“As a virgin Mary, hidden behind her veil, beneath her white crown.”
“As a virgin visible.”
“As a sister?”
“As a sister too dearly loved.”
“With chivalry and without hope?”
“With chivalry and with hope.”
“As if you were still twenty years of age, and wearing that absurd blue coat?”
“Oh better far! I love you thus, and I also love you”—she looked at me with keen apprehension—“as you loved your aunt.”
“I am happy! You dispel my terrors,” she said, returning towards the family, who were surprised at our private conference. “Be still a child at Clochegourde—for you are one still. It may be your policy to be a man with the king, but here, let me tell you, monsieur, your best policy is to remain a child. As a child you shall be loved. I can resist a man, but to a child I can refuse nothing, nothing! He can ask for nothing I will not give him.—Our secrets are all told,” she said, looking at the count with a mischievous air, in which her girlish, natural self reappeared. “I leave you now; I must go and dress.”
Never for three years had I heard her voice so richly happy. For the first time I heard those swallow cries, the infantile notes of which I told you. I had brought Jacques a hunting outfit, and for Madeleine a work-box—which her mother afterwards used. The joy of the two children, delighted to show their presents to each other, seemed to annoy the count, always dissatisfied when attention was withdrawn from himself. I made a sign to Madeleine and followed her father, who wanted to talk to me of his ailments.