“Ah! you can’t explain! Well! but you ought to be able to! There is not the slightest shadow of sense in misbehaving oneself like that, and it is this which exasperates me! Did I ever tell you to deceive your husband? did I ever deceive your father? He is here; ask him. Let him say if he ever caught me with any other man.”
Her pace slackened and became quite majestic, and she slapped herself on her green bodice, driving her breasts back under her arms.
“Nothing; not a fault, not the least forgetfulness, even in thought. My life has been a chaste one. Yet God knows what I have had to put up with from your father! I have had every excuse; many women would have avenged themselves. But I had some sense, and that saved me. Before heaven!” said she, “I swear I would have restrained myself, even if the Emperor had pestered me! One loses too much.”
She took a few steps in silence, apparently reflecting, and then added:
“Moreover, it is the greatest possible shame.”
Monsieur Josserand looked at her, looked at his daughter, and his lips moved, though no sound came from them; and his whole suffering being conjured them to put an end to this cruel explanation. But Berthe, who bent before violence, was wounded by her mother’s lesson. She at length rebelled, for she was quite unconscious of her fault, thanks to the old education which she had received when a girl in search of a husband.
“Well!” said she, boldly planting her elbows on the table, “you should not have made me marry a man I did not love. Now I hate him, and I have taken another.”
“In short, he bores me, and I bore him,” declared she. “It’s not my fault, we don’t understand one another. As early as the morrow of our wedding-day, he looked as though he thought we had taken him in; yes, he was cold and put out, just like when he has a bad day’s sale. For my part, I did not amuse myself particularly with him. Really! I don’t think much of marriage if it offers no more pleasure than that! And that’s how it all began. So much the worse! it was bound to come; I’m not the most guilty.”
She left off speaking, but shortly added, with an air of profound conviction:
“Ah! mamma, how well I understand you now! You remember, when you told us you had had more than enough of it.”