At last, he stealthily slid his hand towards the gloved hand of his wife and touched it as if by accident, but the gesture that she made in withdrawing her arm was so swift and so expressive of disgust that he hesitated anxiously, in spite of his habitual authority and despotism.
At length he muttered:
“Gabrielle.”
Without turning her head, she asked:
“What do you want?”
“You are perfectly adorable.”
She made no answer, and remained leaning back in the carriage with the expression of an infuriated queen.
By now they were going up the Champs-Élysées, towards the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile. The enormous monument at the bottom of the long avenue, spread out its colossal arch against a fiery sky. The sun seemed to fall on it, scattering from the horizon a flaming dust.
And the flood of carriages, splashed with the rays of the sun on copper fittings and on the silver plating and crystal of harness and lamps, was flowing in a double stream towards the park and the city.
The Comte de Mascaret began again:
“Dear Gabrielle.”
Then, unable to stand it any longer, she replied in an exasperated voice:
“Oh, leave me alone, I beg you. I have no longer liberty to be alone in my carriage now.”
He pretended not to have heard, and went on:
“I have never seen you look as pretty as you do today.”
She was nearly at the end of her patience and replied, with an anger which she could contain no longer:
“You are making a mistake in noticing it, for I give you my word that I’ll never be yours again.”
He was obviously stunned and overwhelmed, and, his customary violence getting the better of him, he flung a “What’s that you say?” which revealed more of the brutal master than of the man in love.
In a low voice, although the servants could hear nothing amid the deafening rumbling of the wheels, she repeated:
“What’s that you say? What’s that you say? How well I recognise you! You want me to tell you?”
“Yes.”
“Tell you everything?”
“Yes.”
“Everything that I have held in my heart since I became the victim of your ferocious egoism?”
He turned scarlet with astonishment and rage. He muttered between his clenched teeth:
“Yes, go on.”
He was a man of tall build, with broad shoulders, with a great tawny beard, a handsome man, a nobleman, a man of the world who passed for a perfect husband and an excellent father.
For the first time since they had left the house, she turned towards him and looked him full in the face.
“Well, you are going to hear some unpleasant things, but you may as well know that I am ready for anything, that I will outface everybody, that I fear nothing, and today, you less than anybody.”
He too looked her in the face, and a storm of anger shook him already. He whispered:
“You must be mad.”
“No, but I will no longer be the victim of the detestable torture of maternity that you have made me undergo these last eleven years! I wish to live as a woman in society should, as I have the right, as all wives have the right.”
Suddenly turning pale again, he stammered:
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh, yes, you do. It is now three months since my last child was born, and as I still have all my beauty—which, in spite of your efforts, it is practically impossible to ruin, as you recognised just now when you saw me on the doorstep—you realise that it is time I became enceinte again.”
“You are out of your mind.”
“No. I am thirty and have seven children. We’ve been married for eleven years, and you hope that this will go on for another ten, after which you will cease from being jealous.”
He seized her arm, and squeezing it:
“I am not going to allow you to talk to me like this any longer.
“And I shall talk to you to the end, until I have finished everything I have got to tell you. If you try to stop me, I shall raise my voice loud enough to be understood by the two servants on the box. I only let you sit beside me for this purpose, because I should have these witnesses who would compel you to listen to me and to keep a tight rein on yourself. Now listen to me. You have always been distasteful to me and I have always let you see it, for I have never lied. You married me against my will, you brought pressure to bear on my parents, who were shamed into giving me to you because you were very rich. They forced me to it by making me cry.
“So, having bought me, from the moment when I was in your power, when I began to become a companion ready to attach myself to you, to forget your campaign of intimidation and coercion, in remembering only that I ought to be a devoted wife and to love you as much as it was possible for me to do, you became jealous, yes, as no other man has ever been, the jealousy of a spy, base, ignoble, degrading to yourself and insulting to me. I had only been married eight months when you suspected me of every treachery. You even let me hear you say so. What shame! And since you could not prevent me from being beautiful and pleasing, from being spoken of in drawing rooms and even in the papers as being one of the prettiest women in Paris, you sought what you could discover to cut me off from flirtations, and so you hit on this abominable idea of making me pass my life in a state of perpetual pregnancy, until the time came when I should disgust every man. Oh, don’t deny it. For a long time I understood nothing, then I guessed. You boasted of it even to your own sister, who told me, because she loves me and was horrified by your peasant grossness.
“Think of our battles, doors broken open, locks forced. Think of the
