that no man will ever have more devoted
feelings--"

Up to this moment Madeleine had listened with lowered eyes; now she
stopped me by a gesture.

"Monsieur," she said, in a voice trembling with emotion. "I know all
your thoughts; but I shall not change my feelings towards you. I would
rather fling myself into the Indre than ally myself to you. I will not
speak to you of myself, but if my mother's name still possesses any
power over you, in her name I beg you never to return to Clochegourde
so long as I am in it. The mere sight of you causes me a repugnance I
cannot express, but which I shall never overcome."

She bowed to me with dignity, and returned to the house without looking
back, impassible as her mother had been for one day only, but more
pitiless. The searching eye of that young girl had discovered, though
tardily, the secrets of her mother's heart, and her hatred to the man
whom she fancied fatal to her mother's life may have been increased by a
sense of her innocent complicity.

All before me was now chaos. Madeleine hated me, without considering
whether I was the cause or the victim of these misfortunes. She might
have hated us equally, her mother and me, had we been happy. Thus it was
that the edifice of my happiness fell in ruins. I alone knew the life of
that unknown, noble woman. I alone had entered every region of her
soul; neither mother, father, husband, nor children had ever known
her.--Strange truth! I stir this heap of ashes and take pleasure in
spreading them before you; all hearts may find something in them of
their closest experience. How many families have had their Henriette!
How many noble feelings have left this earth with no historian to fathom
their hearts, to measure the depth and breadth of their spirits. Such is
human life in all its truth! Often mothers know their children as little
as their children know them. So it is with husbands, lovers, brothers.
Did I imagine that one day, beside my father's coffin, I should contend
with my brother Charles, for whose advancement I had done so much? Good
God! how many lessons in the simplest history.

When Madeleine disappeared into the house, I went away with a broken
heart. Bidding farewell to my host at Sache, I started for Paris,
following the right bank of the Indre, the one I had taken when I
entered the valley for the first time. Sadly I drove through the pretty
village of Pont-de-Ruan. Yet I was rich, political life courted me;
I wa