She awaited their arrival with a growing impatience, as though she
felt, in addition to her filial affection, the need of opening her
heart to honest hearts, to talk with frankness to pure-minded people,
devoid of all infamy, all of whose life, actions and thoughts had been
upright at all times.
What she now felt was a sort of moral isolation, amid all this
immorality, and, although she had learned suddenly to disseminate,
although she received the comtesse with outstretched hand and smiling
lips, she felt this consciousness of hollowness, this contempt for
humanity increasing and enveloping her, and the petty gossip of the
district gave her a still greater disgust, a still lower opinion of
her fellow creatures.
The immorality of the peasants shocked her, and this warm spring
seemed to stir the sap in human beings as well as in plants. Jeanne
did not belong to the race of peasants who are dominated by their
lower instincts. Julien one day awakened her aversion anew by telling
her a coarse story that had been told to him and that he considered
very amusing.
When the travelling carriage stopped at the door and the happy face of
the baron appeared at the window Jeanne was stirred with so deep an
emotion, such a tumultuous feeling of affection as she had never
before experienced. But when she saw her mother she was shocked and
almost fainted. The baroness, in six months, had aged ten years. Her
heavy cheeks had grown flabby and purple, as though the blood were
congested; her eyes were dim and she could no longer move about unless
supported under each arm. Her breathing was difficult and wheezing and
affected those near her with a painful sensation.
When Jeanne had taken them to their room, she retired to her own in
order to have a good cry, as she was so upset. Then she went to look
for her father, and throwing herself into his arms, she exclaimed, her
eyes still full of tears: "Oh, how mother is changed! What is the
matter with her? Tell me, what is the matter?" He was much surprised
and replied: "Do you think so? What an idea! Why, no. I have never
been away from her. I assure you that I do not think she looks ill.
She always looks like that."
That evening Julien said to his wife: "Your mother is in a pretty bad
way. I think she will not last long." And as Jeanne burst out sobbing,
he became annoyed. "Come, I did not say there was no hope for her. You
always exaggerate everything. She is changed, that's all. She is no
longer young."
The baroness was not able to walk any distance and only went out for
half an hour each day to take one turn in her avenue and then she
would sit on the bench. And when she felt unequal to walking to the
end of her avenue, she would say: "Let us stop; my hypertrophy is
breaking my legs today." She hardly ever laughed now as she did the
previous year at anything that amused her, but only smiled. As she
could see to read excellently, she passed hours reading "Corinne" or
Lamartine's "Meditations." Then she would ask for her drawer of
"souvenirs," and emptying her cherished letters on her lap, she would
place the drawer on a chair beside her and put back, one by one, her
"relics," after she had slowly gone over them. And when she was alone,
quite alone, she would kiss some of them, as one kisses in secret a
lock of hair of a loved one passed away.
Sometimes Jeanne, coming in abruptly, would find her weeping and would
exclaim: "What is the matter, little mother?" And the baroness,
sighing deeply, would reply: "It is my 'relics' that make me cry. They
stir remembrances that were so delightful and that are now past
forever, and one is reminded of persons whom one had forgotten and
recalls once more. You seem to see them, to hear them and it affects
you strangely. You will feel this later."
When the baron happened to come in at such times he would say gently:
"Jeanne, dearie, take my advice and burn your letters, all of
them--your mother's, mine, everyone's. There is nothing more dreadful,
when one is growing old, than to look back to one's youth." But Jeanne
also kept her letters, was preparing a chest of "relics" in obedience to
a sort of hereditary instinct of dreamy sentimentality, although she
differed from her mother in every other way.
The baron was obliged to leave them some days later, as he had some
business that called him away.