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Updated: May 31, 2025
In this great shipwreck I saw an isle on which I might be rescued. To live at Clochegourde with Madeleine, consecrating my life to hers, was a fate which satisfied the ideas of which my heart was full. But it was necessary to know the truth as to her real feelings. As I was bound to bid the count farewell, I went to Clochegourde to see him, and met him on the terrace.
The count's illness, caused perhaps by a chill under the walnut-tree, became alarming in a few hours. I went to Tours for a famous doctor named Origet, but was unable to find him until evening. He spent that night and the next day at Clochegourde.
I went on foot from park to park, from wood to wood, across the whole of upper Vendee, the Bocage and Poitou, changing my direction as danger threatened. I reached Saumur, from Saumur I went to Chinon, and from Chinon I reached, in a single night, the woods of Nueil, where I met the count on horseback; he took me up behind him and we reached Clochegourde without passing any one who recognized me.
"We profit by the new laws which we have neither brought about nor demanded," she said; "but we are neither place-hunters nor beggars; besides, as you know very well, neither Monsieur de Mortsauf nor I can leave Clochegourde. By my advice he has declined the command to which his rank entitled him at the Maison Rouge. We are quite content that my father should have the place.
The roads to the great farms all opened on an avenue which followed a straight line from Clochegourde to the main road leading to Chinon. The distance from the entrance of this avenue to Tours was only fifteen miles; tenants would never be wanting, especially now that everybody was talking of the count's improvements and the excellent condition of his land.
"Ah! we now own the river from Pont-de-Ruan to Clochegourde; Monsieur de Mortsauf has lately bought forty acres of the meadow lands with the savings of two years and the arrearage of his pension. Does that surprise you?" "Surprise me?" I cried; "I would that all the valley were yours." She answered me with a smile.
Madeleine clung to my hand. "Suppose we play a game of backgammon?" I said. "Let us go back; the rattle of the dice will drown the sound of the bells." We returned to Clochegourde, conversing by fits and starts. Once in the salon an indefinable uncertainty and dread took possession of us.
By acquiring the right to continue my work at Clochegourde you will blot out the faults I have not sufficiently expiated, though they are pardoned in heaven and also on earth, for he is generous and will forgive me. You see I am ever selfish; is it not the proof of a despotic love? I wish you to still love me in mine. Unable to be yours in life, I bequeath to you my thoughts and also my duties.
"Oh! nothing that would interest you," replied his wife. Monsieur de Listomere tranquilly returned to the reading of his paper, and presently said: "Ah! Madame de Mortsauf is dead; your poor brother has, no doubt, gone to Clochegourde." "Are you aware, monsieur," resumed the marquise, turning to Eugene, "that what you have just said is a great impertinence?"
She reached Clochegourde with great rapidity, passing through a gap in the wall and crossing the fields. I returned slowly. Henriette's words lighted my mind, but as the lightning falls and blasts the gathered harvest. On the river I had fancied I was her chosen one; now I felt bitterly the sincerity of her words. The lover who is not everything is nothing.
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