"Indeed, I will. Well, dearest father, after the night of our being together at the play, my husband, who had hitherto been irritable and violent, became gloomy, sullen, and unkind. I scarcely ever saw him, he was out all day, and only returned late at night, or rather morning; at meal-time, he was silent and abstracted, two or three times he left the dinner-table ere the cloth was withdrawn, and went to shut himself up in his own room. If I questioned him upon the vexations he appeared to have, he coldly replied, that it did not concern me, and frowned so angrily, that I durst not mention the subject again. This morning, however, seeing him look more cheerful than usual, I ventured to remark, 'You seem better to-day, Charles, than you have been lately that is all I said, dear father,—indeed, indeed it is. I did not utter another syllable—on my honour, I said no more than that."
"Poor child! but go on!"
"Immediately his features became overcast, and he exclaimed in a bitter tone, 'What is the use of my being better? what have I to hope for? if I could only look forward to any thing better than the wretched life I lead! But when I see you for ever before my eyes like a chain, to which I am eternally bound. Oh, accursed was the day in which I was weak enough to make you my wife, and to fall, like a fool, into the snare you and your father had laid for me."
The old man repressed a movement of rage, then said in a firm voice, "And then, my child?"
"This reproach, so cruel and so unexpected, took from me all power of reply, and I burst into tears, my husband rose violently from his chair, exclaiming, 'Oh, what a bitter lot is mine! oh, my liberty—my liberty!' and yet Heaven knows I never intrude upon him in any way, and the only thing I ask of him is permission to come and see you."
"Oh, patience! grant me patience, Heaven!" cried the engraver, in a voice of forced calmness.
"Seeing him go on thus," resumed Bertha, "I exclaimed, 'Charles, do you wish to leave me? if I am a burden to you, say so!' 'Yes,' cried he furiously, 'yes, you are a nuisance, and a burden I am tired of enduring. I tell you, I hate and detest you!—you have constrained me to entangle myself in a marriage as absurd as inimical to my happiness, and never will I forgive you for it.' 'But,' said I, 'what have I done? and with what do you reproach me?' 'Oh, with nothing,' said he, 'you are too good a manager for that; you dare not betray me, because you know that, if you were, I would kill both yourself and your paramour; it is not virtue, which makes you respect your duty as a wife, but fear;' and with these words, he dashed out of the room; and your poor broken-hearted child has come to pour her sorrows into the bosom of her father, and to say," added Bertha, sobbing as though her heart would break, "that she has none to love her, or pity, or protect her, but her own beloved parent."
"There could be no other result," said Pierre Raimond; "that selfish heart, and haughty, obstinate spirit, were sure to make you pay dearly,—oh, how dearly one day or other, for the sacrifices he had imposed on himself in order to obtain your hand, for which he would then have paid any price. However, things cannot go on in this manner; you must see the propriety of my interfering to prevent this bad man from torturing the heart of my beloved child, who has behaved like an angel towards him: he shall not trample you under foot as the mere plaything of his whim and caprice!"
"But what will you do? how can you alter my husband's conduct?"
"Oh, make yourself perfectly easy, that I will compel a change on his part; thank God! I have still sufficient strength and energy left."