She would never dare to tell her aloud; and even when they were so close and heart was beating against heart, she still hesitated:
“Listen, dear; it is he who demands it—he wants me to tell you that your destiny is the destiny of all women, and that even your mother has not escaped it.”
Rosalie was overwhelmed with that secret confided to her which she had divined in a flash at the first words of her mother, whilst her old and very dear voice broken with tears could hardly articulate the very sorrowful, very sorrowful story, similar in every way to her own—the crime of her husband from the earliest years of their housekeeping, just as if the motto of these wretched coupled beings must be “Deceive me or else I deceive thee!”—the man hastening to begin the evil in order to maintain his superior rank.
“Enough, enough, Mamma. Oh, how you are hurting me!”
This father whom she so admired, whom she placed far above any other man, this sterlingly honest and firm magistrate! But what kind of creatures were men, anyhow? At the North and down South, all were alike, traitors and perjurers. She who had not wept a tear because of the treason of her husband now felt herself invaded by a flood of hot tears because of this humiliation of her father.... And so they were counting upon this, were they? to make her yield! No, a hundred times no; she would never forgive. Ha, ha! so that was marriage, was it? Very well; dishonor and disdain upon marriage then! What cared she for fear of scandal and the proprieties of the world, since it was a rivalry as to who should treat them with the most contempt?
Her mother, taking her in her arms and pressing her against her heart, endeavored to soften the revolt of this young conscience wounded in all its beliefs, in its dearest superstitions; she caressed her gently as if she were rocking a child:
“Yes, yes, you will forgive. You will do as I did—you see it is our destiny. Ah, I also had a terrible bitterness in me during the first moments and a great longing to throw myself out of the window. But I thought of my child, my poor little Andrew who was just coming to life, who since then grew up and died, loving and respecting all his family. So you too will pardon in order that your child shall have the same happy tranquillity which my own courage secured to you, so that he shall not be one of those half-orphans whom parents share between them, whom they bring up in hatred and disdain to one and the other. You will also remember that your father and mother have already suffered tremendously and that other bitter sorrows are menacing them now—”
She stopped short, suffocated by feeling, and then in a solemn accent:
“My daughter, all sorrows become softened and all wounds are capable of being cured. There is only one sorrow which is irreparable and that is the death of the person we love.”
In the failure of her agitated forces that followed these last words Rosalie felt the figure of her mother grow in grandeur by as much as her father had lost greatness in her eyes. She even reproached herself for having so long misunderstood the sublime and resigned self-abnegation concealed beneath that apparent feebleness which was the result of bitter blows. Thus it came about that for her mother’s sake, for her mother’s sake alone, she renounced the lawsuit in revenge of her outraged rights, and renounced it in gentle words, almost as if asking pardon: “Only do not insist that I go back to him—I should be too ashamed. I will accompany my sister to the South. Afterwards, later, we shall see.”