"The river is only as big as this in winter," said the Vicomtesse.
"In summer it dwindles away to almost nothing.
There are places where one can walk across it, from one bank to the other.
Then it is blue, and its banks are golden, but now it is black and ugly."
"Yes," said Hornblower.
He felt a peculiar tingling sensation down his thighs and calves as the words recalled his experience of the night before, the swoop over the fall and the mad battle in the flood.
He and Bush and Brown might easily all be sodden corpses now, rolling among the rocks at the bottom of the river until the process of corruption should bring them to the surface.
"I have not thanked you and M. de Gracay for your hospitality," he said, picking his words with care.
"It is very kind of the Count."
"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 Gracay, 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 Gracay 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 Gracay was an emigre — 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.