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Updated: May 31, 2025
But the duchess returned at last to the pomps and vanities of the court, and Clochegourde recovered its accustomed order.
He declared that if he had had the management of Clochegourde he should be twice as rich as he now was. He shouted these complaints and insults, he swore, he sprang around the room knocking against the furniture and displacing it; then in the middle of a sentence he stopped short, complained that his very marrow was on fire, his brains melting away like his money, his wife had ruined him!
If, the night before, I had allowed Lady Dudley to depart alone, if I had then returned to Clochegourde, where, it may be, Henriette awaited me, perhaps perhaps Madame de Mortsauf might not so cruelly have resolved to be my sister. But now she paid me many ostentatious attentions, playing her part vehemently for the very purpose of not changing it.
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.
Being thus, in a hidden way, the mistress of the estate, she had slowly and with a woman's persistency rebuilt two of the farm-houses on the principle of those in Artois and Flanders. It is easy to see her motive. She wished, after the expiration of the leases on shares, to relet to intelligent and capable persons for rental in money, and thus simplify the revenues of Clochegourde.
When the meal was over I went down, in spite of the heat, to the meadow-lands for another sight of the Indre and its isles, the valley and its slopes, of which I seemed so passionate an admirer. But once there, thanks to a swiftness of foot like that of a loose horse, I returned to my punt, the willows, and Clochegourde. All was silent and palpitating, as a landscape is at midday in summer.
Another consideration forbade my return to Clochegourde, Madeleine's hostility. That hard young girl was not disposed to modify her hatred beside her mother's coffin. Between the count, who would have talked to me incessantly of himself, and the new mistress of the house, who would have shown me invincible dislike, I should have found myself horribly annoyed.
I may feel paltry and small in this dreadful vale of life where myriads of human beings now dust make the surface of the globe, small indeed among that crowd, hurrying beneath the luminous spaces which light them; but what sense of humiliation could equal that with which I watched her calm white figure inflexibly mounting with even steps the terraces of her chateau of Clochegourde, the pride and the torture of that Christian Dido?
I listened admiringly to his plans; and with an involuntary flattery which won his good-will, I envied him the estate and its outlook a terrestrial paradise, I called it, far superior to Frapesle. "Frapesle," I said, "is a massive piece of plate, but Clochegourde is a jewel-case of gems," a speech which he often quoted, giving credit to its author.
On the present occasion, two years' residence in Paris, constant intercourse with the king, the habits of a life at ease, my completed growth, a youthful countenance, which derived a lustre from the placidity of the soul within magnetically united with the pure soul that beamed on me from Clochegourde, all these things combined had transformed me.
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