Why does the love of a month bear so little resemblance to the love of a day? why is the love of a year still less passionate than that of a month? why are we so indifferent to the enjoyment of that which we possess without any obstacles, and why does our enjoyment sometimes cease altogether when we possess what we have ardently desired? It is because everything passes away in this world, where we ourselves are simply birds of passage; it is because men who are greedy of pleasure are always seeking new forms of pleasure, and to many of them love is simply a diversion. But you will say to me, perhaps: "I have been married three years, and I love my wife as dearly as I did the first day;" or: "My lover has adored me for six months, and he is more in love than ever." I have no doubt of it; there are exceptions to every rule, and everyone can invoke them in his favor; and, furthermore, I do not say that love vanishes; I mean simply that it changes its hue; and, unhappily, the last variations have not the splendor, the lustre, the charm, of the original color.
Frédéric still loved the pretty mute, beyond question; but he had been living with her in the woods for three weeks, and it began to seem a little monotonous to him. The great fault of lovers is to yield too freely to the intoxication of passion in the first days of their happiness. They are like those gluttons who go to the table with a tremendous appetite, and who eat so fast that they are filled to repletion before the repast is half served.
Sister Anne felt none of this ennui; she was happier and more loving with Frédéric than ever. As a general rule, women love more truly than men, and, moreover, the unfortunate orphan was no ordinary woman; to her, Frédéric was the whole earth, the universe. Since she had known him, her intelligence had awakened, her mind had developed; she had learned to think, to reflect, to form desires, to fear, and to hope; a thousand new sensations had made her heart beat fast. Before she knew what love was, her life had been only a dream, but Frédéric had roused her from it.
When she saw that he was depressed and preoccupied, she redoubled her attentions and caresses; she would lead him into the woods, and hide behind a bush or a clump of trees; then, suddenly appearing, would rush into his arms; and her childlike grace heightened the sweet expression of her features.
When night came, they returned to the garden of the cottage. Sister Anne, alert and light of foot, prepared in a twinkling their evening meal, which they ate as soon as old Marguerite had gone to bed. The dumb girl gathered fruit, brought milk and rye bread, then seated herself beside Frédéric, close against him, and selected for him what seemed to her the finest and best morsels. When her lover spoke, she listened in rapture; one could see that Frédéric's words echoed in her heart. Once he sang a love song, and the girl listened without moving a muscle, as if she feared to lose a note, then motioned to him to sing it again. Since then, her greatest joy had been to hear him sing; he had a sweet and flexible voice, and she would gladly have passed the whole day listening to him.
Thus did Sister Anne seek to enchain the man she loved. It was not the tactics of a coquette—it was love, pure and simple, and nothing else; whereas in the manœuvres of a coquette there is not the faintest trace of that sentiment.
Why, then, fools that we are, do we allow ourselves to be caught in the nets of the one, and repay with cold disdain the sincere love of the other? Because the coquette has the art to keep us in suspense; when she sees that we are well caught, she plays the cruel; if we seem a little cool, she excites us by giving us some cause of jealousy; if we seem overconfident, her mockery arouses our fears; if we are disgusted and ready to turn our back, she becomes tender, sentimental, passionate, and with a word brings us back to her feet. These constant changes do not give the heart time to grow cold. I was on the point of comparing us men to the epicures whose appetites are sharpened by a variety of dishes, but I refrain; you would think that I had studied the art of love in the Cuisinier Royal.
For several days, Frédéric had taken to making short excursions in the neighborhood. Sister Anne was alarmed at first; but he was away only a little while, and her fears vanished. Frédéric was beginning to think of the future, of his father. What would the Comte de Montreville say, if he knew that his son was living in the woods with a village girl? That question frequently disturbed Frédéric's repose, and as the days passed it recurred with increasing frequency.
Sometimes he said to himself:
"If father should see her, it would be impossible for him not to love her. But would he accept her as his son's wife? No, that is not to be expected; the Comte de Montreville is not in the least romantic; he is proud; he loves wealth, because he knows that money always adds to the estimation in which one is held; so there is no hope that he will allow his son to marry a penniless village girl."
To be sure, he could act without his father's consent; but, in that case, he must renounce his fortune, turn his talents to account, and work for his living; in any event, he must leave the woods, for he was beginning to realize that it is absurd for a young man to turn his back on the world at twenty-one; that men are made for society; and that the being in love with a pretty woman is no reason for burying one's self alive with her in the depths of a forest.
These arguments assumed greater force from day to day; especially when he was away from Sister Anne, he abandoned himself to such reflections, and his absences became longer every day. The poor child groaned in secret; she counted the minutes that she spent without her lover; she ran down into the valley to watch for his coming, and she pouted—oh! so sadly!—when he had been long absent; but she was so overjoyed to see him again, that her dejection soon passed away; she forgot all her anxieties when she held him to her heart.
A month had passed. Dubourg and Ménard had not returned to inquire concerning his plans, and he was greatly surprised. He did not know, as we do, that his two travelling companions were at that time installed under their friend Chambertin's roof, where that surprise in the way of fireworks was being prepared, which disclosed to their host what you already know, but what he did not know, even after the event, so they say, because his wife convinced him that he had seen nothing but fire.
So that Frédéric was at a loss to understand the indifference of his friends, especially of Ménard.
"Something new must have happened to them," he said to himself. "Dubourg has probably performed some further crazy exploit. I did wrong to trust him with all the money I possessed."
The invariable result of his reflections was that he must go to Grenoble, to find out what those gentlemen were doing. But to join them after saying to Dubourg that he would never leave those woods again, that he had abandoned forever a false and wicked world, all of whose pleasures were not equal to the tranquil life of a cottage—that was most embarrassing, and that was why Frédéric could not make up his mind to go to the town; for a man often chooses to persevere in an act of folly rather than admit that he is wrong.
Meanwhile, Frédéric's absolute idleness had become a heavy burden to him; with the best will in the world, one cannot talk twenty-four hours at a stretch to a pretty woman, and the poor girl was unhappy because she saw that her lover was melancholy and often sighed. At last, one fine evening, Frédéric, finding that he could endure it no longer, said to her:
"To-morrow, at daybreak, I shall go to Grenoble, to learn something about my friends."
As if struck by an unforeseen blow, the girl did not move for an instant, then her bosom heaved, and two streams of tears gushed from her eyes. She pointed to the road to the town, then to herself, as if to say:
"And me? are you going to leave me?"
The poor child was unable, in order to detain her lover, to resort to the sweet, loving words and entreaties which it is so hard to resist. But how expressive her gestures were, and how eloquent her eyes! one had but to glance at them to read all her thoughts.
"I will return," said Frédéric, "I promise you; I will return, and I shall never love anyone but you."
These words at once allayed Sister Anne's grief, for she did not doubt her lover's word. Remember, mesdames, that Sister Anne did not know the world—a very painful knowledge sometimes, since it teaches us to renounce the illusions of the heart.
The evening passed sadly enough; for, although she did not doubt that he would return soon, the idea of her friend's departure was very cruel to that glowing heart, upon which love had bestowed an unalloyed happiness which she had thought would endure to the end of her life. Frédéric did all that he could to comfort her; but by giving fresh proofs of his love a man inspires greater love than ever. Surely, then, that is not the best way to lessen the pain of a separation; but it is the way that is usually employed.
The dawn was a gloomy one in the eyes of the young orphan. Can that be a pleasant day which is to part us from all that we love best? Frédéric climbed the hill to the road, holding the poor girl's trembling hand in his. There, having repeated his promises and bade her a most affectionate farewell, he rode away and vanished from his sweetheart's sight.
A heavy weight settled down upon the girl's heart. She could not see Frédéric, but still she stood there, still she sought him with her eyes. Suddenly she turned them upon her immediate surroundings; a groan escaped her, and she fell on her knees at the foot of an old oak, which she kissed with profound respect. Poor child! she was on the very spot where her mother had died while waiting for her father! She recognized the spot, and, clasping her hands, prayed fervently, and commended herself to her mother.
Sister Anne was in the habit of going several times a year to pray by the old oak, near which the unhappy Clotilde had breathed her last; but she had never been there with Frédéric. On that day they had climbed that hill, over which ran the road to the town, and Sister Anne, absorbed by her grief, had not noticed it.
Poor child! what melancholy presentiment oppresses your heart? You think of your mother's fate, and say to yourself:
"Shall I be as unhappy as she was?"
But she must needs return to the cabin; old Marguerite might need her attention. She walked slowly down the hillside, sighing as she looked back at the old oak. There he had parted from her, and there, as her mother had done, she would come every day to await his return.
She returned to her cabin, her goats, and her woods; she resumed her ordinary habits and occupations. But everything was changed in her eyes; the woods seemed gloomy to her; wherever she went, she was oppressed by ennui. Her garden no longer had any charm for her, her home was like a desert. Frédéric embellished everything, and Frédéric was not there! Before she knew him, her eyes looked with pleasure upon things that she now viewed with indifference; and yet, the things themselves had not changed; but she had lost peace of mind and repose, and nothing looked to her as it did before.
Frédéric had not said how many days he would be absent, and the girl hoped to see him soon; she did not dream that he had found his father at Grenoble, and that the Comte de Montreville was at that moment taking his son with him to Paris.
Each day, Sister Anne went to the hilltop with her goats, and her eyes were constantly fixed on the road to the town; she sought Frédéric there, even as poor Clotilde had sought her husband. She amused herself by tracing her lover's name on the ground with a stick; that was all that he had taught her, but she had practised writing the name so often with him that she had succeeded in writing it legibly.
Several days passed, and Frédéric did not return. Sister Anne still hoped, because she could not believe that her lover would break his promise; and every morning, as she went up the hill, she said to herself:
"To-day I shall certainly come down with him."
Vain hope! she must needs return alone once more to her cabin, to that abode whence repose had fled since love had crossed the threshold.
But a new sentiment diverted her thoughts from her sorrow. Sister Anne bore within her a pledge of her love for Frédéric; she was enceinte, but had not yet tried to understand the change that she observed in herself. In her simplicity, it had not occurred to her that she might be a mother; but that thought suddenly came into her mind. Thereupon an unfamiliar joy took possession of her heart; she abandoned herself in ecstasy to that newborn hope. She would have a child—a child by Frédéric! It seemed to her that he must love her more than ever. The thought filled her heart with joy. To be a mother! what bliss! and what pleasure to be able to tell Frédéric! The girl leaped and ran about through the woods; in her excitement, she did innumerable foolish things; she looked at herself in the brook and in the fountain; she was proud to be a mother, and would have been glad that people should see it when they looked at her.
Poor child! whose every action manifests your perfect innocence—enjoy to the utmost this sentiment newborn in your heart! That, at all events, will never grow less.
But the days passed, and Frédéric did not return. Sister Anne was certain that she was to be a mother, and she could not tell her lover the joyful news! There can be no pleasure without pain; hers was poisoned by the anxiety she felt at the non-appearance of the being whom she adored; and every day the old oak was a silent witness of her sighs and her tears.