The woman who loves feels the same presentiments that later illuminate her motherhood.Hence a certain melancholy, a certain inexplicable sadness which surprises men, who are one and all distracted from any such concentration of their souls by the cares of life and the continual necessity for action.All true love becomes to a woman an active contemplation, which is more or less lucid, more or less profound, according to her nature.
"Come, my dear, show your home to Monsieur Emile," said the countess, whose mind was so pre-occupied that she forgot La Pechina, who was the ostensible object of her visit.
The interior of the restored pavilion was in keeping with its exterior.On the ground-floor the old divisions had been replaced, and the architect, sent from Paris with his own workmen (a cause of bitter complaint in the neighborhood against the master of Les Aigues), had made four rooms out of the space.First, an ante-chamber, at the farther end of which was a winding wooden staircase, behind which came the kitchen; on either side of the antechamber was a dining-room and a parlor panelled in oak now nearly black, with armorial bearings in the divisions of the ceilings.The architect chosen by Madame de Montcornet for the restoration of Les Aigues had taken care to put the furniture of this room in keeping with its original decoration.
At the time of which we write fashion had not yet given an exaggerated value to the relics of past ages.The carved settee, the high-backed chairs covered with tapestry, the consoles, the clocks, the tall embroidery frames, the tables, the lustres, hidden away in the second-
hand shops of Auxerre and Ville-aux-Fayes were fifty per-cent cheaper than the modern, ready-made furniture of the faubourg Saint Antoine.
The architect had therefore bought two or three cartloads of well-
chosen old things, which, added to a few others discarded at the chateau, made the little salon of the gate of the Avonne an artistic creation.As to the dining-room, he painted it in browns and hung it with what was called a Scotch paper, and Madame Michaud added white cambric curtains with green borders at the windows, mahogany chairs covered with green cloth, two large buffets and a table, also in mahogany.This room, ornamented with engravings of military scenes, was heated by a porcelain stove, on each side of which were sporting-
guns suspended on the walls.These adornments, which cost but little, were talked of throughout the whole valley as the last extreme of oriental luxury.Singular to say, they, more than anything else, excited the envy of Gaubertin, and whenever he thought of his fixed determination to bring Les Aigues to the hammer and cut it in pieces, he reserved for himself, "in petto," this beautiful pavilion.
On the next floor three chambers sufficed for the household.At the windows were muslin curtains which reminded a Parisian of the particular taste and fancy of bourgeois requirements.Left to herself in the decoration of these rooms, Madame Michaud had chosen satin papers; on the mantel-shelf of her bedroom--which was furnished in that vulgar style of mahogany and Utrecht velvet which is seen everywhere, with its high-backed bed and canopy to which embroidered muslin curtains are fastened--stood an alabaster clock between two candelabra covered with gauze and flanked by two vases filled with artificial flowers protected by glass shades, a conjugal gift of the former cavalry sergeant.Above, under the roof, the bedrooms of the cook, the man-of-all-work, and La Pechina had benefited by the recent restoration.
"Olympe, my dear, you did not tell me all," said the countess, entering Madame Michaud's bedroom, and leaving Emile and the abbe on the stairway, whence they descended when they heard her shut the door.
Madame Michaud, to whom the abbe had contrived to whisper a word, was now anxious to say no more about her fears, which were really greater than she had intimated, and she therefore began to talk of a matter which reminded the countess of the object of her visit.
"I love Michaud, madame, as you know.Well, how would you like to have, in your own house, a rival always beside you?"
"A rival?"
"Yes, madame; that swarthy girl you gave me to take care of loves Michaud without knowing it, poor thing! The child's conduct, long a mystery to me, has been cleared up in my mind for some days."
"Why, she is only thirteen years old!"
"I know that, madame.But you will admit that a woman who is three months pregnant and means to nurse her child herself may have some fears; but as I did not want to speak of this before those gentlemen, I talked a great deal of nonsense when you questioned me," said the generous creature, adroitly.
Madame Michaud was not really afraid of Genevieve Niseron, but for the last three days she was in mortal terror of some disaster from the peasantry.
"How did you discover this?" said the countess.
"From everything and from nothing," replied Olympe."The poor little thing moves with the slowness of a tortoise when she is obliged to obey me, but she runs like a lizard when Justin asks for anything, she trembles like a leaf at the sound of his voice; and her face is that of a saint ascending to heaven when she looks at him.But she knows nothing about love; she has no idea that she loves him."
"Poor child!" said the countess with a smile and tone that were full of naivete.
"And so," continued Madame Michaud, answering with a smile the smile of her late mistress, "Genevieve is gloomy when Justin is out of the house; if I ask her what she is thinking of she replies that she is afraid of Monsieur Rigou, or some such nonsense.She thinks people envy her, though she is as black as the inside of a chimney.When Justin is patrolling the woods at night the child is as anxious as I am.If I open my window to listen for the trot of his horse, I see a light in her room, which shows me that La Pechina (as they call here)
is watching and waiting too.She never goes to bed, any more than I do, till he comes in."