Thus commenced a conversation, during the course of which the Baroness succeeded in removing all the general's scruples. They afterwards proceeded to discuss the matter in question under another point of view--a view which appeared to the lady of very much more consequence than anything wherein feelings were concerned. The marriage settlements were skilfully introduced by the Baroness, who evinced as much practical sense in this second portion of the conversation as in the first; while Gregers Daa, on his side, showed a degree of high-minded liberality which quite surpassed her most exaggerated expectation.
And thus was this marriage determined on, this bargain concluded, in which was bartered away a young girl's future happiness, to secure for her some insignificant worldly advantages. The sacrifice was accomplished with festive pomp, with flowers, smiles, and songs on one side, with smothered sighs and suppressed tears on the other. The same wedding-bells that rang to announce Gregers Daa's happiness rang Jeanné's freedom of soul and happiness into the grave.
The first few weeks after the wedding were spent in society, visiting, and all the round of amusements which it was more the fashion to offer to newly-married people at that period than in our days. Gregers objected to this dissipation in vain, the Baroness insisted on it, and the complaisant son-in-law allowed her to take her own way. The Baroness Rysé hoped, by these means, to procure her daughter some diversion, which might lead her to _forget_: she had herself never felt any other than these small sorrows that vanish amidst wax-lights and noise in a ball-room; she could not, therefore, conceive that Jeanné might, indeed, be stupified by all the entertainments provided for her, but that solitude is the only comfort in deep sorrow, and the great physician for suffering.
Betwixt the mother and daughter, these such opposite characters, the principal difference was simply this--that the Baroness thought only of marriage, and Jeanné of love.
As to the general, he found, to his great surprise, that all those feelings, so new to him, which had begun to be so softening and so pleasant, had suddenly changed their nature. That love, which had wiled his heart out of its accustomed torpor, which had come like a sunbeam on a late day in autumn, unexpectedly, and all of a sudden, had been as hastily enjoyed as if its loss were feared. He tried in vain to acquire the affection he coveted; but how could he think that an old man's measured and bashful love could be able to chase away the clouds of lassitude and grief which rested on Jeanné's beautiful but pale brow, or dislodge the remembrance of what she had lost by what she had won? When at last, after long and fruitless struggles, he perceived the impossibility of attaining the desired object, which seemed always to draw back from him like the obscure and misty images on a wide heath, he shut himself up in his own study--but not with his former peace of mind; and he bore the marks of his internal battles in his hollow sunken cheeks and whitened hair. From this time forward Gregers endured his sorrows in silence, as Jeanné did hers: the only difference between them was--the cause of the unhappiness of each.