This scene took place on a Tuesday. I waited until Sunday and did not cross the river. Duringthose five days great events were happening at Clochegourde. The count received his brevet asgeneral of brigade, the cross of Saint Louis, and a pension of four thousand francs. The Duc deLenoncourt-Givry, made peer of France, recovered possession of two forests, resumed his place atcourt, and his wife regained all her unsold property, which had been made part of the imperialcrown lands. The Comtesse de Mortsauf thus became an heiress. Her mother had arrived atClochegourde, bringing her a hundred thousand francs economized at Givry, the amount of herdowry, still unpaid and never asked for by the count in spite of his poverty. In all such matters ofexternal life the conduct of this man was proudly disinterested. Adding to this sum his own fewsavings he was able to buy two neighboring estates, which would yield him some nine thousandfrancs a year. His son would of course succeed to the grandfather's peerage, and the count now sawhis way to entail the estate upon him without injury to Madeleine, for whom the Duc de Lenoncourtwould no doubt assist in promoting a good marriage.These arrangements and this new happiness shed some balm upon the count's sore mind. Thepresence of the Duchesse de Lenoncourt at Clochegourde was a great event to the neighborhood. Ireflected gloomily that she was a great lady, and the thought made me conscious of the spirit ofcaste in the daughter which the nobility of her sentiments had hitherto hidden from me. Who wasI-poor, insignificant, and with no future but my courage and my faculties? I did not then think ofthe consequences of the Restoration either for me or for others. On Sunday morning, from theprivate chapel where I sat with Monsieur and Madame de Chessel and the Abbe de Quelus, I cast aneager glance at another lateral chapel occupied by the duchess and her daughter, the count and hischildren. The large straw hat which hid my idol from me did not tremble, and this unconsciousnessof my presence seemed to bind me to her more than all the past. This noble Henriette deLenoncourt, my Henriette, whose life I longed to garland, was praying earnestly; faith gave to herfigure an abandonment, a prosternation, the attitude of some religious statue, which moved me tothe soul.