I had been married a year to a rich man, the Count Hervé de Ker, a member of an old Breton family, whom of course I did not love. Real love requires, at least so it seems to me, both freedom and opposition. Can that which is imposed upon one from the outside, sanctioned by law and blessed by the priest, be love? A legal kiss is never as good as a kiss that is stolen. My husband was tall, elegant, and quite the aristocrat in appearance. But he lacked intelligence. He spoke sharply and expressed opinions calculated to wound his hearers. One felt his mind to be full of ready-made thoughts transmitted by his father and mother, who had themselves got them from their ancestors. He never hesitated a moment, but gave directly his narrow-minded opinions about everything, without embarrassment and without realising that there might be other points of view. You felt that his mind was closed to all outer influences, that it contained none of those ideas that renew and cleanse the mind, like a breath of fresh air passing through a house with open doors and windows.
The country house we occupied was situated in a very lonely part of the country. It was a big, sad-looking building, surrounded by enormous trees with tufts of moss that reminded one of the white beards of old men. The park, a real forest, was enclosed by a deep ditch called a ha-ha; at its extremity, near the moors, were two big ponds full of reeds and floating grass; by the side of a stream which joined the two lakes my husband had built a little hut from which he could shoot wild duck.
In addition to our ordinary staff of servants we had a keeper, a brutish individual who would have died for my husband, and a lady’s maid, one might say a friend, passionately attached to me, whom I had brought back from Spain five years before. She was a foundling and might have been taken for a gipsy with her dark complexion, sombre eyes, and hair dense as a forest, which sprang up in waves from her brow; she was sixteen and looked twenty.
Autumn had just set in, and a great deal of shooting was going on, either over our neighbours’ land or over our own, and I noticed among the guns a young man, the Baron de C⸺, who was always coming to the château. Then his visits ceased and I thought no more about, but perceived that my husband’s manner to me had changed. He seemed taciturn and preoccupied, he never kissed me; and although he rarely came to my room—I insisted upon separate rooms so as to enjoy a little liberty—I often heard in the night a stealthy footstep approach my door, stay a few minutes, and then go away again.
My window being on the ground floor, I often thought I heard someone wandering about round the château in the dark. When I told my husband he looked at me steadily for a second or two, and then said:
“It is nothing, it is the keeper.”
Well, one evening, just as dinner was over, Hervé, who seemed in wonderful spirits, which was most unusual, though his cheerfulness had a touch of cunning about it, said to me:
“Would you like to spend three hours on the lookout for a fox who comes every night and eats the chickens?”
I was surprised and hesitated, but as he was gazing at me with curious obstinacy I finally replied: “Certainly, dear.” I must explain that I hunted both wolf and wild boar as well as any man, so that there was nothing unnatural in the suggestion. But suddenly my husband began to look very excited, and during the whole evening he could not keep still, but was always getting up and sitting down again.
Suddenly, about ten o’clock, he said to me:
“Are you ready?” I got up and as he brought me my gun I asked: “Must I load with bullets or buckshot?” He seemed surprised and said: “Oh, only with shot, that’s quite enough, you may be sure!” Then, after a few seconds, he added in a curious voice: “You may pride yourself on possessing amazing presence of mind!” I laughed, saying: “Me? Why? Presence of mind to kill a fox? Whatever are you thinking about, my friend?” So off we went without a sound, through the park. Everyone in the house was asleep. The full moon turned the dark old building with its shining roof yellow. The pinnaces of the two turrets, one on either side, were splotched with light, and no sound disturbed the deathlike stillness of the clear, sad, sweet, heavy night. There was no movement in the air, not a frog croaked, not an owl called; a dreary listlessness was weighing on everything.
When we reached the trees in the park the air was fresh and I could smell the fallen leaves. My husband never said a word, but he was listening, watching, he seemed to be scenting his prey in the dark, entirely carried away by the passion of the chase. We soon reached the bank of the ponds where the jungle of reeds lay perfectly still, unstirred by any breeze; but there was a faint pulsation of the water, occasional specks ruffled its surface, which spread in hardly perceptible circles, growing wider and wider, like luminous ripples.
When we
