ANGÈLE. You would soon be glad enough to have your married life back again, bad as it may be; or even Caroline’s poverty.
JULIE [scornfully] You think so.
ANGÈLE [passionately] You don’t know what you are saying. You don’t understand, Julie. You to talk like that! You to wish—Oh, you don’t understand.
JULIE. You did it yourself.
ANGÈLE [with great emotion] Yes. I did it. But I would strangle myself rather than begin it again. Julie, I entreat you. What am I to say? How am I to stop you? I can’t tell you and Caroline all the shame I have endured. Oh, don’t make me do that.
JULIE. Well, you’re happy now, at least.
ANGÈLE. Happy! When I went off with Georges—they told you, didn’t they? Well, his people got him away from me. His mother was dying of grief. Yes: I know that is not what you wish to hear, but I must tell you, that you may understand how I came to fall as low as I did. I was left alone with the child. I had to feed it, hadn’t I? You can understand that, at least. But how? Work? I tried to get work. But they told me to wait. How was I to wait? And then—my God! that I should have to tell you all this—then I let myself go. [She sobs]. And afterwards—No: I can’t speak of it. But you understand, Julie. You can guess. You can imagine what my life was when you see that even now I can’t bring myself to tell you about it. [Mastering herself]. You think women—women like me—are happy because you see us laugh. But to laugh is our trade. We are paid for that. And I swear to you often we would ask nothing better than just to sit and cry. And you talk of choosing! You poor child. Do you suppose we women choose? Oh, if you could but know how one comes to loathe the whole world, to be wicked, wicked! They despise us so. We have no friends, no pity, no justice. We are robbed, exploited. I tell you all this anyhow, just as it comes, but you understand, don’t you? And once you start downhill you can’t stop. That is our life, the life of women like me. That is the slough in which I have struggled ten years. No, no, Julie! No, little sister. I implore you don’t do as I did. It is too horrible, too abject, too degraded.
JULIE. Poor Angèle.
ANGÈLE. You understand, don’t you?
JULIE. Yes.