Had Marie's mother, formerly a governess of middle-class origin, who had wheedled Marie's father into a marriage with her; who had fled to Sweden to escape from pressing debts; had she, the widow who so cleverly contrived to conceal her poverty, stooped to sell her daughter when they were living at Södertälje?
The old woman, a coquette still at the age of sixty, had always inspired me with mingled feelings of compassion and dislike; mean, pleasure-loving, with the manners of an adventuress, a veritable "man-eater," she regarded every man as her legitimate prey. She had made me support her sister; she had deceived her first son-in-law, the Baron, with the story of a dowry swindled out of one of her creditors.
Poor Marie! Her remorse, her unrest, her dark moods were rooted in that shady past. In putting old events by the side of new ones I had the key to the quarrels between mother and daughter, brutal quarrels, frequently verging on violence. I could understand Marie's hitherto incomprehensible words, "I could kick my mother!"
Had her game been to silence the old woman? Probably; for the latter had threatened to ruin our lives by confessing "everything."
There could have been no doubt of Marie's dislike for her mother, to whom the Baron frequently referred as "that old blackguard," an invective which he justified with the half-truth that she had taught her daughter all the tricks of coquetry to enable her to catch a husband.
All these coincidences strengthened my determination to separate from her. It had to be! There was no alternative. And I left for Copenhagen to make inquiries into the past of the woman in whose keeping I had confided my honour.
In meeting my countrymen after several years' absence I found that they had formed very definite opinions of me; the eager exertions of Marie and her friends had borne fruit. She was a holy martyr; I was a madman, whose lunacy consisted in believing himself to be saddled with an unfaithful wife.
Make inquiries? It was like beating my head against a stone wall. People listened to what I had to say with a furtive smile and stared at me as if I were a rare animal. No information was vouchsafed to me; I was deserted by every one, especially by those who secretly yearned for my ruin, so that they might rise over my fallen body.
I returned to my prison. Marie met me with evident misgivings; I learned more from the expression of her face than I had learned during the whole of my melancholy journey.