But, nevertheless, Madame de Précy the next day departed.
On a clear, fresh May morning the young woman arrived at Meneaux. It is at the seaside, a delightful moment when spring, like a tiny child on its uncertain legs, hesitatingly treads there. The sparse, backward vegetation is more rugged than elsewhere; the blue of the sky has a deeper tint, and in the salt air there is something bracing and healthful which brings red to the cheek and peace to the soul.
For Madame de Précy's occupation, Madame Bénard had prepared, on the second floor, a large bedchamber, wainscoted in oak and hung with old sulphur-colored damask, which on one side overlooked a wide expanse of flat country, broken only here and there by a rock or a thin cluster of reeds; and on the other a pine wood ceaselessly murmuring in the breeze.
After she had emptied her trunks and made herself at home in her room, Madame de Précy found plenty of time for reflection. Nature offers to those who at a moral crisis fly to her, many consolations. By a sort of reflex action, she deadens pain, soothes and cheers. Her immutability, her apparent egotism, are good advisers. Before her who does not pass away one learns to see that everything else will do so, our little happinesses as well as our great sorrows; and the order which in everything she observes incites us to order also our hearts and minds. Madame de Précy began to think, and more seriously than for many and many a long day before. She reviewed her entire past life, beginning with the first white pages of cradle, dolls, first communion, long skirts and balls, next turning to the chapter of marriage. Her life had not been a romance, scarcely even a story, but very ordinary, without great joys, great catastrophes, or anything striking. Every night she had gone to bed with the secret hope that the next day something might happen. During the nine years of her married life, the sun had risen many times, but never had anything happened. Little by little she and her husband had become embittered, and perhaps he also, without being willing to admit it, had suffered from that monotony to some beings so irritating—monotony of things, hours, events, crimes, heroisms, vices, seasons, rain, sun, admirations, and anticipations. Her husband was not a man to be despised: cultivated, distinguished, honorable, sometimes (only sometimes) tender-hearted—in fact, admirable—yet impossible to live with. So, while deploring her fate, in the bloom of youth finding herself thus alone and in a false position, she did not, however, regret the impulse to which she had yielded. She would not know happiness, but she could have peace. One can not expect everything at once. Without feeling that her dignity was compromised, she gladly accepted the society of Madame Bénard, the old housekeeper in charge of the château, and yet, as a rule, she was haughty. But Madame Bénard had brought up Monsieur de Précy, and then the country equalizes; its solitude brings together human beings, raising a little those who are below, and lowering a little those who are above, so that Madame de Précy and the good old lady—for a lady she really was—soon became friends.
On the day Madame Bénard took Madame de Précy through the château, she went first to a large room on the third story, and, as she pushed open the door, said: "I want to begin by showing you everything connected with Monsieur's childhood. This is the room where Monsieur played and amused himself when he was a little boy." Then she opened closets where lay balls, drums, trumpets, boxes of tin soldiers, games of patience, checkers, and dominoes, saying as one after another she fingered them: "These were Monsieur's playthings when he was a little boy." And suddenly she pulled from a heap a doll with a broken nose. "See, Madame! he even had a doll, that boy; he called her Pochette, and when he kissed her he used to say: 'She shall be my wife!' Was it not ludicrous? Well, he would not say that now. He has something better." Madame de Précy did not reply. The housekeeper questioned: "It must agitate you to see all these things?"—"Yes, Madame Bénard."
Then the old lady took her to see the room where Monsieur used to sleep; sometimes forgetting herself, instead of Monsieur, she said Louis; and Madame de Précy was strangely moved at hearing pronounced by another that name she had so often called, but might never say again. The room where her husband used to study was next exhibited, with its shelves still filled by his old school-books and copy-books. One of the latter was seized by Madame Bénard, who, tendering it to Madame de Précy, cried: "See how well Monsieur wrote when he was a little boy." And traced in large, uncertain letters she read: "Let us love one another." Then she exclaimed: "I should like to go out into the air; I do not feel quite well."
They went out of doors, and for some moments silently walked about. When a large pond, on which floated two beautiful white swans, was presently approached, Madame Bénard announced: "Here is the pond where Monsieur kept his boat when he was a little boy. One evening he came near drowning himself. I shall never forget that."
When, a few steps farther on, they reached an old straight-backed, moss-grown wooden bench, on either side of which stood a tall earthenware vase, she cried: "This is the bench where Monsieur used to sit and read when he was a little boy."
Next they entered the vegetable garden, and Madame Bénard, walking at once toward a little plot, enclosed by a hedge of box, said again: "This was Monsieur's garden when he was a little boy."