The Dream Lover Read Free Page A

understand why she had had to leave. All of this would be no more difficult than the days when Deschartres had to force the loudly protesting young Maurice to bed, only to see the boy, once his head hit the pillow, fall asleep immediately.
    But when the excited police arrived and demanded that my mother let them in, they found only what looked like a weeping angel, a lovely figure in a white dress, barefoot and seemingly defenseless. Those men were susceptible to my mother’s charms in a way that Deschartres could not be, and they ended up expressing not outrage but pity for her. Upon gentle questioning, my mother told the authorities the truth: she had met Maurice in Italy and they had fallen in love. She had left a wealthy general for him, a poor lieutenant; she had listened to her heart and chosen love over riches and comfort. Was this a crime?
    Deschartres, who was waiting outside, agreed to leave only when he was told that the police would persuade my mother to go back to Paris that very day.
    Deschartres had just left when my father came galloping up, having learned that his tutor had gone to castigate his true love. Everyone knows this simple truth of the heart: Nothing will bring lovers closer together than people trying to keep them apart. And so my father rushed to Sophie’s defense. He leapt off his steed, raced up the steps to her room, and embraced her. He tenderly dried her tears, kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her mouth, and the palms of her hands. He begged her to forgive the behavior of his family, whom he now disavowed. He told her to take the coach back to Paris, promising that he would soon follow her there.
    Back at Nohant, a breathless and red-faced Deschartres, nearly choking on his self-righteousness, had been telling my grandmotherthat she was more than justified in having serious doubts about my father’s lover. “She is the lowest kind of commoner,” he said, pacing back and forth in the dining room. “She is uncouth and selfish, totally without proper upbringing, and you are correct in thinking that the sooner Maurice is separated from her, the better. He cannot think straight around her; she clouds his reason, but he is of course in every way too good for her!”
    Into this scene came my father, panting and wild-eyed. When Deschartres started to speak, my father turned his back to him, ignoring him, and stood close to his mother to tell her that he must get away from Deschartres immediately or he would throttle him at the least. My father would go and visit friends in Châteauroux for a few days to clear his head; when he came back, all would be calmer and they could talk.
    “But now you leave me yet again,” my grandmother said, weeping. “How it hurts me for you to go away when all I want in the world is to have you nearby!”
    My father could engage in fearsome battles with his sword, he rode on when cannonballs were whizzing by him, he could withstand being wounded or made a prisoner of war, but never could he bear his mother’s tears.
    His heart softened and he embraced her, kissed the top of her head and rocked her side to side, saying, “Now, Mother, dear Mother, you know that we are all beside ourselves! Let me go for a brief visit and have some time to think. Do not concern yourself with Sophie! Perhaps she will go to Paris and console herself in the arms of another man and I will be shown to be the fool that you suggest I am. But let me go away now, and give me your blessing; I shall soon return to you and even to that reprobate Deschartres in a much better frame of mind.”
    My father knew very well he could not stay angry at Deschartres, for above all else, they loved each other. The tutor had helped raise the little boy, and the boy’s mind and spirit were enriched by theodd soul who taught him arts and sciences and took him for long walks in and around Nohant, oftentimes carrying him home, asleep on his shoulder.
    My father did go to visit friends, and from there he sent