“Ah,” she cried. “What makes you think that? But it is impossible.”
“No,” I continued, “it is not impossible. It is true. He gave me to understand that himself.”
I felt her watching me closely.
“You mean?” she breathed.
“I mean that I must now take measures to live my own life. It is impossible for me to live in his house any longer.”
It was then that she made one of her quick, characteristic mental turns.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s a monstrous house. I don’t wonder you detest it.”
I almost smiled, but I was determined to get to the point. “Dear Belle-Mère,” I insisted, “that is neither here nor there. What I mean is that I must be legally free from Philibert.” I hesitated, I saw her face whiten, but I pressed the point. “It is best for me to tell you that I have decided to divorce your son.”
I don’t know what effect I had expected and feared to produce. It may be that I thought she would break down or faint dead away, or something of that kind. She had seemed so frail that I had been really afraid of the effect of my words. But nothing of this sort happened. The blow I had dealt seemed to spend its force in the air. It glanced off and went shivering into the rich, cold atmosphere of the room.
“My dear,” she said, enunciating her words very precisely, “on ne divorce pas dans notre monde.” And she looked away from me, coolly taking in the room with its priceless objects as if summoning them to witness to the truth of her statement. She was right to look round that room. It was her room, not mine. It understood her, not me. She had called it a moment before a detestable house, but that made no difference. Its magnificence was to be made use of all the same. We were in the room that Philibert always referred to when he took people over the house as “le salon de Madame de Joigny,” or “le boudoir de ma femme.” It was the nicest room in the house. You remember it well, with its pearly grey boiseries fine as lace, its Frangonard panels, its green lacquer furniture, the three windows on the garden where a stone fountain lifted its fine sculptured figures from the lawn. The light in the room was silvery green and translucent as the light seen beneath the surface of clear water, and in that dim radiance the fine precious objects floated above the polished floor as if even the laws of gravitation had been circumvented in the fine enclosed space. The boiseries had been in the Trianon—you remember Philibert had procured them after much bargaining. They had been designed and executed for Madame de Montespan. Their perfect beauty constituted a document, a testimony to the marvellous taste and finished craftsmanship of an epoch. France, in all its delicate dignity, existed in that room. It is no wonder that your mother looked about her for moral support. The rest of the immense house might have belied her, here she could place her faith without hesitation. I opposed to it the profession of my own faith.