I answered in monosyllables, mostly
acquiescent, avoiding discussion; but Monsieur de Mortsauf had too much
sense not to perceive the meaning of my politeness. Presently he was
angry at being always in the right; he grew refractory, his eyebrows and
the wrinkles of his forehead worked, his yellow eyes blazed, his rufous
nose grew redder, as it did on the day I first witnessed an attack of
madness. Henriette gave me a supplicating look, making me understand
that she could not employ on my behalf an authority to which she
had recourse to protect her children. I at once answered the count
seriously, taking up the political question, and managing his peevish
spirit with the utmost care.

"Poor dear! poor dear!" she murmured two or three times; the words
reaching my ear like a gentle breeze. When she could intervene with
success she said, interrupting us, "Let me tell you, gentlemen, that you
are very dull company."

Recalled by this conversation to his chivalrous sense of what was due to
a woman, the count ceased to talk politics, and as we bored him in our
turn by commonplace matters, he presently left us to continue our walk,
declaring that it made his head spin to go round and round on the same
path.

My sad conjectures were true. The soft landscape, the warm atmosphere,
the cloudless skies, the soothing poetry of this valley, which for
fifteen years had calmed the stinging fancies of that diseased mind,
were now impotent. At a period of life when the asperities of other
men are softened and their angles smoothed, the disposition of this man
became more and more aggressive. For the last few months he had taken
a habit of contradicting for the sake of contradiction, without reason,
without even trying to justify his opinions; he insisted on knowing the
why and the wherefore of everything; grew restless under a delay or
an omission; meddled with every item of the household affairs, and
compelled his wife and the servants to render him the most minute
and fatiguing account of all that was done; never allowing them the
slightest freedom of action. Formerly he did not lose his temper except
for some special reason; now his irritation was constant. Perhaps the
care of his farms, the interests of agriculture, an active out-door life
had formerly soothed his atrabilious temper by giving it a field for its
uneasiness, and by furnishing employment for his activity. Possibly the
loss of such occupation had allowed his malady to