“I am sure that you go every day to see your old neighbor, this Marguerite. I do not know her, but I detest her, I have a perfect horror of her. Her Monsieur Ernest had better not think of bringing her here, for I will turn her out of doors,—Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! after being married only fifteen months, to have a mistress!”
She hid her face in her hands and began to sob again. Her tears made me forgive her injustice. I was about to go to her and to try to make her listen to reason, when she suddenly sprang to her feet, saying:
“Very well, monsieur, if you have a mistress, I warn you that I will have a lover.”
I confess that those words produced an exceedingly disagreeable effect on me; I was well aware that they were said in anger; but I would never have believed that Eugénie could conceive such a thought.
“Madame,” I said, in a tone in which there was no trace of gentleness, “do not drive me beyond bounds, or wear out my patience. I am willing to tell you once more that I have no mistress, that Madame Ernest never was and never will be my mistress, that I very rarely go to see them, and that it is a mere chance that Ernest is not there when I go. Indeed, as he is not a government clerk, it is impossible to be sure when he will be absent. But now, madame, remember this: even if I had one or several mistresses, if I neglected or totally abandoned my family, that would give you no right at all to have a lover, A man’s position and his wife’s are entirely different. I may have love-affairs, waste my fortune, ruin my health; that will not dishonor you, madame, and will not bring strange children into the bosom of your family. It is not the same with the conduct of a wife; a single misstep ruins her in the eyes of society, and may compel her husband’s children to share their bread with her seducer’s children.”
“That is all very convenient, monsieur; it proves that you can do what you please and that wives have simply to pass their lives weeping. Is that fair, monsieur?”
“If you consider that too hard, too cruel, why do you women marry? You should know what you undertake when you take that step.”
“You are right, it would be much better not to marry—to do like Mademoiselle Marguerite; then one is free to follow one’s inclinations, to drop people and take them up again at pleasure.”
I made no reply. I paced the floor back and forth. Meanwhile Eugénie had ceased to weep and had wiped her eyes; a moment later she came to me and laid her hand gently on my arm:
“Henri, perhaps I was a little wrong. But if this woman never has been, and is not now your mistress, if you do not love her—swear to me that you do not love her.”