“She does not hate me to-day; but she will to-morrow. For her I represent an immense disillusion of amour propre, a defeat of her egoism, a real sentimental rout. You will see, you will see how Vittoria will hate me.”
“But what should this unfortunate creature have done to please you, to unite herself to you in spirit, to render to you the happiness you were giving to her?”
“Love me, mother!”
“Doesn’t she love you?”
“To love me, mother, not for herself; to give all and ask nothing; to be happy that a man delivered from the fatality of an unlawful passion is in a haven of peace; to be serenity itself; to be, in short, the Christian wife, the ideal companion of our hearth whose scope is every soft desire of ours.”
“Oh, what a gulf, my son, what a gulf!”
“Between me and Vittoria? Immense, immeasurable, it is impossible to bridge it, impossible to surmount it.”
“What is to be done, what is to be done?”
“Nothing, mother dear. You can do nothing. Let Vittoria execrate me to-morrow; let her consider me as the cause of all her misfortune; let me be an object of repulsion to her. It is better so.”
“But you already have a sweetheart, after two years of married life?”