第5章

Meanwhile the arrival of these two new inmates soon spread a little more life and gaiety through the house.Furthermore; greatly to the astonishment of the marquise, her husband, who had so long been indifferent to her beauty, seemed to remark afresh that she was too charming to be despised; his words accordingly began little by little to express an affection that had long since gradually disappeared from them.The marquise had never ceased to love him; she had suffered the loss of his love with resignation, she hailed its return with joy, and three months elapsed that resembled those which had long ceased to be more to the poor wife than a distant and half-worn-out memory.

Thus she had, with the supreme facility of youth, always ready to be happy, taken up her gladness again, without even asking what genius had brought back to her the treasure which she had thought lost, when she received an invitation from a lady of the neighbourhood to spend some days in her country house.Her husband and her two brothers-in-law, invited with her, were of the party, and accompanied her.

A great hunting party had been arranged beforehand, and almost immediately upon arriving everyone began to prepare for taking part in it.

The abbe, whose talents had made him indispensable in every company, declared that for that day he was the marquise's cavalier, a title which his sister-in-law, with her usual amiability, confirmed.Each of the huntsmen, following this example, made choice of a lady to whom to dedicate his attentions throughout the day; then, this chivalrous arrangement being completed, all present directed their course towards the place of meeting.

That happened which almost always happens the dogs hunted on their own account.Two or three sportsmen only followed the dogs; the rest got lost.The abbe, in his character of esquire to the marquise, had not left her for a moment, and had managed so cleverly that he was alone with her--an opportunity which he had been seeking for a month previously with no less care--than the marquise had been using to avoid it.No sooner, therefore, did the marquise believe herself aware that the abbe had intentionally turned aside from the hunt than she attempted to gallop her horse in the opposite direction from that which she had been following; but the abbe stopped her.The marquise neither could nor would enter upon a struggle; she resigned herself, therefore, to hearing what the abbe had to say to her, and her face assumed that air of haughty disdain which women so well know how to put on when they wish a man to understand that he has nothing to hope from them.There was an instant's silence; the abbe was the first to break it.

"Madame," said he, "I ask your pardon for having used this means to speak to you alone; but since, in spite of my rank of brother-in-law, you did not seem inclined to grant me that favour if I had asked it, I thought it would be better for me, to deprive you of the power to refuse it me.""If you have hesitated to ask me so simple a thing, monsieur,"replied the marquise, "and if you have taken such precautions to compel me to listen to you, it must, no doubt, be because you knew beforehand that the words you had to say to me were such as I could not hear.Have the goodness, therefore, to reflect, before you open this conversation, that here as elsewhere I reserve the right--and Iwarn you of it--to interrupt what you may say at the moment when it may cease to seem to me befitting.""As to that, madame," said the abbe, "I think I can answer for it that whatever it may please me to say to you, you will hear to the end; but indeed the matters are so simple that there is no need to make you uneasy beforehand: I wished to ask you, madame, whether you have perceived a change in the conduct of your husband towards you.""Yes, monsieur," replied the marquise, "and no single day has passed in which I have not thanked Heaven for this happiness.""And you have been wrong, madame," returned the abbe, with one of those smiles that were peculiar to himself; "Heaven has nothing to do with it.Thank Heaven for having made you the most beautiful and charming of women, and that will be enough thanksgiving without despoiling me of such as belong to my share.""I do not understand you, monsieur," said the marquise in an icy tone.

"Well, I will make myself comprehensible, my dear sister-in-law.Iam the worker of the miracle for which you are thanking Heaven; to me therefore belongs your gratitude.Heaven is rich enough not to rob the poor.""You are right, monsieur: if it is really to you that I owe this return, the cause of which I did not know, I will thank you in the first place; and then afterwards I will thank Heaven for having inspired you with this good thought.""Yes," answered the abbe, "but Heaven, which has inspired me with a good thought, may equally well inspire me with a bad one, if the good thought does not bring me what I expect from it.""What do you mean, monsieur?"