I could understand nothing of my mother’s and grandmother’s explanations, they were so mixed up, and, besides, my head was aching so badly.
I had certainly done wrong to say what I had said, and I felt myself miserably guilty, but because of the thoughtless words of a child, did I deserve to be left in such a state?
“So,” said my mother, “you have promised to give Juliette as large a dot as you can, and, doubtless, your fortune also? Am I, then, absolutely nothing to you? Do you disown me, your own daughter? I don’t care a fig for your money, but the humiliation of being treated thus by you is something I will not bear.”
When I think of my distress during those not-to-be-forgotten minutes, I still feel the effect of it, so convulsed was I in all my being, and so keenly did I realise my mother’s cruel jealousy.
My grandfather appeared at one door, Arthémise at the other. He looked at me, listened for a moment, and understood what was taking place. I threw myself in his arms, crying, my face bloated, swollen, and bleeding, in such a misery of abandonment and feeling so forsaken that my grandfather’s heart was convulsed with pain.
“You are, each of you, madder, more wicked, more ferocious than the other,” he cried, in a furious voice. “Your quarrels, your suspicions, your idiotic, imbecile explanations crush every atom of maternal feeling in your hearts. You will kill the child, do you hear? you will kill her! Olympe, do you not remember that your son died of convulsions after one of your quarrels? Look, both of you, at your only child. Don’t you feel any pity for her, shrews that you are? And then you will dare say to me that you love Juliette! I have half a mind to take her from you both, and to fly with her to the ends of the world. Just look at her!”
And grandfather, who was fond of dramatic scenes himself, placed me standing on a chair. My sobs redoubled, and I must have been pitiful to see, for my mother and grandmother threw themselves upon me, frightened. Grandfather pushed them aside, and put me in Arthémise’s arms, who again began her song: “It is murder!”
This phrase made me remember, with singular clearness, my adventure at school, and I cried out to grandmother:
“This time I will never forgive you!” My lips trembled, my throat was on fire, and I was shivering.
While grandfather washed me, grandmother made up the fire, weeping. When I was warmed and calmed, my grandfather, with an anger and hardness I had never seen him show before, flew at my mother, seized her by the wrists, and, shaking her, said: