第17章
Moreover, from day to day Madame de la Chanterie, with whom he always remained for an hour after the second breakfast, allowed him to discover the treasures that were in her; he knew then that he never could have imagined a loving-kindness so broad and so complete.Awoman of Madame de la Chanterie's apparent age no longer has the pettiness of younger women.She is a friend who offers you all feminine refinements, who displays the graces, the choice attractions which nature inspires in a woman for man; she gives them, and no longer sells them.Such a woman is either detestable or perfect; for her gifts are either not of the flesh or they are worthless.Madame de la Chanterie was perfect.She seemed never to have had a youth; her glance never told of a past.Godefroid's curiosity was far from being appeased by a closer and more intimate knowledge of this sublime nature; the discoveries of each succeeding day only redoubled his desire to learn the anterior life of a woman whom he now thought a saint.Had she ever loved? Had she been a wife,--a mother? Nothing about her was characteristic of an old maid; she displayed all the graces of a well-born woman; and an observer would perceive in her robust health, in the extraordinary phenomena of her physical preservation, a divine life, and a species of ignorance of the earthly existence.
Except the gay and cheery goodman Alain, all these persons had suffered; but Monsieur Nicolas himself seemed to give the palm of martyrdom to Madame de la Chanterie.Nevertheless, the memory of her sorrows was so restrained by religious resignation, by her secret avocations, that she seemed to have been always happy.
"You are the life of your friends," Godefroid said to her one day;"you are the tie that unites them,--the house-mother, as it were, of some great work; and, as we are all mortal, I ask myself sometimes what your association would become without you.""That is what frightens the others; but Providence, to whom we owe our new book-keeper," she said, smiling, "will provide.Besides, I am on the look-out.""Will your new book-keeper soon be allowed to work at your business?"asked Godefroid.
"That depends on himself," she answered, smiling."He must be sincerely religious, truly pious, without the least self-interest, not concerned about the riches of our house, able to rise above all petty social considerations on the two wings which God has given us.""What are they?"
"Singleness of mind and purity," replied Madame de la Chanterie."Your ignorance shows that you have neglected the reading of our book." she added, laughing at the innocent trick she had played to know if Godefroid had read the "Imitation of Jesus Christ." "And, lastly," she went on, "fill your soul with Saint Paul's epistle upon Charity.When that is done," she added, with a sublime look, "it will not be you who belong to us, we shall belong to you, and you will be able to count up greater riches than the sovereigns of this world possess; you will enjoy as we enjoy; yes, let me tell you (if you remember the 'Arabian Nights') that the treasures of Aladdin are nothing to those we possess.And so for the last year we have not sufficed for our affairs, and we needed, as you see, a book-keeper."While speaking, she studied Godefroid's face; he, on his part, did not know how to take this extraordinary confidence.But as the scene in the counting-room at Mongenod's came often to his mind, he hovered between doubt and belief.
"Ah, you will be very happy!" she said.
Godefroid was so consumed with curiosity that from this moment he determined to break through the reserve of one of the four friends and question him.Now, the one to whom he felt the most drawn, and who seemed naturally to excite the sympathies of all classes, was the kind, gay, simple Monsieur Alain.By what strange path could Providence have led a being so guileless into this monastery without a lock, where recluses of both sexes lived beneath a rule in the midst of Paris, in absolute freedom, as though they were guarded by the sternest of superiors? What drama, what event, had made him leave his own road in life, and take this path among the sorrows of the great city?
Godefroid resolved to ask.