When my father told me his answer, I said to him:
“That is a joke, is it not?”
“No,” he answered, “it is my dearest wish.”
“It is not mine!” I answered curtly. “I would give up my life for our cause, but I have no taste for the slow torture of married life out of my own sphere.”
“Juliette!”
“It is true, papa, and I will never, never marry a man who is my inferior.”
“Well, where is your theory of equality?”
“Equality of rights—yes, papa, I believe in that with all my heart, but equality in manners and ways of life—no, never!”
My father was angry and I was sulky.
During the day a cartload of wood was brought to the door, and, fearing a fall of snow, my father, my mother, and myself helped to carry in the logs. As I stooped to pick some up in my arms, my father, taking up one of the logs, gave me such a blow that I screamed with pain. I stood up and found the blood flowing from my temple and left eye. My father, under the impression that he had destroyed my eye, had one of his fits of madness. His only fault was his extreme violence of temper. In one of his rages he had killed a dog of whom he was very fond. In another, because his brother-in-law, a man as tall and as strong as himself, had somewhat roughly treated his wife, my father’s sister, he would have killed him also, if they had not been separated.