The Lily of the Valley Part 10

Dear friend, there are certain little matters on which I may dwell, for I know them, and it comes within my province to impart them. Be not too confiding, nor frivolous, nor over enthusiastic, --three rocks on which youth often strikes. Too confiding a nature loses respect, frivolity brings contempt, and others take advantage of excessive enthusiasm. In the first place, Felix, you will never have more than two or three friends in the course of your life. Your entire confidence is their right; to give it to many is to betray your real friends. If you are more intimate with some men than with others keep guard over yourself; be as cautious as though you knew they would one day be your rivals, or your enemies; the chances and changes of life require this. Maintain an att.i.tude which is neither cold nor hot; find the medium point at which a man can safely hold intercourse with others without compromising himself. Yes, believe me, the honest man is as far from the base cowardice of Philinte as he is from the harsh virtue of Alceste. The genius of the poet is displayed in the mind of this true medium; certainly all minds do enjoy more the ridicule of virtue than the sovereign contempt of easy-going selfishness which underlies that picture of it; but all, nevertheless, are prompted to keep themselves from either extreme.

As to frivolity, if it causes fools to proclaim you a charming man, others who are accustomed to judge of men's capacities and fathom character, will winnow out your tare and bring you to disrepute, for frivolity is the resource of weak natures, and weakness is soon appraised in a society which regards its members as nothing more than organs--and perhaps justly, for nature herself puts to death imperfect beings. A woman's protecting instincts may be roused by the pleasure she feels in supporting the weak against the strong, and in leading the intelligence of the heart to victory over the brutality of matter; but society, less a mother than a stepmother, adores only the children who flatter her vanity.

As to ardent enthusiasm, that first sublime mistake of youth, which finds true happiness in using its powers, and begins by being its own dupe before it is the dupe of others, keep it within the region of the heart's communion, keep it for woman and for G.o.d. Do not hawk its treasures in the bazaars of society or of politics, where trumpery will be offered in exchange for them.

Believe the voice which commands you to be n.o.ble in all things when it also prays you not to expend your forces uselessly.

Unhappily, men will rate you according to your usefulness, and not according to your worth. To use an image which I think will strike your poetic mind, let a cipher be what it may, immeasurable in size, written in gold, or written in pencil, it is only a cipher after all. A man of our times has said, "No zeal, above all, no zeal!" The lesson may be sad, but it is true, and it saves the soul from wasting its bloom. Hide your pure sentiments, or put them in regions inaccessible, where their blossoms may be pa.s.sionately admired, where the artist may dream amorously of his master-piece. But duties, my friend, are not sentiments. To do what we ought is by no means to do what we like. A man who would give his life enthusiastically for a woman must be ready to die coldly for his country.

One of the most important rules in the science of manners is that of almost absolute silence about ourselves. Play a little comedy for your own instruction; talk of yourself to acquaintances, tell them about your sufferings, your pleasures, your business, and you will see how indifference succeeds pretended interest; then annoyance follows, and if the mistress of the house does not find some civil way of stopping you the company will disappear under various pretexts adroitly seized. Would you, on the other hand, gather sympathies about you and be spoken of as amiable and witty, and a true friend? talk to others of themselves, find a way to bring them forward, and brows will clear, lips will smile, and after you leave the room all present will praise you. Your conscience and the voice of your own heart will show you the line where the cowardice of flattery begins and the courtesy of intercourse ceases.

One word more about a young man's demeanor in public. My dear friend, youth is always inclined to a rapidity of judgment which does it honor, but also injury. This was why the old system of education obliged young people to keep silence and study life in a probationary period beside their elders. Formerly, as you know, n.o.bility, like art, had its apprentices, its pages, devoted body and soul to the masters who maintained them. To-day youth is forced in a hot-house; it is trained to judge of thoughts, actions, and writings with biting severity; it slashes with a blade that has not been fleshed. Do not make this mistake. Such judgments will seem like censures to many about you, who would sooner pardon an open rebuke than a secret wound. Young people are pitiless because they know nothing of life and its difficulties.

The old critic is kind and considerate, the young critic is implacable; the one knows nothing, the other knows all. Moreover, at the bottom of all human actions there is a labyrinth of determining reasons on which G.o.d reserves for himself the final judgment. Be severe therefore to none but yourself.

Your future is before you; but no one in the world can make his way unaided. Therefore, make use of my father's house; its doors are open to you; the connections that you will create for yourself under his roof will serve you in a hundred ways. But do not yield an inch of ground to my mother; she will crush any one who gives up to her, but she will admire the courage of whoever resists her.

She is like iron, which if beaten, can be fused with iron, but when cold will break everything less hard than itself. Cultivate my mother; for if she thinks well of you she will introduce you into certain houses where you can acquire the fatal science of the world, the art of listening, speaking, answering, presenting yourself to the company and taking leave of it; the precise use of language, the something--how shall I explain it?--which is no more superiority than the coat is the man, but without which the highest talent in the world will never be admitted within those portals.

I know you well enough to be quite sure I indulge no illusion when I imagine that I see you as I wish you to be; simple in manners, gentle in tone, proud without conceit, respectful to the old, courteous without servility, above all, discreet. Use your wit but never display it for the amus.e.m.e.nt of others; for be sure that if your brilliancy annoys an inferior man, he will retire from the field and say of you in a tone of contempt, "He is very amusing."

Let your superiority be leonine. Moreover, do not be always seeking to please others. I advise a certain coldness in your relations with men, which may even amount to indifference; this will not anger others, for all persons esteem those who slight them; and it will win you the favor of women, who will respect you for the little consequence that you attach to men. Never remain in company with those who have lost their reputation, even though they may not have deserved to do so; for society holds us responsible for our friends.h.i.+ps as well as for our enmities. In this matter let your judgments be slowly and maturely weighed, but see that they are irrevocable. When the men whom you have repulsed justify the repulsion, your esteem and regard will be all the more sought after; you have inspired the tacit respect which raises a man among his peers. I behold you now armed with a youth that pleases, grace which attracts, and wisdom with which to preserve your conquests. All that I have now told you can be summed up in two words, two old-fas.h.i.+oned words, "n.o.blesse oblige."

Now apply these precepts to the management of life. You will hear many persons say that strategy is the chief element of success; that the best way to press through the crowd is to set some men against other men and so take their places. That was a good system for the Middle Ages, when princes had to destroy their rivals by pitting one against the other; but in these days, all things being done in open day, I am afraid it would do you ill-service. No, you must meet your compet.i.tors face to face, be they loyal and true men, or traitorous enemies whose weapons are calumny, evil-speaking, and fraud. But remember this, you have no more powerful auxiliaries than these men themselves; they are their own enemies; fight them with honest weapons, and sooner or later they are condemned. As to the first of them, loyal men and true, your straightforwardness will obtain their respect, and the differences between you once settled (for all things can be settled), these men will serve you. Do not be afraid of making enemies; woe to him who has none in the world you are about to enter; but try to give no handle for ridicule or disparagement. I say _try_, for in Paris a man cannot always belong solely to himself; he is sometimes at the mercy of circ.u.mstances; you will not always be able to avoid the mud in the gutter nor the tile that falls from the roof. The moral world has gutters where persons of no reputation endeavor to splash the mud in which they live upon men of honor. But you can always compel respect by showing that you are, under all circ.u.mstances, immovable in your principles. In the conflict of opinions, in the midst of quarrels and cross-purposes, go straight to the point, keep resolutely to the question; never fight except for the essential thing, and put your whole strength into that.

You know how Monsieur de Mortsauf hates Napoleon, how he curses him and pursues him as justice does a criminal; demanding punishment day and night for the death of the Duc d'Enghien, the only death, the only misfortune, that ever brought the tears to his eyes; well, he nevertheless admired him as the greatest of captains, and has often explained to me his strategy. May not the same tactics be applied to the war of human interests; they would economize time as heretofore they economized men and s.p.a.ce. Think this over, for as a woman I am liable to be mistaken on such points which my s.e.x judges only by instinct and sentiment. One point, however, I may insist on; all trickery, all deception, is certain to be discovered and to result in doing harm; whereas every situation presents less danger if a man plants himself firmly on his own truthfulness. If I may cite my own case, I can tell you that, obliged as I am by Monsieur de Mortsauf's condition to avoid litigation and to bring to an immediate settlement all difficulties which arise in the management of Clochegourde, and which would otherwise cause him an excitement under which his mind would succ.u.mb, I have invariably settled matters promptly by taking hold of the knot of the difficulty and saying to our opponents: "We will either untie it or cut it!"

It will often happen that you do a service to others and find yourself ill-rewarded; I beg you not to imitate those who complain of men and declare them to be all ungrateful. That is putting themselves on a pedestal indeed! and surely it is somewhat silly to admit their lack of knowledge of the world. But you, I trust, will not do good as a usurer lends his money; you will do it--will you not?--for good's sake. n.o.blesse oblige. Nevertheless, do not bestow such services as to force others to ingrat.i.tude, for if you do, they will become your most implacable enemies; obligations sometimes lead to despair, like the despair of ruin itself, which is capable of very desperate efforts. As for yourself, accept as little as you can from others. Be no man's va.s.sal; and bring yourself out of your own difficulties.

You see, dear friend, I am advising you only on the lesser points of life. In the world of politics things wear a different aspect; the rules which are to guide your individual steps give way before the national interests. If you reach that sphere where great men revolve you will be, like G.o.d himself, the sole arbiter of your determinations. You will no longer be a man, but law, the living law; no longer an individual, you are then the Nation incarnate.

But remember this, though you judge, you will yourself be judged; hereafter you will be summoned before the ages, and you know history well enough to be fully informed as to what deeds and what sentiments have led to true grandeur.

I now come to a serious matter, your conduct towards women.

Wherever you visit make it a principle not to fritter yourself away in a petty round of gallantry. A man of the last century who had great social success never paid attention to more than one woman of an evening, choosing the one who seemed the most neglected. That man, my dear child, controlled his epoch. He wisely reckoned that by a given time all women would speak well of him. Many young men waste their most precious possession, namely, the time necessary to create connections which contribute more than all else to social success. Your springtime is short, endeavor to make the most of it. Cultivate influential women.

Influential women are old women; they will teach you the intermarriages and the secrets of all the families of the great world; they will show you the cross-roads which will bring you soonest to your goal. They will be fond of you. The bestowal of protection is their last form of love--when they are not devout.

They will do you innumerable good services; sing your praises and make you desirable to society. Avoid young women. Do not think I say this from personal self-interest. The woman of fifty will do all for you, the woman of twenty will do nothing; she wants your whole life while the other asks only a few attentions. Laugh with the young women, meet them for pastime merely; they are incapable of serious thought. Young women, dear friend, are selfish, vain, petty, ignorant of true friends.h.i.+p; they love no one but themselves; they would sacrifice you to an evening's success.

Besides, they all want absolute devotion, and your present situation requires that devotion be shown to you; two irreconcilable needs! None of these young women would enter into your interests; they would think of themselves and not of you; they would injure you more by their emptiness and frivolity than they could serve you by their love; they will waste your time unscrupulously, hinder your advance to fortune, and end by destroying your future with the best grace possible. If you complain, the silliest of them will make you think that her glove is more precious than fortune, and that nothing is so glorious as to be her slave. They will all tell you that they bestow happiness, and thus lull you to forget your n.o.bler destiny.

Believe me, the happiness they give is transitory; your great career will endure. You know not with what perfidious cleverness they contrive to satisfy their caprices, nor the art with which they will convert your pa.s.sing fancy into a love which ought to be eternal. The day when they abandon you they will tell you that the words, "I no longer love you," are a full justification of their conduct, just as the words, "I love," justified their winning you; they will declare that love is involuntary and not to be coerced.

Absurd! Believe me, dear, true love is eternal, infinite, always like unto itself; it is equable, pure, without violent demonstration; white hair often covers the head but the heart that holds it is ever young. No such love is found among the women of the world; all are playing comedy; this one will interest you by her misfortunes; she seems the gentlest and least exacting of her s.e.x, but when once she is necessary to you, you will feel the tyranny of weakness and will do her will; you may wish to be a diplomat, to go and come, and study men and interests,--no, you must stay in Paris, or at her country-place, sewn to her petticoat, and the more devotion you show the more ungrateful and exacting she will be. Another will attract you by her submissiveness; she will be your attendant, follow you romantically about, compromise herself to keep you, and be the millstone about your neck. You will drown yourself some day, but the woman will come to the surface.

The least manoeuvring of these women of the world have many nets.

The silliest triumph because too foolish to excite distrust. The one to be feared least may be the woman of gallantry whom you love without exactly knowing why; she will leave you for no motive and go back to you out of vanity. All these women will injure you, either in the present or the future. Every young woman who enters society and lives a life of pleasure and of gratified vanity is semi-corrupt and will corrupt you. Among them you will not find the chaste and tranquil being in whom you may forever reign. Ah!

she who loves you will love solitude; the festivals of her heart will be your glances; she will live upon your words. May she be all the world to you, for you will be all in all to her. Love her well; give her neither griefs nor rivals; do not rouse her jealousy. To be loved, dear, to be comprehended, is the greatest of all joys; I pray that you may taste it! But run no risk of injuring the flower of your soul; be sure, be very sure of the heart in which you place your affections. That woman will never be her own self; she will never think of herself, but of you. She will never oppose you, she will have no interests of her own; for you she will see a danger where you can see none and where she would be oblivious of her own. If she suffers it will be in silence; she will have no personal vanity, but deep reverence for whatever in her has won your love. Respond to such a love by surpa.s.sing it. If you are fortunate enough to find that which I, your poor friend, must ever be without, I mean a love mutually inspired, mutually felt, remember that in a valley lives a mother whose heart is so filled with the feelings you have put there that you can never sound its depths. Yes, I bear you an affection which you will never know to its full extent; before it could show itself for what it is you would have to lose your mind and intellect, and then you would be unable to comprehend the length and breadth of my devotion.

Shall I be misunderstood in bidding you avoid young women (all more or less artful, satirical, vain, frivolous, and extravagant) and attach yourself to influential women, to those imposing dowagers full of excellent good-sense, like my aunt, who will help your career, defend you from attacks, and say for you the things that you cannot say for yourself? Am I not, on the contrary, generous in bidding you reserve your love for the coming angel with the guileless heart? If the motto n.o.blesse oblige sums up the advice I gave you just now, my further advice on your relations to women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, "Serve all, love one!"

Your educational knowledge is immense; your heart, saved by early suffering, is without a stain; all is n.o.ble, all is well with you.

Now, Felix, WILL! Your future lies in that one word, that word of great men. My child, you will obey your Henriette, will you not?

You will permit her to tell you from time to time the thoughts that are in her mind of you and of your relations to the world? I have an eye in my soul which sees the future for you as for my children; suffer me to use that faculty for your benefit; it is a faculty, a mysterious gift bestowed by my lonely life; far from its growing weaker, I find it strengthened and exalted by solitude and silence.

I ask you in return to bestow a happiness on me; I desire to see you becoming more and more important among men, without one single success that shall bring a line of shame upon my brow; I desire that you may quickly bring your fortunes to the level of your n.o.ble name, and be able to tell me I have contributed to your advancement by something better than a wish. This secret co-operation in your future is the only pleasure I can allow myself. For it, I will wait and hope.

I do not say farewell. We are separated; you cannot put my hand to your lips, but you must surely know the place you hold in the heart of your

Henriette.

As I read this letter I felt the maternal heart beating beneath my fingers which held the paper while I was still cold from the harsh greeting of my own mother. I understood why the countess had forbidden me to open it in Touraine; no doubt she feared that I would fall at her feet and wet them with my tears.

I now made the acquaintance of my brother Charles, who up to this time had been a stranger to me. But in all our intercourse he showed a haughtiness which kept us apart and prevented brotherly affection.

Kindly feelings depend on similarity of soul, and there was no point of touch between us. He preached to me dogmatically those social trifles which head or heart can see without instruction; he seemed to mistrust me. If I had not had the inward support of my great love he would have made me awkward and stupid by affecting to believe that I knew nothing of life. He presented me in society under the expectation that my dulness would be a foil to his qualities. Had I not remembered the sorrows of my childhood I might have taken his protecting vanity for brotherly affection; but inward solitude produces the same effects as outward solitude; silence within our souls enables us to hear the faintest sound; the habit of taking refuge within ourselves develops a perception which discerns every quality of the affections about us.

Before I knew Madame de Mortsauf a hard look grieved me, a rough word wounded me to the heart; I bewailed these things without as yet knowing anything of a life of tenderness; whereas now, since my return from Clochegourde, I could make comparisons which perfected my instinctive perceptions. All deductions derived only from sufferings endured are incomplete. Happiness has a light to cast. I now allowed myself the more willingly to be kept under the heel of primogeniture because I was not my brother's dupe.

I always went alone to the d.u.c.h.esse de Lenoncourt's, where Henriette's name was never mentioned; no one, except the good old duke, who was simplicity itself, ever spoke of her to me; but by the way he welcomed me I guessed that his daughter had privately commended me to his care.

At the moment when I was beginning to overcome the foolish wonder and shyness which besets a young man at his first entrance into the great world, and to realize the pleasures it could give through the resources it offers to ambition, just, too, as I was beginning to make use of Henriette's maxims, admiring their wisdom, the events of the 20th of March took place.

My brother followed the court to Ghent; I, by Henriette's advice (for I kept up a correspondence with her, active on my side only), went there also with the Duc de Lenoncourt. The natural kindness of the old duke turned to a hearty and sincere protection as soon as he saw me attached, body and soul, to the Bourbons. He himself presented me to his Majesty.

Courtiers are not numerous when misfortunes are rife; but youth is gifted with ingenuous admiration and uncalculating fidelity. The king had the faculty of judging men; a devotion which might have pa.s.sed un.o.bserved in Paris counted for much at Ghent, and I had the happiness of pleasing Louis XVIII.

A letter from Madame de Mortsauf to her father, brought with despatches by an emissary of the Vendeens, enclosed a note to me by which I learned that Jacques was ill. Monsieur de Mortsauf, in despair at his son's ill-health, and also at the news of a second emigration, added a few words which enabled me to guess the situation of my dear one. Worried by him, no doubt, when she pa.s.sed all her time at Jacques' bedside, allowed no rest either day or night, superior to annoyance, yet unable always to control herself when her whole soul was given to the care of her child, Henriette needed the support of a friends.h.i.+p which might lighten the burden of her life, were it only by diverting her husband's mind. Though I was now most impatient to rival the career of my brother, who had lately been sent to the Congress of Vienna, and was anxious at any risk to justify Henriette's appeal and become a man myself, freed from all va.s.salage, nevertheless my ambition, my desire for independence, the great interest I had in not leaving the king, all were of no account before the vision of Madame de Mortsauf's sad face. I resolved to leave the court at Ghent and serve my true sovereign. G.o.d rewarded me. The emissary sent by the Vendeens was unable to return. The king wanted a messenger who would faithfully carry back his instructions. The Duc de Lenoncourt knew that the king would never forget the man who undertook so perilous an enterprise; he asked for the mission without consulting me, and I gladly accepted it, happy indeed to be able to return to Clochegourde employed in the good cause.

After an audience with the king I returned to France, where, both in Paris and in Vendee, I was fortunate enough to carry out his Majesty's instructions. Towards the end of May, being tracked by the Bonapartist authorities to whom I was denounced, I was obliged to fly from place to place in the character of a man endeavoring to get back to his estate.

I went on foot from park to park, from wood to wood, across the whole of upper Vendee, the Bocage and Poitou, changing my direction as danger threatened.

I reached Saumur, from Saumur I went to Chinon, and from Chinon I reached, in a single night, the woods of Nueil, where I met the count on horseback; he took me up behind him and we reached Clochegourde without pa.s.sing any one who recognized me.

"Jacques is better," were the first words he said to me.

I explained to him my position of diplomatic postman, hunted like a wild beast, and the brave gentleman in his quality of royalist claimed the danger over Chessel of receiving me. As we came in sight of Clochegourde the past eight months rolled away like a dream. When we entered the salon the count said: "Guess whom I bring you?--Felix!"

"Is it possible!" she said, with pendant arms and a bewildered face.

I showed myself and we both remained motionless; she in her armchair, I on the threshold of the door; looking at each other with that hunger of the soul which endeavors to make up in a single glance for the lost months. Then, recovering from a surprise which left her heart unveiled, she rose and I went up to her.

"I have prayed for your safety," she said, giving me her hand to kiss.

She asked news of her father; then she guessed my weariness and went to prepare my room, while the count gave me something to eat, for I was dying of hunger. My room was the one above hers, her aunt's room; she requested the count to take me there, after setting her foot on the first step of the staircase, deliberating no doubt whether to accompany me; I turned my head, she blushed, bade me sleep well, and went away.

When I came down to dinner I heard for the first time of the disasters at Waterloo, the flight of Napoleon, the march of the Allies to Paris, and the probable return of the Bourbons. These events were all in all to the count; to us they were nothing. What think you was the great event I was to learn, after kissing the children?--for I will not dwell on the alarm I felt at seeing the countess pale and shrunken; I knew the injury I might do by showing it and was careful to express only joy at seeing her. But the great event for us was told in the words, "You shall have ice to-day!" She had often fretted the year before that the water was not cold enough for me, who, never drinking anything else, liked it iced. G.o.d knows how many entreaties it had cost her to get an ice-house built. You know better than any one that a word, a look, an inflection of the voice, a trifling attention, suffices for love; love's n.o.blest privilege is to prove itself by love. Well, her words, her look, her pleasure, showed me her feelings, as I had formerly shown her mine by that first game of backgammon. These ingenuous proofs of her affection were many; on the seventh day after my arrival she recovered her freshness, she sparkled with health and youth and happiness; my lily expanded in beauty just as the treasures of my heart increased. Only in petty minds or in common hearts can absence lessen love or efface the features or diminish the beauty of our dear one. To ardent imaginations, to all beings through whose veins enthusiasm pa.s.ses like a crimson tide, and in whom pa.s.sion takes the form of constancy, absence has the same effect as the sufferings of the early Christians, which strengthened their faith and made G.o.d visible to them. In hearts that abound in love are there not incessant longings for a desired object, to which the glowing fire of our dreams gives higher value and a deeper tint? Are we not conscious of instigations which give to the beloved features the beauty of the ideal by inspiring them with thought? The past, dwelt on in all its details becomes magnified; the future teems with hope. When two hearts filled with these electric clouds meet each other, their interview is like the welcome storm which revives the earth and stimulates it with the swift lightnings of the thunderbolt. How many tender pleasures came to me when I found these thoughts and these sensations reciprocal! With what glad eyes I followed the development of happiness in Henriette! A woman who renews her life from that of her beloved gives, perhaps, a greater proof of feeling than she who dies killed by a doubt, withered on her stock for want of sap; I know not which of the two is the more touching.

The revival of Madame de Mortsauf was wholly natural, like the effects of the month of May upon the meadows, or those of the sun and of the brook upon the drooping flowers. Henriette, like our dear valley of love, had had her winter; she revived like the valley in the springtime.

Before dinner we went down to the beloved terrace. There, with one hand stroking the head of her son, who walked feebly beside her, silent, as though he were breeding an illness, she told me of her nights beside his pillow.

For three months, she said, she had lived wholly within herself, inhabiting, as it were, a dark palace; afraid to enter sumptuous rooms where the light shone, where festivals were given, to her denied, at the door of which she stood, one glance turned upon her child, another to a dim and distant figure; one ear listening for moans, another for a voice. She told me poems, born of solitude, such as no poet ever sang; but all ingenuously, without one vestige of love, one trace of voluptuous thought, one echo of a poesy orientally soothing as the rose of Frangistan. When the count joined us she continued in the same tone, like a woman secure within herself, able to look proudly at her husband and kiss the forehead of her son without a blush. She had prayed much; she had clasped her hands for nights together over her child, refusing to let him die.

"I went," she said, "to the gate of the sanctuary and asked his life of G.o.d."

She had had visions, and she told them to me; but when she said, in that angelic voice of hers, these exquisite words, "While I slept my heart watched," the count harshly interrupted her.

"That is to say, you were half crazy," he cried.

She was silent, as deeply hurt as though it were a first wound; forgetting that for thirteen years this man had lost no chance to shoot his arrows into her heart. Like a soaring bird struck on the wing by vulgar shot, she sank into a dull depression; then she roused herself.

"How is it, monsieur," she said, "that no word of mine ever finds favor in your sight? Have you no indulgence for my weakness,--no comprehension of me as a woman?"

She stopped short. Already she regretted the murmur, and measured the future by the past; how could she expect comprehension? Had she not drawn upon herself some virulent attack? The blue veins of her temples throbbed; she shed no tears, but the color of her eyes faded. Then she looked down, that she might not see her pain reflected on my face, her feelings guessed, her soul wooed by my soul; above all, not see the sympathy of young love, ready like a faithful dog to spring at the throat of whoever threatened his mistress, without regard to the a.s.sailant's strength or quality. At such cruel moments the count's air of superiority was supreme. He thought he had triumphed over his wife, and he pursued her with a hail of phrases which repeated the one idea, and were like the blows of an axe which fell with unvarying sound.