“To soften our brutish fate, we have discovered and manufactured everything, beginning with houses, and going on to delicate foods, sweets, cakes, drinks, liqueurs, tapestries, clothing, ornaments, beds, hair mattresses, carriages, railways, innumerable machines: more, we have discovered science and art, writing and poetry. Yes, we have created the arts, poetry, music, painting. Everything that belongs to the imagination comes from us, and all the gay conceits of life, feminine dress and masculine talent, which has managed to make the merely reproductive existence, for which alone a divine Providence gave us life, a little more beautiful in our eyes, a little less naked, less monotonous and less harsh.
“Look at this theatre. Is there not here a human world created by us, unforeseen by the eternal Fates, unknown to Them, comprehensible to our minds alone, a gay titillation of mind and senses, created solely for us and by the feeble discontented restless animal that we are?
“Look at this woman, Mme. de Mascaret. God had made her to live in a cave, naked, or clothed in the skins of beasts. Isn’t she better like this? But, talking of her, who knows why or how her brute of a husband, having had a woman like that for a companion and especially after having been uncouth enough to make her seven times a mother, abandoned her all at once to run after loose women?”
Grandin replied:
“Oh, my dear, that’s probably the only reason. He discovered at last that sleeping in his own bed costs him too much. He has arrived by way of domestic economy at the same theories you hold philosophically.”
The bell rang three times for the last act. The two friends turned round, removed their hats and took their seats.
IV
Side by side in the brougham that took them back to their house after the performance at the Opéra, the Comte and Comtesse de Mascaret sat in silence. But suddenly the husband said to his wife:
“Gabrielle!”
“What is it?”
“Don’t you think this has lasted long enough?”
“What?”
“The abominable torture to which you have condemned me for six years.”
“Well, I can’t do anything about it.”
“At least, tell me which one it is.”
“Never.”
“Think how I can no longer see my children or feel them round me without my heart being wrung by this doubt. Tell me which it is, and I swear I will forgive and that I’ll treat it just like the others.”
“I haven’t the right to do it.”
“Don’t you see that I can’t endure this life any longer, this gnawing thought, this question that I never cease to ask myself, this question that tortures me every time I look at them? I shall go mad.”
She asked:
“So you have suffered deeply?”
“Frightfully. Would I otherwise have endured the horror of living beside you, and the still worse horror of feeling, of knowing that there is one such child among them, whom I can’t recognise, and who makes it impossible for me to love the others?”
She repeated:
“So, you really have suffered very much?”
He answered in a sad restrained voice:
“Don’t I tell you every day that it is an intolerable torture to me? But for that, would I have come back, would I have remained in this house, near you and near them, if I had not loved them, my children? Oh, you have behaved towards me in a shameful way. The only passion of my heart is for my children: you know it well. I feel for them as a father of olden days, as I was for you the husband of an older ideal of family life, for I remain a man of instinct, a man of nature, a man of an earlier day. Yes, I own it, you made me terribly jealous, because you are a woman of another race, another spirit, with other needs. Oh, I shall never forget the things you said to me. From that day, moreover, I cared no more what you did. I did not kill you because that would have deprived me of the last means on earth by which I could find out which of our … of your children is not mine. I have waited, but I have suffered more than you would believe, for I dare not love them now, except perhaps the eldest: I daren’t look at them now, call them, embrace them, I can’t take one of them on my knees now without wondering: ‘Is this the one?’ For six years I have been courteous to you, even kind and complaisant towards you. Tell me the truth and I give you my word that I will do nothing unkind.”
In the darkness of the carriage, he thought he could feel that she was moved, and feeling that at last she was going to speak, he said:
“I beg you to tell me, I implore you.”
She murmured:
“Perhaps I have been more guilty than you think. But I could not, I could not go on with that destestable life of continued pregnancies. There was only one way in which I could drive you from my bed. I lied before God, and I lied with my hand raised to my children’s heads, for I never deceived you.”
He seized her arm in the darkness, and gripping it as he had done on the terrible day when they drove in the park, he stammered:
“Is it true?”
“Quite true.”
But, distraught with agony, he groaned:
“Oh, I shall be a prey to new doubts that will never end. Which time did you lie, that other day or today? How can I believe you now? How can I believe a woman after that? I shall never know again what to think. I had rather you had said to me: ‘It’s Jacques,’ or ‘It’s Jeanne.’ ”
The carriage was turning into the courtyard of the house. When it drew up before the steps, the comte descended first and as always offered his arm to his wife to mount the steps.
“Can I
