Séverine. Please, dear Marquis, ask the man how he caught his wife—or I will ask him myself.
Marquis (after resisting). Tell us, Henri, how did you manage to catch the pair?
Henri (who has been for a long while sunk in reverie). Know you my wife, then? She is the fairest and vilest creature under the sun. And I loved her! We have known one another for seven years—but it is only yesterday that she became my wife. In those seven years there was not one day, nay, not one day, in which she did not lie to me, for everything about her is a lie—her eyes and her lips, her kisses and her smiles.
François. He rants a little.
Henri. Every boy and every old man, every one who excited her and every one who paid her—every one, I think, who wanted her—has possessed her, and I have known it!
Séverine. Not every one can boast as much.
Henri. And all the same she loved me, my friends. Can any one of you understand that? She always came back to me again—from all quarters back again to me—from the handsome and from the ugly, from the shrewd and from the foolish, from ragamuffins and from courtiers—always came back to me.
Séverine (to Rollin). Now, if only you had an inkling that it is just this coming back which is really love.
Henri. What I suffered ... tortures, tortures!
Rollin. It is harrowing.