That you have married a Catholic while you yourself are a Protestant is no one’s fault but your own, as you did not ask anybody’s permission. Unfortunately you have inherited from your mother a hysterical temperament, and from your father a certain matter-of-factness which prevents your enjoying life.
I feel compelled to act like a surgeon who undertakes a necessary operation, in spite of the patient’s objection to scars.
The only time your husband was here on a visit I was able to get a certain impression of his character. You are right in saying that he is “dangerous to women through the animal magnetism which radiates from his person, attracting to him adults and children alike.” And you might add, “through his natural amiability and his kindliness.” He makes no disguise of his vanity, but when you plume yourself on being his only chick because you alone resist him, you are adopting a dangerous line. The man who wishes to be worshipped will not be discouraged by superior airs, especially when these are put on, and you merely feign opposition in order to annoy him, and to conceal how much you are in love.
Owing to the position he holds he is the centre of much attention. He is unable, like most men, to diverge from the high road. Every movement of his is noticed, and may cause him unpleasantness. Thus his position forces him to be cautious. Yet you as his loving wife accuse him of giving to every woman what ought to be your position alone.
Your want of trust puts him on the rack. You pluck his nerves to pieces, and dissect his secret thoughts. You hate him for not being unfaithful to you in deed in that you suspect continually that he is unfaithful to you in thought. You hurt him by telling him constantly that your mutual life is animal and savage, that he lacks soul, and does not comprehend what it is to love with the soul as you do. He retorts by calling you hysterical.
Then a young girl comes to stay in your house. She falls in love with your husband, and he is in love with her. You say, “She made a dead set at him.” Instead of deciding to remove her immediately you watch for proofs of the criminal relations which you suspect. I don’t condemn you for getting hold of your husband’s letters by any means honourable or the reverse, because jealous wives are as irresponsible for their actions as patients with a temperature of a hundred and six. You triumph and cause yourself diabolical torments by revelling in the stolen love-letters. You find in them the “psychological” impulse that you have missed in your husband’s love.
What ought you to do now? Either you must go, as you cannot stay with a man who is in love with another; or you must remain and leave him and his feelings in peace. Nonsense! Instead you thrust a dagger into his heart and turn it in the wound. If he moans, you ask, “Do you still love her?”
You think that love can be wrenched out of a man’s life as easily as a tooth is drawn, root and all.
Agony brings your husband to reason and his senses, he belies what he feels and cries, “I love no one but you!” But even then can you leave him alone? Certainly not. You now insist on his telling everything, betraying and deceiving. You know, as a Catholic, he cannot claim a divorce, and yet you ask if he will marry her in the case of your retiring? Not a word of this offer do you intend seriously. You want to humiliate and torment him.
Next you make a scene with the girl, pervert his words about her, misapply your knowledge, and use such expressions as “Impurity, lies, vulgarity.” But she only answers, “I love him, I cannot do anything else.” And you find this exasperating.