for she offered me the restoratives I needed, with a few kind and
consoling words, which gave me back the power of speech. I blushed
like a young girl, and in a voice as tremulous as that of an old man I
thanked her and declined.

"All I ask," I said, raising my eyes to hers, which mine now met for
the second time in a glance as rapid as lightning,--"is to rest here.
I am so crippled with fatigue I really cannot walk farther."

"You must not doubt the hospitality of our beautiful Touraine," she
said; then, turning to my companion, she added: "You will give us the
pleasure of your dining at Clochegourde?"

I threw such a look of entreaty at Monsieur de Chessel that he began
the preliminaries of accepting the invitation, though it was given in
a manner that seemed to expect a refusal. As a man of the world, he
recognized these shades of meaning; but I, a young man without
experience, believed so implicitly in the sincerity between word and
thought of this beautiful woman that I was wholly astonished when my
host said to me, after we reached home that evening, "I stayed because
I saw you were dying to do so; but if you do not succeed in making it
all right, I may find myself on bad terms with my neighbors." That
expression, "if you do not make it all right," made me ponder the
matter deeply. In other words, if I pleased Madame de Mortsauf, she
would not be displeased with the man who introduced me to her. He
evidently thought I had the power to please her; this in itself gave
me that power, and corroborated my inward hope at a moment when it
needed some outward succor.

"I am afraid it will be difficult," he began; "Madame de Chessel