" There is
a rustic peacefulness pervading everything which, for me, stands instead
of beauty.
I am hypocrite enough to pretend to be pleased with everything, for I can
perceive how anxiously M. Lenoble watches me in order to discover whether
I like his native country. He was not born at Beaubocage, but in Paris.
Mademoiselle Lenoble told me the story of his childhood, and how she
brought him to Beaubocage, when quite a little fellow, from Rouen, where
his father died. About his mother there seems to have been some mystery.
Mademoiselle told me nothing of this, except that her brother, Gustave
the elder, made a love-match, and thereby offended his father. She has
the little crib in which her nephew, Gustave the younger, slept on the
night of his coming. It had been his father's little bed thirty years
before. She shed tears as she told me the story, and how she sat and
watched by the little fellow as he cried himself to sleep with his head
lying on her arm, and the summer moonlight shining full upon his face.
I was deeply touched by her manner as she told me these things; and I
think, if I had not already learned to love M. Lenoble, I should love him
for the sake of his aunt. She is charming; a creature so innocent and
pure, that one considers one's words in speaking to her, almost as if she
were a child. She is about forty years older than I; yet for worlds I
would not tell her of the people and the scenes I have beheld at foreign
watering-places and gambling-rooms.
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