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Updated: June 4, 2025
A paltry clock, between two copper-gilt candlesticks, decorated the mantel-shelf. Beside Madame de la Chanterie was an ancient table with spindle legs, on which lay her balls of worsted in a wicker basket. A hydrostatic lamp lighted the scene.
Two years after his death Madame de la Chanterie discovered that a second Madame de la Chanterie existed, widowed like herself, and, like her, ruined. That bigamist had found two angels incapable of discarding him.
Except the gay and cheery goodman Alain, all these persons had suffered; but Monsieur Nicolas himself seemed to give the palm of martyrdom to Madame de la Chanterie. Nevertheless, the memory of her sorrows was so restrained by religious resignation, by her secret avocations, that she seemed to have been always happy.
The presence of this great lady in Madame de la Chanterie's salon was sufficiently surprising; but the manner in which the two women met and treated each other seemed to Godefroid inexplicable; for it showed the closest intimacy and a constant intercourse which gave Madame de la Chanterie an added value in his eyes.
Godefroid was wearing polished leather boots, yellow gloves, handsome studs, and a very pretty gold chain passed through the buttonhole of his waistcoat of black silk with blue flowers. Madame de la Chanterie took a little silver whistle from her pocket and blew it. The serving-woman came. "Manon, my child, show this gentleman the apartment.
The blow, when it came to a life so devoted, so pure, so truly religious as that of a woman already tested by many trials, gave Madame de la Chanterie a distrust of herself which served to isolate her from her daughter; and all the more because her daughter, in compensation for her misfortunes, exacted complete liberty, ruled her mother, and was even, at times, unkind to her.
He did not look about him, being seized with curiosity as to Madame de la Chanterie, whose name was already a puzzle to him. This lady was evidently a person of another epoch, not to say of another world. Her face was placid, its tones both soft and cold; the nose aquiline; the forehead full of sweetness; the eyes brown; the chin double; and all were framed in silvery white hair.
The next morning at eight o'clock, Baron Bourlac knocked at the old yellow door in the rue Chanoinesse, and asked for Madame de la Chanterie. The portress showed him the portico. Happily it was the breakfast hour.
Thus it happened that one day a day made solemn by the power of the spirit within him Godefroid again went up to see the good old Alain, him whom Madame de la Chanterie called her "lamb," the member of the community who seemed to Godefroid the least imposing, the most approachable member of the fraternity, intending to obtain from him some definite light on the conditions of the sacred work to which these brothers of God were dedicated.
The old man, whose little estate of la Chanterie was between Caen and Saint-Lo, often heard regrets expressed before him that so perfect a young girl, and one so capable of rendering a husband happy, should be condemned to pass her life in a convent.
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