“Kind? He is the kindest man in the whole world. I can’t tell you how good he is.”
There was no doubting the sincerity of the Count’s daughter-in-law as she made this speech; her wide humorous mouth parted and her dark eyes glowed.
“Really?” said Hornblower — the word ‘vraiment’ slipped naturally from his lips now that some animation had come into the conversation.
“Yes, really. He is good all the way through. He is sweet and kind, by nature and not — not as a result of experience. He has never said a word to me, not once, not a word, about the disappointment I have caused him.”
“You, madame?”
“Yes. Oh, isn’t it obvious? I am not a great lady — Marcel should not have married me. My father is a Normandy peasant, on his own land, but a peasant all the same, while the Ladons, Counts of Graçay, go back to — to Saint Louis, or before that. Marcel told me how disappointed was the Count at our marriage, but I should never have known of it otherwise — not by word or by action. Marcel was the eldest son then, because Antoine had been killed at Austerlitz. And Marcel is dead, too — he was wounded at Aspern — and I have no son, no child at all, and the Count has never reproached me, never.”
Hornblower tried to make some kind of sympathetic noise.
“And Louis-Marie is dead as well now. He died of fever in Spain. He was the third son, and M. de Graçay is the last of the Ladons. I think it broke his heart, but he has never said a bitter word.”
“The three sons are all dead?” said Hornblower.
“Yes, as I told you. M. de Graçay was an émigré — he lived in your town of London with his children for years after the Revolution. And then the boys grew up and they heard of the fame of the Emperor — he was First Consul then — and they all wanted to share in the glory of France. It was to please them that the Count took advantage of the amnesty and returned here — this is all that the Revolution has left of his estates. He never went to Paris. What would he have in common with the Emperor? But he allowed his sons to join the army, and now they are all dead, Antoine and Marcel and Louis-Marie. Marcel married me when his regiment was billeted in our village, but the others never married. Louis-Marie was only eighteen when he died.”
“Terrible!” said Hornblower.
The banal words did not express his sense of the pathos of the story, but it was all he could think of. He understood now the Count’s statement of the night before that the authorities would be willing to accept his bare word that he had seen nothing of any escaped prisoners. A great gentleman whose three sons had died in the Imperial service would never be suspected of harbouring fugitives.
“Understand me,” went on the Vicomtesse. “It is not because he hates the Emperor that he makes you welcome here. It is because he is kind, because you needed help — I have never known him to deny help to anyone. Oh, it is hard to explain, but I think you understand.”
“I understand,” said Hornblower, gently.
His heart warmed to the Vicomtesse, She might be lonely and unhappy; she was obviously as hard as her peasant upbringing would make her, and yet her first thought was to impress upon this stranger the goodness and virtue of her father-in-law. With her nearly-red hair and black eyes she was a striking-looking woman, and her skin had a thick creaminess which enhanced her looks; only a slight irregularity of feature and the wideness of her mouth prevented her from being of dazzling beauty. No wonder the young subaltern in the Hussars — Hornblower took it for granted that the dead Vicomte de Graçay had been a subaltern of Hussars — had fallen in love with her during the dreary routine of training, and had insisted on marrying her despite his father’s opposition. Hornblower thought he would not find it hard to fall in love with her himself if he were mad enough to allow such a thing to happen while his life was in the hands of the Count.