watchful as the sentinel on whom the safety of others depends and who
looks for danger, there were moments when smiles would wreathe her
lips and betray the happy nature buried beneath the saddened bearing
that was the outcome of her life. Her gift of attraction was
mysterious. Instead of inspiring the gallant attentions which other
women seek, she made men dream, letting them see her virginal nature
of pure flame, her celestial visions, as we see the azure heavens
through rifts in the clouds. This involuntary revelation of her being
made others thoughtful. The rarity of her gestures, above all, the
rarity of her glances--for, excepting her children, she seldom looked
at any one--gave a strange solemnity to all she said and did when her
words or actions seemed to her to compromise her dignity.

On this particular morning Madame de Mortsauf wore a rose-colored gown
patterned in tiny stripes, a collar with a wide hem, a black belt, and
little boots of the same hue. Her hair was simply twisted round her
head, and held in place by a tortoise-shell comb. Such, my dear
Natalie, is the imperfect sketch I promised you. But the constant
emanation of her soul upon her family, that nurturing essence shed in
floods around her as the sun emits its light, her inward nature, her
cheerfulness on days serene, her resignation on stormy ones,--all
those variations of expression by which character is displayed depend,
like the effects in the sky, on unexpected and fugitive circumstances,
which have no connection with each other except the background against
which they rest, though all are necessarily mingled with the events of
this history,--truly a household epic, as great to the eyes of a wise
man as a tragedy to the eyes of the crowd, an epic in which you will
feel an interest, not only for the part I took in it, but for the
likeness that it bears to the destinies of so vast a number of women.