Free A Life by Guy de Maupassant Page B

debts and sold the family mansion, had found himself a small hunting-lodge on one of the three farms which he owned in the commune of Étouvent. These estates brought in some five to six thousand a year in total; but the Vicomte, being of a thrifty and sober disposition, intended to spend the next two or three years living simply in this modest pied-à-terre in order to accumulate sufficient funds to cut a figure in the world and marry well without incurring debts or mortgaging his farms.
    The priest added:
    'He's such a charming fellow, so sensible and mild-mannered. But he doesn't find much to amuse him round here.'
    The Baron answered:
    'Then bring him to see us, Monsieur l'Abbé. Perhaps that may offer him some distraction from time to time.'
    And they began to talk of other things.
    When they went into the drawing-room after coffee, the priest asked if he might take a turn round the garden, being accustomed to a little exercise after his meals. The Baron accompanied him. Slowly they walked the length of the white-fronted chateau before retracing their steps. Their shadows, the one thin, the other round and wearing a mushroom on its head, came and went, now before them, now behind, depending on whether they were walking towards the moon or away from it. The priest was chewing a kind of cigarette which he had taken out of his pocket. He explained its use with a countryman's frankness:
    'It helps me belch. My digestion's not very good.'
    Then, promptly looking up at the bright moon riding in the sky, he declared:
    'Ah, there's a sight one never tires of.'
    And he went in to take his leave of the ladies.
    III
    On the following Sunday the Baroness and Jeanne went to Mass, out of tactful deference towards their priest.
    They waited for him after the service in order to invite him to lunch on Thursday. He came out of the vestry arm-in-arm with a tall, elegant young man. On catching sight of the two ladies, he gestured in delighted surprise and exclaimed:
    'How opportune! Allow me, your ladyship, Mademoiselle Jeanne, to introduce to you your neighbour, Monsieur le Vicomte de Lamare'.
    The Vicomte bowed, said how he had long wished to make the ladies' acquaintance, and began to converse with the easy, well-bred assurance of a man who has lived. He had one of those fortunate faces which women dream about and all men find disagreeable. His black, curly hair cast a shadow over his smooth, tanned forehead; and two large eyebrows, as regular in shape as though they had been artificially drawn, lent depth and tenderness to his dark eyes, the whites of which seemed faintly tinged with blue.
    His long, thick eyelashes lent his expression the passionate eloquence that unnerves the grand lady in her drawing-room and makes the young lass in a bonnet turn to look as she carries her basket through the streets.
    The languid charm of this look suggested a profundity of thought and made his slightest remark seem important.
    The beard, thick, glossy, and finely combed, concealed a slightly too prominent jaw.
    They parted after many civilities.
    Two days later Monsieur de Lamare paid his first visit.
    He arrived as they were trying out a garden bench which had just been installed that very morning beneath the tall plane-tree opposite the drawing-room windows. The Baron wanted another placed beneath the lime-tree to balance it: Mama, an enemy of symmetry, did not. The Vicomte, on being  consulted, was of the same view as the Baroness.
    Then he spoke of the region, which he declared to be very 'pictureseque', having chanced in the course of his solitary walks upon many ravishing 'beauty spots'. From time to time his eyes would, as though by chance, encounter Jeanne's; and she was left with a singular sensation by this sudden, rapidly averted gaze in which there appeared appreciative admiration and the beginnings of an instinctive compatibility.
    As it turned out, Monsieur de Lamare senior, who had died the previous year, had known an intimate friend