made brief admissions,
and then blushed for them; but I soon perceived myself the increase of
trouble which the count's present want of regular occupation had brought
upon the household.

"Henriette," I said, after I had been there some days, "don't you think
you have made a mistake in so arranging the estate that the count has no
longer anything to do?"

"Dear," she said, smiling, "my situation is critical enough to take all
my attention; believe me, I have considered all my resources, and they
are now exhausted. It is true that the bickerings are getting worse
and worse. As Monsieur de Mortsauf and I are always together, I cannot
lessen them by diverting his attention in other directions; in fact the
pain would be the same to me in any case. I did think of advising him
to start a nursery for silk-worms at Clochegourde, where we have many
mulberry-trees, remains of the old industry of Touraine. But I reflected
that he would still be the same tyrant at home, and I should have
many more annoyances through the enterprise. You will learn, my dear
observer, that in youth a man's ill qualities are restrained by society,
checked in their swing by the play of passions, subdued under the fear
of public opinion; later, a middle-aged man, living in solitude, shows
his native defects, which are all the more terrible because so long
repressed. Human weaknesses are essentially base; they allow of neither
peace nor truce; what you yield to them to-day they exact to-morrow, and
always; they fasten on concessions and compel more of them. Power, on
the other hand, is merciful; it conforms to evidence, it is just and it
is peaceable. But the passions born of weakness are implacable. Monsieur
de Mortsauf takes an absolute pleasure in getting the better of me; and
he who would deceive no one else, deceives me with delight."

One morning as we left the breakfast table, about a month after my
arrival, the countess took me by the arm, darted through an iron gate
which led into the vineyard, and dragged me hastily among the vines.

"He will kill me!" she cried. "And I want to live--for my children's
sake. But oh! not a day's respite! Always to walk among thorns! to
come near falling every instant! every instant to have to summon all my
strength to keep my balance! No human being can long endure such strain
upon the system. If I were certain of the ground I ought to take, if my
resistance could be a settled thing, then my mind might concent