Gratitude, the key-
note of his life, held him bound to that household where he alone
could look after the affairs of the heedless owners. The long absence
of Adam and Clementine had given him peace. But the countess had
returned more lovely than ever, enjoying the freedom which marriage
brings to a Parisian woman, displaying the graces of a young wife and
the nameless attraction she gains from the happiness, or the
independence, bestowed upon her by a young man as trustful, as
chivalric, and as much in love as Adam. To know that he was the pivot
on which the splendor the household depended, to see Clementine when
she got out of her carriage on returning from some fete, or got into
it in the morning when she took her drive, to meet her on the
boulevards in her pretty equipage, looking like a flower in a whorl of
leaves, inspired poor Thaddeus with mysterious delights, which glowed
in the depths of his heart but gave no signs upon his face.
How happened it that for five whole months the countess had never
perceived the captain? Because he hid himself from her knowledge, and
carefully concealed the pains he took to avoid her. Nothing so
resembles the Divine love as hopeless human love. A man must have
great depth of heart to devote himself in silence and obscurity to a
woman.
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