Now furious, now broken, now contemptuous, now with hoarse, poignant emotion, Forjot addresses his wife.
He knows her to be the mistress of Rametty. His illness of three years ago was due to that humiliating and horrible discovery, but he had thought that she had sinned in a moment of madness and was repentant; and so he resolved to pardon her, generously, without even charging her with her crime:
Forjot. After I had discovered your treachery, I had that attack of brain fever, which nearly left you free. As a result of being brought so near to death, thoughts came to me that I might not have had otherwise, and they ripened in the long hours of my convalescence. When I recovered, as I was touched by the care you had taken in nursing me, and by your grief (which I still believe was sincere), I thought you had only given way to a mad impulse; and I forgave you in the silence of my heart. Yes; I know well I am not like the husbands in the novels you are constantly reading. Those husbands are idle men of fortune; their child’s future causes them no tormenting anxiety; they have not the incessant preoccupations of carrying on a large business concern, where many interests of others, as well as one’s own are involved. With men in my class, a false wife does not mean killing someone; it means asking for a divorce. Well, I did not want to make Pascaline the daughter of a divorced woman; nor did I want to expose her to the sense of disgrace of finding out her mother’s degradation. And it is on Pascaline’s account that I am putting you to-day in a position when you can make your choice—either become again the wife and mother you ought to be; or else I shall ask for a divorce. I don’t want to see again what I saw to-day, Rametty embracing my child! Nor do I want that one of these days, Pascaline may be told by some little playmate that her mother is a wanton [which is true], and her father a man who consents to his own dishonour—which is not true.
Gabrielle. Well, then, ask for a divorce. Adieu.
Forjot. What is your decision?
Gabrielle. To leave you.
Forjot. Think well of what it means. It means throwing over, once and for ever, a regular life.
Gabrielle. It bores me to death this “regular” life. And then, do you imagine I could endure to go on living near you when I knew that you despised me enough to hold your tongue about what you had discovered?
Forjot. If you stay, I promise that, by my attitude towards you, you may be able to suppose that everything is forgotten.