“It is of old standing, this abominable and quite mysterious thing, the full implication of which I was so long in realising (but I have grown quick to note your acts and thoughts): you are attached to your children by all the security which they have given you during the time I carried them in my body. You made your affection for them with all the aversion that you had for me, with all your shameful fears, momentarily set at rest, and with joy at seeing me grown big.
“Oh, how often have I felt that joy in you, recognised it in your eyes, guessed it. You love your children as victories and not as flesh of your flesh. They are victories over me, over my youth, over my beauty, over my charm, over the compliments paid to me, and over those whispered round me and left unspoken. And you are proud of it: you parade with them, you take them to ride in a carriage in the Bois de Boulogne, and on donkeys at Montmorency. You escort them to the theatre in the afternoon so that people shall see you in the middle of them, and say: ‘What a good father!’ and repeat it …”
He had seized her wrist with savage brutality, and was gripping it so violently that she fell silent, a groan tearing her throat.
And speaking very softly he said:
“I love my children, do you hear! What you have just told me is a shameful thing for a mother to have said. But you are mine. I am the master … your master … I can exact from you what I like, when I like … and I have the law … on my side.”
He tried to crush her fingers in the pincer-like pressure of his heavy masculine fist. Livid with pain, she struggled in vain to withdraw her hand from this vice that was grinding it; and the suffering made her gasp for breath, and tears came to her eyes.
“You realise that I am the master,” he said, “the stronger.”
He had loosed his grasp a little. She replied:
“You believe I am a pious woman?”
Surprised, he stammered:
“Of course.”
“You think that I believe in God?”
“Of course.”
“Do you think that I could lie in swearing an oath to you before an altar that holds the body of Christ?”
“No.”
“Will you accompany me into a church?”
“What to do?”
“You’ll see. Will you come?”
“If you insist, yes.”
She raised her voice, calling:
“Philippe.”
The coachman, bending his neck slightly, without taking his eyes off the horses, seemed to turn only his ear towards his mistress, who went on:
“Drive to the Church of Saint-Philippe-du-Roule.”
And the victoria, which had just reached the entrance to the park, turned back in the direction of Paris.
Wife and husband exchanged no further word during their new journey. Then, when the carriage had stopped before the entrance to the church, Mme. de Mascaret, jumping out, went in, followed a few paces behind by the comte.
She went without a pause, straight to the railings of the choir, and falling on her knees beside a chair, hid her face in her hands and prayed. She prayed for a long time, and, standing beside her, he saw at last that she was crying. She cried silently, as women cry in moments of terrible poignant grief. It was a sort of shudder that ran through her body and ended in a little sob, hidden and stifled under her fingers.
But the Comte de Mascaret decided that the situation was lasting too long, and he touched her on the shoulder.
The contact roused her as if it had burnt her. Standing up, she looked him straight in the eyes:
“This is what I have to say to you. I’m not afraid, you can do what you like. You can kill me if that is what you want to do. One of your children is not yours. I swear it to you before God who hears me in this place. It was the only revenge I could take on you, against your abominable masculine tyranny, against the forced labour of procreation to which you have condemned me. Who was my lover? You will never know. You will suspect the whole world. You will not discover him. I gave myself to him without love and without pleasure, solely to deceive you. And he too made me a mother. Who is the child? You will never know. I have seven children; find out the one! I had intended to tell you this later, since one is not avenged on a man by deceiving him until he knows it. You have forced me to confess it to you today: I have finished.”
And she fled through the church, towards the door open on the street, expecting to hear behind her the swift footsteps of the husband she had defied, and to lie crushed on the pavement under the stunning blow of his fist.
But she heard nothing and reached the carriage. She climbed in at one bound, shaken with anguish, fainting with fear, and cried to the coachman:
“Home.”
The horses set off at a quick trot.
II
Shut in her room, the Comtesse de Mascaret waited
