year. His son would of course succeed to the grandfather's peerage,
and the count now saw his way to entail the estate upon him without
injury to Madeleine, for whom the Duc de Lenoncourt would no doubt
assist in promoting a good marriage.

These arrangements and this new happiness shed some balm upon the
count's sore mind. The presence of the Duchesse de Lenoncourt at
Clochegourde was a great event to the neighborhood. I reflected
gloomily that she was a great lady, and the thought made me conscious
of the spirit of caste in the daughter which the nobility of her
sentiments had hitherto hidden from me. Who was I--poor,
insignificant, and with no future but my courage and my faculties? I
did not then think of the consequences of the Restoration either for
me or for others. On Sunday morning, from the private chapel where I
sat with Monsieur and Madame de Chessel and the Abbe de Quelus, I cast
an eager glance at another lateral chapel occupied by the duchess and
her daughter, the count and his children. The large straw hat which
hid my idol from me did not tremble, and this unconsciousness of my
presence seemed to bind me to her more than all the past. This noble
Henriette de Lenoncourt, my Henriette, whose life I longed to garland,
was praying earnestly; faith gave to her figure an abandonment, a
prosternation, the attitude of some religious statue, which moved me
to the soul.

According to village custom, vespers were said soon after mass. Coming
out of church Madame de Chessel naturally proposed to her neighbors to
pass the intermediate time at Frapesle instead of crossing the Indre
and the meadows twice in the great heat. The offer was accepted.
Monsieur de Chessel gave his arm to the duchess, Madame de Chessel
took that of the count. I offered mine to the countess, and felt, for