yours. A single day effaces all past evil. Sorrow, despondency,
despair, and melancholy, passed but not forgotten, are links by which
the soul then fastens to its mate. Woman falls heir to all our past,
our sighs, our lost illusions, and gives them back to us ennobled; she
explains those former griefs as payment claimed by destiny for joys
eternal, which she brings to us on the day our souls are wedded. The
angels alone can utter the new name by which that sacred love is
called, and none but women, dear martyrs, truly know what Madame de
Mortsauf now became to me--to me, poor and desolate.



CHAPTER II

FIRST LOVE

This scene took place on a Tuesday. I waited until Sunday and did not
cross the river. During those five days great events were happening at
Clochegourde. The count received his brevet as general of brigade, the
cross of Saint Louis, and a pension of four thousand francs. The Duc
de Lenoncourt-Givry, made peer of France, recovered possession of two
forests, resumed his place at court, and his wife regained all her
unsold property, which had been made part of the imperial crown lands.
The Comtesse de Mortsauf thus became an heiress. Her mother had
arrived at Clochegourde, bringing her a hundred thousand francs
economized at Givry, the amount of her dowry, still unpaid and never
asked for by the count in spite of his poverty. In all such matters of
external life the conduct of this man was proudly disinterested.
Adding to this sum his own few savings he was able to buy two
neighboring estates, which would yield him some nine thousand francs a