnasting, to afford her aid to Donna Hilda, who was, it is said, in sore pain and distress. Alas! she had no fond husband to cheer and console her; no one to whom she could show with pride and joy the little creature about to be born into the world. ”

“ Such was Mademoiselle de Mortemart’s grief that life became unbearable to her. Beautiful, witty, and accomplished, she quitted the world where she was beloved, and, at the age of seventeen, took the veil at Fontevrault.
So severely had she blamed the conduct of Mademoiselle de la Valliere, while often vehemently denouncing that which she termed the disorder at Court, that, since the birth of the Duc du Maine, I had not gone to the convent to see her. We were like unto persons both most anxious to break off an intimacy and yet who had not done so. ”

“ Monsieur de Mortsauf calls me Blanche. One only person, the one I have most loved, my dear aunt, called me Henriette. I will be Henriette once more, to you.”
I took her hand and kissed it. She left it in mine with the trustfulness that makes a woman so far superior to men; a trustfulness that shames us. She was leaning on the brick balustrade and gazing at the river.
“Are you not unwise, my friend, to rush at a bound to the extremes of friendship? You have drained the cup, offered in all sincerity, at a draught. It is true that a real feeling is never piecemeal ”

“ Morton smiled. "Victoria never harmed a fly in all her life. She's too much of a man to strike a fallen enemy, and, besides, once her own character is cleared, she'll never think about the matter again—she has too many things of more importance to employ her mind,—she's too busy."
The lady looked incredulous. "I hardly think," she said, sententiously, "that you understand women, Mr. Conway."
Morton rose. "I don't pretend to, Mrs. Ford, I assure you. But Victoria is particularly a tomboy, and I think I can answer for her mental progressions. ”