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Updated: June 4, 2025
Little by little he began to see clearly into this vast work, and his desire to co-operate in it increased. He was preparing at nine o'clock to return on foot to the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse; but Madame de la Chanterie, fearing the solitude of that neighborhood at a late hour, made him take a cab.
"Forgive me, madame," said Godefroid; "I do desire, from this time forth, to be worthy of you. I will submit to any trial you think necessary before initiating me into the secrets of your work; and if the Abbe de Veze will undertake to instruct me I will listen to him, soul and mind." These words made Madame de la Chanterie so happy that a faint color stole upon her cheeks.
"Oh, it is not very considerable!" added Madame de la Chanterie, rather hastily, as if she feared that Godefroid might think these remarks a bait. "There are thirty acres of tilled land," said one of the two personages still unknown to Godefroid, "six of meadow, and an enclosure containing four acres, in which our house, which adjoins the farmhouse, stands."
His mind conceived the state of that wild country where lingered still the memory of the Comtes de Bauvan, de Longuy, the exploits of Marche-a-Terre, the massacre at La Vivetiere, the death of the Marquis de Montauran of whose prowess Madame de la Chanterie had told him. This sort of vision of things, of men, of places was rapid.
She stuck her needles into her hair, held her work in her hand, and rose to open the door of a salon which looked out on the inner court. The dress of the woman was somewhat like that of the Sisters of Mercy. "Madame, I bring you a tenant," said the priest, ushering Godefroid into the salon, where the latter saw three persons sitting in armchairs near Madame de la Chanterie.
These people had been saved from a bankruptcy, which would have reduced them to misery, by the Baroness, acting in behalf of Madame de la Chanterie. In a few months comfort had taken the place of poverty, and Religion had found a home in hearts which once had cursed Heaven with the energy peculiar to Italian stove-fitters. So one of Madame Hulot's first visits was to this family.
The old man, delighted with the outset of the marriage, and believing in the reform of his son, sent the young couple to Paris. All this happened about the beginning of the year 1788. "Nearly a whole year of happiness followed. Madame de la Chanterie enjoyed during that time the tenderest care and the most delicate attentions that a man deeply in love can bestow upon a loving woman.
He saw a man, still young, but already celebrated, a poet, whom he had frequently met in society, Victor de Vernisset, on his knees before Madame de la Chanterie and kissing the hem of her dress. If the sky had fallen, and shivered to atoms like glass, as the ancients thought it was, Godefroid could not have been more astonished.
For Godefroid, the hotel de la Chanterie now held a woman and a book; day by day he loved the woman more; he discovered flowers buried beneath the snows of winter in her heart; he had glimpses of the joys of a sacred friendship which religion permits, on which the angels smile; a friendship which here united these five persons and against which no evil could prevail.
Godefroid went there at once, and obtained from Madame de la Chanterie the address of a painter who, for a moderate sum, agreed to whiten the ceilings, clean the windows, paint the woodwork, and stain the floors, within a week. Godefroid took the measure of the rooms, intending to put the same carpet in all of them, a green carpet of the cheapest kind.
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