Will gold protect you from Eternity?
Are you happier, any happier at all?
Life was a search for the happiness that is the secret of the world. The key was not of Gold.
CHAPTER XXXIV: I BECOME A DAUGHTER
We had arranged to spend a certain day in Rouen, but when the day came I did not feel well: I was tired and inclined to be feverish. The first sign of a coming illness, to which bad dreams and bad conscience (Money) were each contributing. I asked to be left at home. The Countess and the two girls went away by the early train; de Fouquier also was to be absent for a whole day, visiting some distant farms. I was alone.
I was restless, and could not settle down to read or even to think. A ride might cheer me up, I decided, so I went down to the stables and ordered the horse I always rode. Then I went upstairs and put on my riding-habit. By the time I was downstairs again, I felt tired and disinclined. I sent the horse away, and threw myself down in a chair in the great dining-room, without changing back into my ordinary clothes. I still had the whip in my hand.
I cannot have been more than half awake, for though I had a dim notion of Gabrielle retreating through the curtains and depositing a gentleman in the room, I remember nothing in the way of announcement or explanation. Some one was there: who or how or why I did not know. I took in that he was tall, dressed like a gentleman, and silver-haired; but at his face, for some vaguely-felt reason of half-awakeness or self-consciousness or fear, I could not look.
"Good day, Sir," I said, shunning his eyes, "pray won't you sit down." Naturally I spoke in French.