“My personal life deserves respect, too. I don’t want people to meddle with it. I have given you satisfaction on all the points as to which my father has any right to ask a reckoning.”
“Maurice!”
“I passed my examinations, and brilliantly, too. I came back after six years in Paris without a single debt. What blame have I ever deserved from you? You can’t reproach me even with one of those low Latin Quarter intrigues that are so common among the students.”
“I’ve not reproached you with anything. But, my poor child——”
“I’m not a child.”
“You’ll always be a child to your father; Don’t you understand that just because work and pride and family traditions have protected your youth with their sense of order and discipline, this woman, who’s older than you are, and whose name I’ve not been the first to mention here, is all the more a danger for you? Do you so much as know who she is?”
“Don’t talk about her!” cried Maurice.
“I will talk about her, though,” said Mr. Roquevillard, in a tone that had become abrupt and imperious. “Am I the head of the family, or am I not? By what right do you tell me to keep still? Are you afraid I am going to use undignified arguments with you? You know that would not be like me.”
“Mrs. Frasne is a good woman,” repeated the young man.
“Yes, one of those good women who have to play with fire to distract themselves, who are never satisfied unless they monopolise all the men in a drawing-room, even the old ones. One of those virtuous women of to-day, who have read everything except the Gospel, who understand everything except their duty, who excuse everything except virtue, who take advantage of every privilege but that of doing good, which is always open to them. Why are they virtuous? You can’t tell. Neither faith nor shame deters them, and as for honour, that’s a religion for men alone. They are all rebels. In their youth they are content with words. When youth threatens to take wing, believe me, they want realities. This woman here, the young wife of a man already well on in years, ought at least to remember that he houses and feeds her, for he married her without a cent.”