Books: Monsieur de Camors, v3
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He went down in great haste, and found M. de Camors stretched apparently
lifeless on the floor at the foot of his desk. The servant, whose name
was Daniel, had all his master's confidence, and he loved him with that
singular affection which strong natures often inspire in their inferiors.
He sent for Madame de Campvallon, who soon came. M. de Camors,
recovering from his fainting-fit, was very pale, and was walking across
the room when she entered. He seemed irritated at seeing her, and
rebuked his servant sharply for his ill-advised zeal.
He said he had only had a touch of vertigo, to which he was subject.
Madame de Campvallon soon retired, having first supplicated him not to
overwork himself again. When he came to her next day, she could not help
being surprised at the dejection stamped on his face, which she
attributed to the attack he had had the night before. But when she spoke
of their approaching departure, she was astonished, and even alarmed by
his reply:
"Let us defer it a little, I beg of you," he said. "I do not feel in a
state fit for travelling."
Days passed; he made no further allusion to the voyage. He was serious,
silent, and cold. The active ardor, almost feverish, which had animated
until then his life, his speech, his eyes, was suddenly quenched. One
symptom which disquieted the Marquise above all was the absolute idleness
to which he now abandoned himself.
He left her in the evening at an early hour. Daniel told the Marquise
that the Count worked no longer; that he heard him pacing up and down the
greater part of the night. At the same time his health failed visibly.
The Marquise ventured once to interrogate him. As they were both walking
one day in the park, she said:
"You are hiding something from me. You suffer, my friend. What is the
cause?"
"There is nothing."
"I pray you tell me!"
"Nothing is the matter with me," he replied, petulantly.
"Is it your son that you regret?"
"I regret nothing." After a few steps taken in silence--" When I think,"
he said, quickly, "that there is one person in the world who considers me
a coward--for I hear always that word in my ear--and who treated me like
a coward, and who believed it when it was said, and believes it still!
If it had been a man, it would be easy, but it was a woman."
After this sudden explosion he was silent.
"Very well; what do you desire?" said the Marquise, with vexation. "Do
you wish that I should go and tell her the truth--tell her that you were
ready to defend her against me--that you love her, and hate me? If it be
that you wish, say so. I believe if this life continues I shall be
capable of doing anything!"
"Do not you also outrage me! Dismiss me, if that will give you pleasure;
but I love you only. My pride bleeds, that is all; and I give you my
word of honor that if you ever affront me by going to justify me, I shall
never in my life see you or her. Embrace me!" and he pressed her to his
heart.
She was calm for a few hours.
The house he occupied was about to be taken again by its proprietor. The
middle of September approached, and it was the time when the Marquise was
in the habit of returning to Paris. She proposed to M. de Camors to
occupy the chateau during the few days he purposed passing in the
country. He accepted; but whenever she spoke of returning to Paris:
"Why so soon?" he would say; "are we not very well here?"
A little later she reminded him that the session of the Chamber was about
to open. He made his health a pretext for delay, saying that he felt
weak and wished to send in his resignation as deputy. She induced him
only by her urgent prayer to content himself with asking leave of
absence.
"But you, my beloved!" he said, "I am condemning you to a sad
existence!"
"With you," she replied, "I am happy everywhere and always!"
It was not true that she was happy, but it was true that she loved him
and was devoted to him. There was no suffering she would not have
resigned herself to, no sacrifice she would not make, were it for him.
From this moment the prospect of worldly sovereignty, which she thought
she had touched with her hand, escaped her. She had a presentiment of a
melancholy future of solitude, of renunciation, of secret tears; but near
him grief became a fete. One knows with what rapidity life passes with
those who busy themselves without distraction in some profound grief--the
days themselves are long, but the succession of them is rapid and
imperceptible. It was thus that the months and then the seasons
succeeded one another, for Camors and the Marquise, with a monotony that
left hardly any trace on their thoughts. Their daily relations were
marked, on the part of the Count with an invariably cold and distant
courtesy, and very often silence; on the part of the Marquise by an
attentive tenderness and a constrained grief. Every day they rode out on
horseback, both clad in black, sympathetic by their beauty and their
sadness, and surrounded in the country by distant respect. About the
beginning of the ensuing winter Madame de Campvallon experienced a
serious disquietude. Although M. de Camors never complained, it was
evident his health was gradually failing. A dark and almost clayey tint
covered his thin cheeks, and spread nearly to the whites of his eyes.
The Marquise showed some emotion on perceiving it, and persuaded him to
consult a physician. The physician perceived symptoms of chronic
debility. He did not think it dangerous, but recommended a season at
Vichy, a few hygienic precautions, and absolute repose of mind and body.
When the Marquise proposed to Camors this visit to Vichy, he only
shrugged his shoulders without reply.
A few days after, Madame de Campvallon on entering the stable one
morning, saw Medjid, the favorite mare of Camors, white with foam,
panting and exhausted. The groom explained, with some awkwardness,
the condition of the animal, by a ride the Count had taken that morning.
The Marquise had recourse to Daniel, of whom she made a confidant,
and having questioned him, drew out the acknowledgment that for some time
his master had been in the habit of going out in the evening and not
returning until morning. Daniel was in despair with these nightly
wanderings, which he said greatly fatigued his master. He ended by
confessing to Madame de Campvallon the goal of his excursions.
The Comtesse de Camors, yielding to considerations the details of which
would not be interesting, had continued to live at Reuilly since her
husband had abandoned her. Reuilly was distant twelve leagues from
Campvallon, which could be made shorter by a crosscut. M. de Camors did
not hesitate to pass over this distance twice in the same night, to give
himself the emotion of breathing for a few minutes the same air with his
wife and child.
Daniel had accompanied him two or three times, but the Count generally
went alone. He left his horse in the wood, and approached as near as he
could without risking discovery; and, hiding himself like a malefactor
behind the shadows of the trees, he watched the windows, the lights, the
house, the least signs of those dear beings, from whom an eternal abyss
had divided him.
The Marquise, half frightened, half irritated, by an oddity which seemed
to border on madness, pretended to be ignorant of it. But these two
spirits were too accustomed to each other, day by day, to be able to hide
anything. He knew she was aware of his weakness, and seemed no longer to
care to make a mystery of it.
One evening in the month of July, he left on horseback in the afternoon,
and did not return for dinner. He arrived at the woods of Reuilly at the
close of the day, as he had premeditated. He entered the garden with his
usual precaution, and, thanks to his knowledge of the habits of the
household, he could approach, without being noticed, the pavilion where
the Countess's chamber was situated, and which was also that of his son.
This chamber, by a particular arrangement of the house, was elevated at
the side of the court by the height of an entresol, but was level with
the garden. One of the windows was open, owing to the heat of the
evening. Camors hid himself behind the shutters, which were half closed,
and gazed eagerly into the chamber.
He had not seen for two years either his wife, his child, or Madame de
Tecle. He now saw all three there. Madame de Tecle was working near the
chimney. Her face was unchanged. She had the same youthful look, but
her hair was as white, as snow. Madame de Camors was sitting on a couch
nearly in front of the window and undressing her son, at the same time
talking to and caressing him.
The child, at a sign, knelt down at his mother's feet in his light night-
garments, and while she held his joined hands in her own, he began in a
loud voice his evening prayers. She whispered him from time to time a
word that escaped him. This prayer, composed of a number of phrases
adapted to a youthful mind, terminated with these words: "O God! be good
and merciful to my mother, my grandmother, to me--and above all, O God,
to my unfortunate father." He pronounced these words with childish
haste, but under a serious look from his mother, he repeated them
immediately, with some emotion, as a child who repeats the inflection of
a voice which has been taught him.
Camors turned suddenly and retired noiselessly, leaving the garden by the
nearest gate. A fixed idea tortured him. He wished to see his son--to
speak to him--to embrace him, and to press him to his heart. After that,
he cared for little.
He remembered they had formerly the habit of taking the child to the
dairy every morning to give him a cup of milk. He hoped they had
continued this custom. Morning arrived, and soon came the hour for which
he waited. He hid himself in the walk which led to the farm. He heard
the noise of feet, of laughter, and of joyous cries, and his son suddenly
appeared running in advance. He was a charming little boy of five or six
years, of a graceful and proud mien. On perceiving M. de Camors in the
middle of the walk he stopped, he hesitated at this unknown or half-
forgotten face; but the tender and half-supplicating smile of Camors
reassured him.
"Monsieur!" he said, doubtfully.
Camors opened his arms and bent as if to kneel before him.
"Come and embrace me, I beg of you," he murmured.
The child had already advanced smiling, when the woman who was following
him, who was his old nurse, suddenly appeared. 'She made a gesture of
fright:
"Your father!" she said, in a stifled voice.
At these words the child uttered a cry of terror, rushed back to the
nurse, pressed against her, and regarded his father with frightened eyes.
The nurse took him by the arm, and earned him off in great haste.
M. de Camors did not weep. A frightful contraction distorted the corners
of his mouth, and exaggerated the thinness of his cheeks. He had two or
three shudderings as if seized with sudden fever. He slowly passed his
hand over his forehead, sighed profoundly, and departed.
Madame de Campvallon knew nothing of this sad scene, but she saw its
consequences; and she herself felt them bitterly. The character of M. de
Camors, already so changed, became after this unrecognizable. He showed
her no longer even the cold politeness he had manifested for her up to
that period. He exhibited a strange antipathy toward her. He fled from
her. She perceived he avoided even touching her hand.
They saw each other rarely now. The health of Camors did not admit of
his taking regular meals. These two desolate existences offered then,
in the midst of the almost royal state which surrounded them, a spectacle
of pity.
In this magnificent park--across these beautiful gardens, with great
vases of marble--under long arcades of verdure peopled with more statues-
both wandered separately, like two sad shadows, meeting sometimes but
never speaking.
One day, near the end of September, Camors did not descend from his
apartment. Daniel told the Marquise he had given orders to let no one
enter.
"Not even me?" she said. He bent his head mournfully. She insisted.
"Madame, I should lose my place!"
The Count persisted in this mania of absolute seclusion. She was
compelled from this moment to content herself with the news she obtained
from his servant. M. de Camors was not bedridden. He passed his time in
a sad reverie, lying on his divan. He got up at intervals, wrote a few
lines, then lay down again. His weakness appeared great, though he did
not complain of any suffering.
After two or three weeks, the Marquise read in the features of Daniel a
more marked disquietude than usual. He supplicated her to call in the
country physician who had once before seen him. It was so decided.
The unfortunate woman, when the physician was shown into the Count's
apartment, leaned against the door listening in agony. She thought she
heard the voice of Camors loudly raised, then the noise ceased.
The doctor, when departing, simply said to her: "Madame, his sad case
appears to me serious--but not hopeless. I did not wish to press him
to-day, but he allows me to return tomorrow."
In the night which followed, at two o'clock, Madame de Campvallon heard
some one calling her, and recognized the voice of Daniel. She rose
immediately, threw a mantle around her, and admitted him.
"Madame," he said, "Monsieur le Comte asks for you," and burst into
tears.
"Mon Dieu! what is the matter?"
"Come, Madame--you must hasten!"
She accompanied him immediately. From the moment she put her foot in the
chamber, she could not deceive herself--Death was there. Crushed by
sorrow, this existence, so full, so proud, so powerful, was about to
terminate. The head of Camors, turned on the pillow, seemed already to
have assumed a death-like immobility. His beautiful features, sharpened
by suffering, took the rigid outline of sculpture; his eye alone yet
lived and looked at her.
She approached him hastily and wished to seize the hand resting on the
sheet.
He withdrew it. She gave a despairing groan. He continued to look
fixedly at her. She thought he was trying to speak, but could not; but
his eyes spoke. They addressed to her some request, at the same time
with an imperious though supplicating expression, which she doubtless
understood; for she said aloud, with an accent full of sadness and
tenderness:
"I promise it to you."
He appeared to make a painful effort, and his look indicated a large
sealed letter lying on the bed. She took it, and read on the envelope-
"To my son."
"I promise you," she said, again, falling on her knees, and moistening
the sheet with her tears.
He extended his hand toward her. "Thanks!" was all he said. Her tears
flowed faster. She set her lips on this hand already cold. When she
raised her head, she saw at the same instant the eyes of Camors slightly
moist, rolling wildly--then extinguished! She uttered a cry, threw
herself on the bed, and kissed madly those eyes still open--yet void of
light forever!
Thus ended Camors, who was a great sinner, but nevertheless a MAN!
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
A man never should kneel unless sure of rising a conqueror
One of those pious persons who always think evil
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