“If your wife should think as you do!”
“Oh! so far as that is concerned, I am not alarmed; my wife is virtue personified, and she does no more than her duty; for a woman—that’s a very different matter.”
“As to the consequences, yes; but morally, and even according to the law of nature, I consider that the fault is absolutely identical.”
“You are joking! At all events, aren’t the consequences everything? Is the absurdity of it the same? Will any one ever laugh at a wife whose husband has mistresses? No, nothing is ever said then, because it is considered a very common occurrence; but if a wife makes her husband a cuckold——”
“That is a very common occurrence too.”
“For all that, people laugh at the poor husband and point their fingers at him!—Besides, what harm can come of the husband’s infidelity? None at all. The fair ones who have yielded to him won’t go about boasting of it! With a woman it is just the opposite; her lovers always ruin her reputation, either by their words, or by their actions, which never escape the eyes of curiosity and calumny. In fact, a woman who finds her husband in another woman’s arms can only complain and weep; while a man who surprises his wife in flagrante delicto has a right to punish the culprit; so you see, my dear fellow, that the offence is not the same, as the punishment is different.”
“I see that it was we men who made the laws, and that we treated ourselves very well.”
“Are you going to preach to me too? Really, Dufresne, you are almost as savagely virtuous as my wife.”
“No, my dear fellow, you don’t know me yet. But before assisting you, I wanted to find out whether you had fully weighed the consequences of this intrigue.”
“I have weighed and calculated everything. I love Madame de Géran, and I wish to be loved in return. I feel that there is no sacrifice of which I am not capable to attain my object. Do you understand?”