think of the sensation her absence would produce; she had quite comforted herself while she reflected on les misérables whom she would leave behind; she also felt a little touch of curiosity when the count desired her company; she became almost interested about him while thinking what could be the cause. It was but a little mystery, scarcely worth penetrating, if she had known all. De Boufflers was himself in despair at leaving Paris, and was only induced to take so rash a step from considering that his own chateau was preferable to the Bastile. In an agony of anticipated ennui he looked about for a resource; his wife’s evil genius managed that her idea should occur to his mind. Every body said she was so charming, would not her company be better than none at all—or, worse than none at all—his own? The Comte de Boufflers was himself “the ocean to the river of his thoughts,” and he decided that it was far better for half the salons in Paris to be desolés than to omit even so slight a precaution as his wife’s company, when reduced to sixty miles from Paris, tapestried chambers, some fifty worm-eaten portraits, and an avenue with a rookery.
The next morning Amalie, who had made up her mind to enact la femme comme il y en a peu, was ready, and they drove off rapidly, after a conjugal dispute as to whether both her pet poodle and paroquet were to have a place in the carriage; but, as is usually the case in trifles, female supremacy carried the day. For many miles the countess was kept awake by hope and reflection; the hope, a sort of vague, romance-reading hope, that some adventure would fall out by the way, and the reflection on the despair which her sudden departure would occasion. At length her imagination and her temper were alike exhausted; she became sleepy and petulant, and, if such a term could be applied to any form of speech proceeding from a mouth whence spring had copied its roses (we merely translate into prose an expression in the last copy of verses addressed to the divine Amalie), she actually scolded, her poodle barked and snapped, her paroquet screamed and bit, and when they arrived at the end of their journey, the count was plunged in a profound meditation as to what other people could find so fascinating in his wife.
The chateau was, like the general run of chateaux left to a concierge and one or two old retainers, as dilapidated as their dwelling. A ghost had taken possession of one chamber—smoke of a second—a murder, ages ago, had been in a third—and a fourth swarmed with rats. The count sought refuge in shooting partridges from morning till night, and the countess in despair and letter-writing. There is such a thing as friendship, for her epistles received answers full of condolences, regret, and, dearer still, news. One
