Louis Lambert — Honoré de Balzac, trans. Katharine Prescott Wormeley

‘““T,”’ said she, ‘‘am the Comtesse de Mahaut,”’ and she rose with a dignity that took the man’s breath away. ‘‘Beware of bringing the smallest trouble on your guests. Above all, respect the old man; I have seen him in the company of your Lord the King, who entreated him courteously; you will be ill advised to trouble him in any way. As to my having been here—never breathe a word of it, as you value your life.”’

She said no more, but relapsed into thought.

Presently she looked up, signed to Jacqueline, and together they went up into Godefroid's room. The fair Countess looked at the bed, the carved chairs, the chest, the tapestry, the table, with a joy like that of the exile who sees on his return the crowded roofs of his native town nestling at the foot of a hill.

“Tf you have not deceived me,’’ said-she to Jacqueline,
‘‘T promise you a hundred crowns in gold.”’

‘‘Behold, Madame,’’ said the woman, ‘‘the poor angel is confiding—here is all his treasure.’’

As she spoke, Jacqueline opened a drawer in the table and showed some parchments.

‘“‘“God of mercy!’ cried the Countess, snatching up a document that caught her eye, on which she read, Gothofredus Comes Gantiacus (Godefroid, Count of Ghent).

She dropped the parchment, and passed her hand over her brow; then, feeling, no doubt, that she had compromised herself by showing so much emotion, she recoyered her cold demeanor.

‘‘T am satisfied,’’ said she.

She went downstairs and out of the house. The constable and his wife stood in their doorway, and saw her take the path to the landing-place.

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A boat was moored hard by. When the rustle of the Countess’s approach was audible, a boatman suddenly stood up, helped the fair laundress to take her seat in it, and rowed with such strength as to make the boat fly hke a swallow down the stream.

2)

“You are a sorry fellow,’’ said Jacqueline, giving the officer’s shoulder a familiar slap. ‘‘We have earned a hundred gold crowns this morning.”’

“T like harboring lords no better than harboring wizards. And I know not, of the two, which is the more like to bring us to the gallows,”’ replied Tirechair, taking up his halberd. ‘‘T will go my rounds over by Champfleuri; God protect us, and send me to meet some pert jade out in her bravery of gold rings to glitter in the shade like a glow-worm!”’

Jacqueline, alone in the house, hastily went up to the unknown lord’s room to discover, if she could, some clew to this mysterious business. Like some learned men who give themselves infinite pains to complicate the clear and simple laws of nature, she had already invented a chaotic romance to account for the meeting of these three persons under her humble roof. She hunted through the chest, examined everything, but could find nothing extraordinary. She saw nothing on the table but a writing-case and some sheets of parchment; and as she could not read, this discovery told her nothing. A woman’s instinct then took her into the young man’s room, and from thence she descried her two lodgers crossing the river in the ferryboat.

“They stand like two statues,’’ said she to herself. ““Ah, ha! They are landing at the Rue du Fouarre. How nimble he is, the sweet youth! He jumped out like a bird. By him the old man looks like some stone saint in the Cathedral.—They are going to the old Schoolp. 830 of the Four Nations.~ Presto! they are out of sight.—And this is where he lives, poor cherub!’’ she went on, looking about the room. ‘‘How smart and winning he is! Ah! your fine gentry are made of other stuff than we are.”’

And Jacqueline went down again after smoothing down the bed-coverlet, dusting the chest, and wondering for the hundredth time in six months—