Leo Tolstoy - 3 books to know Napoleonic Wars

“A reconciliation, after all!” they exclaimed together.

“Reconciliation? Not that exactly. It is something much more binding. Is it not so, General?”

General Feraud only lowered his head in sign of assent. The two veterans looked at each other. Later in the day, when they found themselves alone out of their moody friend’s earshot, the cuirassier remarked suddenly, “Generally speaking, I can see with my one eye as far as most people; but this beats me. He won’t say anything.”

“In this affair of honour I understand there has been from first to last always something that no one in the army could quite make out,” declared the chasseur with the imperfect nose. “In mystery it began, in mystery it went on, in mystery it is to end, apparently.”

General D’Hubert walked home with long, hasty strides, by no means uplifted by a sense of triumph. He had conquered, yet it did not seem to him that he had gained very much by his conquest. The night before he had grudged the risk of his life which appeared to him magnificent, worthy of preservation as an opportunity to win a girl’s love. He had known moments when, by a marvellous illusion, this love seemed to be already his, and his threatened life a still more magnificent opportunity of devotion. Now that his life was safe it had suddenly lost its special magnificence. It had acquired instead a specially alarming aspect as a snare for the exposure of unworthiness. As to the marvellous illusion of conquered love that had visited him for a moment in the agitated watches of the night, which might have been his last on earth, he comprehended now its true nature. It had been merely a paroxysm of delirious conceit. Thus to this man, sobered by the victorious issue of a duel, life appeared robbed of its charm, simply because it was no longer menaced.

Approaching the house from the back, through the orchard and the kitchen garden, he could not notice the agitation which reigned in front. He never met a single soul. Only while walking softly along the corridor, he became aware that the house was awake and more noisy than usual. Names of servants were being called out down below in a confused noise of coming and going. With some concern he noticed that the door of his own room stood ajar, though the shutters had not been opened yet. He had hoped that his early excursion would have passed unperceived. He expected to find some servant just gone in; but the sunshine filtering through the usual cracks enabled him to see lying on the low divan something bulky, which had the appearance of two women clasped in each other’s arms. Tearful and desolate murmurs issued mysteriously from that appearance. General D’Hubert pulled open the nearest pair of shutters violently. One of the women then jumped up. It was his sister. She stood for a moment with her hair hanging down and her arms raised straight up above her head, and then flung herself with a stifled cry into his arms. He returned her embrace, trying at the same time to disengage himself from it. The other woman had not risen. She seemed, on the contrary, to cling closer to the divan, hiding her face in the cushions. Her hair was also loose; it was admirably fair. General D’Hubert recognized it with staggering emotion. Mademoiselle de Valmassigue! Adele! In distress!

He became greatly alarmed, and got rid of his sister’s hug definitely. Madame Leonie then extended her shapely bare arm out of her peignoir, pointing dramatically at the divan. “This poor, terrified child has rushed here from home, on foot, two miles — running all the way.”

“What on earth has happened?” asked General D’Hubert in a low, agitated voice.

But Madame Leonie was speaking loudly. “She rang the great bell at the gate and roused all the household — we were all asleep yet. You may imagine what a terrible shock. . . . Adele, my dear child, sit up.”

General D’Hubert’s expression was not that of a man who “imagines” with facility. He did, however, fish out of the chaos of surmises the notion that his prospective mother-in-law had died suddenly, but only to dismiss it at once. He could not conceive the nature of the event or the catastrophe which would induce Mademoiselle de Valmassigue, living in a house full of servants, to bring the news over the fields herself, two miles, running all the way.

“But why are you in this room?” he whispered, full of awe.

“Of course, I ran up to see, and this child . . . I did not notice it . . . she followed me. It’s that absurd Chevalier,” went on Madame Leonie, looking towards the divan. . . . “Her hair is all come down. You may imagine she did not stop to call her maid to dress it before she started . . . Adele, my dear, sit up. . . . He blurted it all out to her at half-past five in the morning. She woke up early and opened her shutters to breathe the fresh air, and saw him sitting collapsed on a garden bench at the end of the great alley. At that hour — you may imagine! And the evening before he had declared himself indisposed. She hurried on some clothes and flew down to him. One would be anxious for less. He loves her, but not very intelligently. He had been up all night, fully dressed, the poor old man, perfectly exhausted. He wasn’t in a state to invent a plausible story. . . . What a confidant you chose there! My husband was furious. He said, ‘We can’t interfere now.’ So we sat down to wait. It was awful. And this poor child running with her hair loose over here publicly! She has been seen by some people in the fields. She has roused the whole household, too. It’s awkward for her. Luckily you are to be married next week. . . . Adele, sit up. He has come home on his own legs. . . . We expected to see you coming on a stretcher, perhaps — what do I know? Go and see if the carriage is ready. I must take this child home at once. It isn’t proper for her to stay here a minute longer.”

General D’Hubert did not move. It was as though he had heard nothing. Madame Leonie changed her mind. “I will go and see myself,” she cried. “I want also my cloak. — Adele —” she began, but did not add “sit up.” She went out saying, in a very loud and cheerful tone: “I leave the door open.”

General D’Hubert made a movement towards the divan, but then Adele sat up, and that checked him dead. He thought, “I haven’t washed this morning. I must look like an old tramp. There’s earth on the back of my coat and pine-needles in my hair.” It occurred to him that the situation required a good deal of circumspection on his part.

“I am greatly concerned, mademoiselle,” he began, vaguely, and abandoned that line. She was sitting up on the divan with her cheeks unusually pink and her hair, brilliantly fair, falling all over her shoulders — which was a very novel sight to the general. He walked away up the room, and looking out of the window for safety said, “I fear you must think I behaved like a madman,” in accents of sincere despair. Then he spun round, and noticed that she had followed him with her eyes. They were not cast down on meeting his glance. And the expression of her face was novel to him also. It was, one might have said, reversed. Those eyes looked at him with grave thoughtfulness, while the exquisite lines of her mouth seemed to suggest a restrained smile. This change made her transcendental beauty much less mysterious, much more accessible to a man’s comprehension. An amazing ease of mind came to the general — and even some ease of manner. He walked down the room with as much pleasurable excitement as he would have found in walking up to a battery vomiting death, fire, and smoke; then stood looking down with smiling eyes at the girl whose marriage with him (next week) had been so carefully arranged by the wise, the good, the admirable Leonie.

“Ah! mademoiselle,” he said, in a tone of courtly regret, “if only I could be certain that you did not come here this morning, two miles, running all the way, merely from affection for your mother!”