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Updated: May 23, 2025
M. de Camors rallied quickly from his weakness, if even he did not repent it. He spent eight days at Reuilly, remarking in the countenance of Madame de Tecle and in her manner toward him, more ease than formerly. On his return to Paris, with thoughtful care he made some changes in the interior arrangement of his mansion.
The long months which intervened between the annual apparition of Camors at Reuilly, filled up by Madame de Tecle with a single idea and by the sweet monotony of a regular life, passed more rapidly than the Count could have imagined. His own life, so active and so occupied, placed ages and abysses between each of his periodical voyages.
While making this transit he reflected that the path of ambition was not one of roses; and that it was hard for him, at the outset of his enterprise, to by compelled to encounter two faces likely to be as disquieting as those of Des Rameures and his niece. The domain of Reuilly consisted of two farms and of a house of some pretension, inhabited formerly by the maternal family of M. de Camors.
One morning toward the close of November, he received a despatch which made him understand, in telegraphic style, that his presence was immediately required at Reuilly, if he wished to be present at the birth of his son. Whenever social duties or courtesy were required of M. de Camors, he never hesitated.
One day when, from what Gobain told me, I believed in some chance of a reconciliation, I wrote by post a letter, in which I tried to propitiate my wife a letter written and re-written twenty times! I will not describe my agonies. I went from the Rue Payenne to the Rue de Reuilly like a condemned wretch going from the Palais de Justice to his execution, but he goes on a cart, and I was on foot.
His calm superiority asserted itself so mildly it was pardoned for its grace. Without a gayety unbecoming his mourning, he nevertheless made such lively sallies and such amusing jokes about his first mishaps at Reuilly as to break up the stiffness of the party. He conversed pleasantly with each one in turn, and, seeming to take the deepest interest in his affairs, put him at once at his ease.
After passing the few weeks of the honeymoon at Reuilly, the Comte and Comtesse de Camors returned to Paris and established themselves at their hotel in the Rue de l'Imperatrice.
He ended by confessing to Madame de Campvallon the goal of his excursions. The Comtesse de Camors, yielding to considerations the details of which would not be interesting, had continued to live at Reuilly since her husband had abandoned her. Reuilly was distant twelve leagues from Campvallon, which could be made shorter by a crosscut.
Her health supplied her with a natural excuse for not going, during that summer, to Campvallon, and also for keeping herself confined to her own room the day the Marquise visited Reuilly, accompanied by the General. Madame de Tecle received her with her usual kindness.
Sometimes he took his son with him, as if by chance. He sometimes attempted a little timid tenderness with his wife; and this awkwardness, on his part, was quite touching. "Marie," he said to her one day, "you, who are a fairy, wave your wand over Reuilly and make of it an island in mid-ocean."
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