What is a man to do in a case of this sort? Is he to denounce his own wife? Impossible! Divorce her? No! I looked upon the family as an organism, like the organism of a plant; a whole, of which I was a part. I could not exist independently of it; without the mother, life seemed impossible to me, even if I had had the custody of the children. My heart's blood, transmitted through my wife, flowed through the veins of their small bodies. The whole was like a system of arteries intimately connected and interdependent. If a single one were cut, my life would ebb away with the blood which trickled down and was sucked up by the sand. For this reason the infidelity of the wife is a terrible crime. One cannot help sympathising with the "Kill her!" of a well-known author, who shows us a father stricken to death because he has come to doubt the legitimacy of his offspring.
Marie, on the other hand, identified herself with the crazy endeavours to increase women's rights and liberties, and fully endorsed the new doctrine that the woman who deceives her husband is not guilty, because she is not his property.
I could not degrade myself to spy on her, I did not want proof which meant death to me. I wanted to deceive myself, live in a world of my own, which I could create at my pleasure.
But I was deeply wounded. I doubted the legitimacy of my children; I was haunted by the suspicion that although they bore my name and were supported by my earnings, they were yet not my children. Nevertheless, I loved them, for they had come into my life as a pledge of my future existence. Deprived of the hope to live again in my children, I floated in mid-air, like a poor phantom, breathing through roots which were not my own.
Marie seemed to lose patience, because I lingered so long. It was true before witnesses she treated me with the tender love of a mother, but when no one was present she tortured me, just as the little acrobat is pinched by his father behind the scenes. She tried to hasten my end by cruelty. She invented a new torture; justifying her conduct with my temporary weakness, she treated me as if I were a cripple. One day, proudly boasting of her physical strength, she threatened to strike me. She rushed at me, but I seized her by the wrists and forced her down on the sofa.
"Admit that I am the stronger, in spite of my illness!"
She did not admit it; she merely looked disconcerted, and, furious at having made a mistake, she left the room, sulking.
In our mutual struggle she had all the advantages of the woman and actress. It was impossible for me, a hardworking man, to hold my own against an idle woman who spent all her time spinning intrigues. In an unequal struggle of this sort the man is certain to be caught in the end in a net which enmeshes him on all sides.
"In love," said Napoleon, that most excellent judge of women, "one only wins by flight." But how could a carefully guarded prisoner escape? and as for a man sentenced to death....