“Jacques,” he said, “come here.”
Jacques objected slightly.
“Your father wants you; go at once, my son,” said his mother, pushing him.
“They love me by order,” said the old man, who sometimes perceived his situation.
“Monsieur,” she answered, passing her hand over Madeleine’s smooth tresses, which were dressed that day “a la belle Ferronniere”; “do not be unjust to us poor women; life is not so easy for us to bear. Perhaps the children are the virtues of a mother.”
“My dear,” said the count, who took it into his head to be logical, “what you say signifies that women who have no children would have no virtue, and would leave their husbands in the lurch.”
The countess rose hastily and took Madeleine to the portico.
“That’s marriage, my dear fellow,” remarked the count to me. “Do you mean to imply by going off in that manner that I am talking nonsense?” he cried to his wife, taking his son by the hand and going to the portico after her with a furious look in his eyes.
“On the contrary, Monsieur, you frightened me. Your words hurt me cruelly,” she added, in a hollow voice. “If virtue does not consist in sacrificing everything to our children and our husband, what is virtue?”
“Sac-ri-ficing!” cried the count, making each syllable the blow of a sledge-hammer on the heart of his victim. “What have you sacrificed to your children? What do you sacrifice to me? Speak! what means all this? Answer. What is going on here? What did you mean by what you said?”