Each week during all that time she received one letter, at least, from Chupin.
Ah! many a time she envied the lot of her victim! What was Marie-Anne’s death compared with the life she led?
Her sufferings were measured by years, Marie-Anne’s by minutes; and she said to herself, again and again, that the torture of poison could not be as intolerable as her agony.
CHAPTER LIII
How was it that Martial had failed to discover or to suspect this state of affairs?
A moment’s reflection will explain this fact which is so extraordinary in appearance, so natural in reality.
The head of a family, whether he dwells in an attic or in a palace, is always the last to know what is going on in his home. What everybody else knows he does not even suspect. The master often sleeps while his house is on fire. Some terrible catastrophe—an explosion—is necessary to arouse him from his fancied security.
The life that Martial led was likely to prevent him from arriving at the truth. He was a stranger to his wife. His manner toward her was perfect, full of deference and chivalrous courtesy; but they had nothing in common except a name and certain interests.
Each lived their own life. They met only at dinner, or at the entertainments which they gave and which were considered the most brilliant in Paris society.