ers, that is all," I said; "I will be silent
henceforth."

"Your generosity shames me," she said, raising her eyes to heaven.

We reached the terrace and found the count sitting in a chair, in the
sun. The sight of that sunken face, scarcely brightened by a feeble
smile, extinguished the last flames that came from the ashes. I leaned
against the balustrade and considered the picture of that poor wreck,
between his sickly children and his wife, pale with her vigils, worn
out by extreme fatigue, by the fears, perhaps also by the joys of these
terrible months, but whose cheeks now glowed from the emotions she had
just passed through. At the sight of that suffering family beneath the
trembling leafage through which the gray light of a cloudy autumn sky
came dimly, I felt within me a rupture of the bonds which hold the body
to the spirit. There came upon me then that moral spleen which, they
say, the strongest wrestlers know in the crisis of their combats, a
species of cold madness which makes a coward of the bravest man, a bigot
of an unbeliever, and renders those it grasps indifferent to all things,
even to vital sentiments, to honor, to love--for the doubt it brings
takes from us the knowledge of ourselves and disgusts us with life
itself. Poor, nervous creatures, whom the very richness of your
organization delivers over to this mysterious, fatal power, who are your
peers and who your judges? Horrified by the thoughts that rose within
me, and demanding, like the wicked man, "Where is now thy God?" I could
not restrain the tears that rolled down my cheeks.

"What is it, dear Felix?" said Madeleine in her childish voice.

Then Henriette put to flight these dark horrors of the mind by a look of
tender solicitude which shone into my soul like a sunbeam. Just then the
old huntsman brought me a letter from Tours, at sight of which I made a
sudden cry of surprise, which made Madame de Mortsauf tremble. I saw the
king's signet and knew it contained my recall. I gave her the letter and
she read it at a glance.

"What will become of me?" she murmured, beholding her desert sunless.

We fell into a stupor of thought which oppressed us equally; never
had we felt more strongly how necessary we were to one another. The
countess, even when she spoke indifferently of other things, seemed to
have a new voice, as if the instrument had lost some chords and others
were out of tune. Her movements were apathetic, her eyes without light.
I