"Just now I provoked your confidence by assuring you that, doubtless, some happy result to you and your husband would be the consequence of it. I was not mistaken."
"Explain, if you please."
"Let us see now. Imagine, dear Sophie, that you are in a confessional," replied Madeleine, smiling, "yes, in the confessional of that great fat abbé, Jolivet, you know, the chaplain of the boarding-school, who put such strange questions to us when we were young girls. So, since that time I have often asked myself why there were not abbesses to confess young girls; but as, without being an abbess, I am a woman," added the marquise, smiling again, "I am going to risk some questions which would have been very tempting to our old confessor. Now, tell me, and do not blush, your husband married you for love, did he not?"
"Alas! yes."
"Well, you need not groan at such a charming recollection."
"Ah, Madeleine, the sadder the present is, the more certain memories tear our hearts."
"The present and the future will all be what you would like to have it. But, answer me, during the first two or three years of your marriage, you loved each other as lovers, did you not? You understand me?"
The young woman looked downwards and blushed.
"Then by degrees, without any diminution of love, that passionate tenderness gave place to a calmer sentiment, that your love for your children has filled with charm and sweetness; and, finally, the two lovers were only two friends united by the dearest and most sacred duties. Is that true?"
"That is true, Madeleine, and if I must say it, sometimes I have regretted these days of first youth and love; but I reproached myself for these regrets, with the thought that perhaps they were incompatible with the serious duties imposed by motherhood."