And as if she were following for herself alone the thread of her own reflections:—
"That will bring them together, perhaps."
"What will, Mother?" asked Elizabeth. Mme. Derize looked at her, as if she had come back from afar, and said smilingly:
"Oh, nothing, my dear girl. One sometimes has strange ideas ..."
The life of these two women at Saint-Martin d'Uriage was quite simple and monotonous. The care of the children, some reading, walks, and a little music or long conversations in the evening filled their days, which began and ended early. Mme. Derize often walked along the plane avenue which led to the Chapel. As Elizabeth did not accompany her there, she chose, by preference, the time when the latter took Marie Louise and Philippe out walking in the open air, in the woods or meadows nearby. Her limbs soon felt the fatigue which her mind, remaining active and even keen until old age, did not know.
Elizabeth, recalling that Albert had praised the benefit of physical fatigue in his note-books, trained herself to take a longer walk each day. At the beginning she had to listen to sarcasm from Marie Louise, who ran down the roads like a hare and reproached Philippe and her mother for their laziness. Little by little, as her physical condition improved, she covered greater distances and found that she took a new pleasure in this exercise that she had formerly disliked. On the slopes of Chamrousse, as far from the house as the little legs of her son would allow him to go, she looked with surprise (as if she had only just discovered them) at the high arches formed by the pine trees with their straight tops, resembling the columns of a cathedral. She was impressed by them with a sense of awe. Nature ceased to be to her, as in the previous autumn, a sorrowful companion.
Almost every evening, from the porch, she watched night come on. The flocks and their shepherds, who crowded around the pond, gave her that feeling of peace, which, at the close of day, the country exhales like a perfume.
Marie Louise had to admit that her mother walked almost as well as she did.
"But you can't run!"
"Let us try."