We do not know exactly what Alfred and Valentine were talking
about in the garden-walk, as running from side to side to form their bouquet they chanced so often to meet. But, under the arbor, they were more grave, calmer, and certainly more mature, and they spoke of business.
“If you will permit it, my dear friend, I should like the young couple to live in my house,” said M. Maubars. “It is, I may say, without vanity, one of the most comfortable and best furnished in the town. As to me, you know, I am becoming a monk, or a bear, or a house-rat. The rolling of the half-dozen coaches and the three or four cabs our town possesses is sufficient to trouble my digestion, and almost deafens me; so I think, in order to plant my cabbages in peace, I had better lodge in the pavilion of my large garden at Vaux, which is not more than a league from the town. My good old Baptistine will accompany me, and keep the pot boiling. Every evening the children can come and see me, that is, every fine evening; and you can have them right by you—nothing to do but cross the street, and walk a few steps on the quay, ring the little bell, the latch will fly up, and there will be Valentine in a clean dress and red ribbon coming to meet you, for her delicate hearing would distinguish your step among a thousand others on the same pavement.”
“Poor dear child! I don’t want to be selfish, and yet it is hard to part with her,” murmured Madame de Guers, while stifling a sigh.
“Do you call that parting with her, when I tell you she will be right under your eye? And then, my dear friend, I must tell you you have become very worldly of late. You are obliged to accompany Valentine to this and that soirée, and it fatigues you, absorbs and puts you out altogether. When it comes my
Alfred’s turn to do all this for her, you will see how you will improve, and old ladies always recover so naturally. Confess it, my dear Madame de Guers, have you not for some time been very negligent of yourself and your old people?”
“Alas, yes! poor good old people!” replied the respectable lady, with a sweet smile. “Yet every morning, after Mass, I stop to see them. True, my child monopolizes much of the time I should give to them, but she loves them too: she has so excellent a heart! How often I have seen her, when quite a child, take from her weekly allowance to buy jujube for old Manou, who has catarrh so badly, and tobacco for Périne, whose happiness is in smoking! And how she takes care of them when necessary, my friend! How merry she makes them, and consoles them, and reads them good books, and the Scripture she explains so prettily! In truth, this humble work will not perish with me: I have some one to whom I can confide it.”
This demands an explanation. Madame de Guers was not only an excellent, tender, and devoted mother, a constant and generous friend, but she was, at the same time, profoundly pious and sincerely charitable. The death of M. de Guers had left in her soul a bitter and secret sorrow, which she had never been able to console. The former lieutenant of the service, in spite of the solicitations and tears of his Christian and devoted wife, had bid farewell to this world in a manner far from exemplary, dying, without doubt, peaceably and bravely enough, but without repentance, without hope, without penitence, neither fixing his eyes on the cross nor listening to the absolution of the curé. So, for the poor, tender soul of the wife there remained a gnawing regret, a continual
terror, and at the price of any austerities, of any sacrifices, she wished to secure the eternal salvation of this obstinate husband. God only knows what mortifications she practised in secret, to gain a little every day towards the tender and sublime end she proposed; and, above all, she openly redoubled her works of fervor and charity. A part of the money left her by her husband had been employed by her in a house of refuge, where ten or twelve old, infirm women, the very poorest of the department, could live comfortably and in peace until the end of their days, and at the low price of reciting every day from their bench in the chapel a prayer for the repose and salvation of the soul of Jean Louis de Guers, former officer of the king’s fleet. We said before that Madame de Guers had given Valentine all her heart, her time, and her life: we should, nevertheless, have remarked that she reserved a portion for the poor old recluses of her little hospital, not finding it a difficult matter to reconcile, in her humble and peaceable existence, happiness and duty, charity and love.
“My dear old pensioners,” she said again, while regarding from a distance her charming adopted daughter, who smiled on her from amidst the shady trees, “they will be truly happy to find after me this dear child, who will, I am sure, possess the courage and strength to replace me. Good little Valentine! she has already given them, in my name, a portion of her heart, and to do so she needs to be as generous as in truth she is, for I could have given a much more brilliant heritage to this dear child had I not already adopted my old people. Her mother, alas! died without fortune, and for me, I have still remaining forty