“‘In other words,’ she said, ‘you have loved me as a pastime. I have been the amusement of your youth, the poetry of twenty years, that love-romance which every man wants to have. But you are becoming serious; you want sober affections, and you leave me. Well, be it so. But what is to become of me when you are married?’
“I was suffering terribly.
“‘You have your husband,’ I stammered, ‘your children’—
“She stopped me.
“‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I shall go back go live at Valpinson, in that country full of associations, where every place recalls a rendezvous. I shall live with my husband, whom I have betrayed; with daughters, one of whom—That cannot be, Jacques.’
“I had a fit of courage.
“‘Still,’ I said, ‘I may have to marry. What would you do?’
“‘Oh! very little,’ she replied. ‘I should hand all your letters to Count Claudieuse.’”
During the thirty years which he had spent at the bar, M. Magloire had heard many a strange confession; but never in his life had all his ideas been overthrown as in this case.
“That is utterly confounding,” he murmured.