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Updated: May 3, 2025
Madame de Tecle, in using this opportunity of giving her daughter a lesson on reserve and on convenance, avoided treating the matter too seriously and even seemed to laugh heartily at it, although she had little inclination to do so, and the child finished by laughing with her.
Therefore Madame de Tecle and her daughter, in his presence, were compelled to make only half utterances, and maintain great reserve as much as if he had been a stranger.
After some weeks of almost daily intercourse, M. des Rameures graciously praised his young neighbor as a charming fellow, an excellent musician, an amiable associate; but, regarding him as a possible deputy, he saw some things which might disqualify him. Madame de Tecle feared this, and did not hide it from M. de Camors.
One of the windows was open, owing to the heat of the evening. Camors hid himself behind the shutters, which were half closed, and gazed eagerly into the chamber. He had not seen for two years either his wife, his child, or Madame de Tecle. He now saw all three there. Madame de Tecle was working near the chimney. Her face was unchanged.
The doctor was obliged to content himself with the essence of coffee, which the servant was ordered to prepare in haste, and to send to the village for the other things needed. "To the village!" cried Madame de Tecle. "Good heavens! it is four leagues it is night, and we shall have to wait probably three or four hours!"
She extended her hand, wet with her tears, which he took and pressed to his lips, bowed low, and left the room. If there ever was a moment in his fatal career when the young man was really worthy of admiration, it was this. His love for Madame de Tecle, however unworthy of her it might be, was nevertheless great. It was the only true passion he had ever felt.
She herself abandoned the old habitation of the Comte de Tecle, to install herself near her daughter in the modest chateau which belonged to the maternal ancestors of M. de Camors, and which we have already described in another place, with its solemn avenue, its balustrades of granite, its labyrinths of hornbeams and the black fishpond, shaded with poplars.
Camors himself, three fourths of the time, would bring him in before going out in the evening. "I bring you Vautrot, my dear," he would say, "and Shakespeare. You can read him together." Vautrot read well; and though his heavy declamatory style frequently annoyed the Countess, she thus managed to kill many a long evening, while waiting the expected visit of Madame de Tecle.
"If you do not object to a short walk in the sun," said Madame de Tecle at length, "let us walk to meet my uncle. We are almost sure to meet him." Camors bowed. Madame de Tecle rose and rang the bell: "Ask Mademoiselle Marie," she said to the servant, "to be kind enough to put on her hat and join us."
In this solitude, and on a space of cleared ground, rose a sort of rude hut, constructed by a poor devil who was a sabot-maker by trade, and who had been allowed to establish himself there by the Comte de Tecle, and to use the beech-trees to gain his humble living. This Bohemian interested Madame de Tecle, probably because, like M. de Camors, he had a bad reputation.
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