CHAPTER IX

AT SAVIGNY

It was a great misfortune, that sojourn of the two families at Savigny
for a month.

After an interval of two years Georges and Sidonie found themselves side
by side once more on the old estate, too old not to be always like
itself, where the stones, the ponds, the trees, always the same, seemed
to cast derision upon all that changes and passes away. A renewal of
intercourse under such circumstances must have been disastrous to two
natures that were not of a very different stamp, and far more virtuous
than those two.

As for Claire, she never had been so happy; Savigny never had seemed so
lovely to her. What joy to walk with her child over the greensward where
she herself had walked as a child; to sit, a young mother, upon the
shaded seats from which her own mother had looked on at her childish
games years before; to go, leaning on Georges's arm, to seek out the
nooks where they had played together. She felt a tranquil contentment,
the overflowing happiness of placid lives which enjoy their bliss in
silence; and all day long her skirts swept along the paths, guided by the
tiny footsteps of the child, her cries and her demands upon her mother's
care.

Sidonie seldom took part in these maternal promenades. She said that the
chatter of children tired her, and therein she agreed with old Gardinois,
who seized upon any pretext to annoy his granddaughter. He believed that
he accomplished that object by devoting himself exclusively to Sidonie,