"Can she be fickle?" he asked himself as he returned to the Stopfers'
house. "She sympathized in my sorrow, and I cannot take part in her
joy!"
He blamed himself, justifying this girl-wife.
"She has no taint of hypocrisy, and is carried away by impulse,"
thought he, "and I want her to be like a Parisian woman."
* * * * *
Next day and the following days, in fact, for twenty days after,
Rodolphe spent all his time at the Bergmanns', watching Francesca
without having determined to watch her. In some souls admiration is
not independent of a certain penetration. The young Frenchman
discerned in Francesca the imprudence of girlhood, the true nature of
a woman as yet unbroken, sometimes struggling against her love, and at
other moments yielding and carried away by it. The old man certainly
behaved to her as a father to his daughter, and Francesca treated him
with a deeply felt gratitude which roused her instinctive nobleness.
The situation and the woman were to Rodolphe an impenetrable enigma,
of which the solution attracted him more and more.
These last days were full of secret joys, alternating with melancholy
moods, with tiffs and quarrels even more delightful than the hours
when Rodolphe and Francesca were of one mind. And he was more and more
fascinated by this tenderness apart from wit, always and in all things
the same, an affection that was jealous of mere nothings--already!
"You care very much for luxury?" said he one evening to Francesca, who
was expressing her wish to get away from Gersau, where she missed many
things.
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