I had always found that policy best which was bravest. I
remembered this now. Dropping my high tone, and soothing my excited
features, I beckoned the woman and gave her a chair; I took a chair
myself, wrapping a shawl close about me to repress the shivering I
could not yet overcome, and I and that woman, returned from the grave,
as it seemed to me, sat calmly down in business-fashion, and held a
long conversation.
Madame C---- had loved her husband with that sort of respectful,
awe-filled affection which lower natures experience towards those
which are a grade above them. She had loved her children, too,
although they were her torment. Her inability to manage or keep
them in order fretted and irritated her excessively. Monsieur, as a
philosopher, could not understand the anomaly, that a woman who was
perpetually unhappy and ill-tempered, while her children, young,
buoyant, and mischievous, were about her, should sympathize with
and care for them when sick. He could not understand her
conscience-stricken misery when little Jacques drooped after her
severity towards him. Monsieur was a kind husband, however, and a wise
man in many things. He had studied much in his youth, chiefly medical
works, of which he had quite a collection.
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