第27章

Balthazar was exuberantly gay throughout the evening.He invented games for the children, and played with such zest himself that he did not notice two or three short absences made by his wife.About half-past nine, when Jean had gone to bed, Marguerite returned to the parlor after helping her sister Felicie to undress, and found her mother seated in the deep armchair, and her father holding his wife's hand as he talked to her.The young girl feared to disturb them, and was about to retire without speaking, when Madame Claes caught sight of her, and said:--"Come in, Marguerite; come here, dear child." She drew her down, kissed her tenderly on the forehead, and said, "Carry your book into your own room; but do not sit up too late.""Good-night, my darling daughter," said Balthazar.

Marguerite kissed her father and mother and went away.Husband and wife remained alone for some minutes without speaking, watching the last glimmer of the twilight as it faded from the trees in the garden, whose outlines were scarcely discernible through the gathering darkness.When night had almost fallen, Balthazar said to his wife in a voice of emotion,--"Let us go upstairs."

Long before English manners and customs had consecrated the wife's chamber as a sacred spot, that of a Flemish woman was impenetrable.

The good housewives of the Low Countries did not make it a symbol of virtue.It was to them a habit contracted from childhood, a domestic superstition, rendering the bedroom a delightful sanctuary of tender feelings, where simplicity blended with all that was most sweet and sacred in social life.Any woman in Madame Claes's position would have wished to gather about her the elegances of life, but Josephine had done so with exquisite taste, knowing well how great an influence the aspect of our surroundings exerts upon the feelings of others.To a pretty creature it would have been mere luxury, to her it was a necessity.No one better understood the meaning of the saying, "Apretty woman is self-created,"--a maxim which guided every action of Napoleon's first wife, and often made her false; whereas Madame Claes was ever natural and true.

Though Balthazar knew his wife's chamber well, his forgetfulness of material things had lately been so complete that he felt a thrill of soft emotion when he entered it, as though he saw it for the first time.The proud gaiety of a triumphant woman glowed in the splendid colors of the tulips which rose from the long throats of Chinese vases judiciously placed about the room, and sparkled in the profusion of lights whose effect can only be compared to a joyous burst of martial music.The gleam of the wax candles cast a mellow sheen on the coverings of pearl-gray silk, whose monotony was relieved by touches of gold, soberly distributed here and there on a few ornaments, and by the varied colors of the tulips, which were like sheaves of precious stones.The secret of this choice arrangement--it was he, ever he!

Josephine could not tell him in words more eloquent that he was now and ever the mainspring of her joys and woes.

The aspect of that chamber put the soul deliciously at ease, cast out sad thoughts, and left a sense of pure and equable happiness.The silken coverings, brought from China, gave forth a soothing perfume that penetrated the system without fatiguing it.The curtains, carefully drawn, betrayed a desire for solitude, a jealous intention of guarding the sound of every word, of hiding every look of the reconquered husband.Madame Claes, wearing a dressing-robe of muslin, which was trimmed by a long pelerine with falls of lace that came about her throat, and adorned with her beautiful black hair, which was exquisitely glossy and fell on either side of her forehead like a raven's wing, went to draw the tapestry portiere that hung before the door and allowed no sound to penetrate the chamber from without.