Short Stories, vol 6 | Page 8

"Ah!
You will hear some disagreeable things, but you must know that I am
prepared for everything, that I fear nothing, and you less than any one
to-day."
He also was looking into her eyes and was already shaking with rage as
he said in a low voice: "You are mad."
"No, but I will no longer be the victim of the hateful penalty of
maternity, which you have inflicted on me for eleven years! I wish to
take my place in society as I have the right to do, as all women have the
right to do."
He suddenly grew pale again and stammered: "I do not understand
you."
"Oh! yes; you understand me well enough. It is now three months since
I had my last child, and as I am still very beautiful, and as, in spite of
all your efforts you cannot spoil my figure, as you just now perceived,
when you saw me on the doorstep, you think it is time that I should

think of having another child."
"But you are talking nonsense!"
"No, I am not, I am thirty, and I have had seven children, and we have
been married eleven years, and you hope that this will go on for ten
years longer, after which you will leave off being jealous."
He seized her arm and squeezed it, saying: "I will not allow you to talk
to me like that much longer."
"And I shall talk to you till the end, until I have finished all I have to
say to you, and if you try to prevent me, I shall raise my voice so that
the two servants, who are on the box, may hear. I only allowed you to
come with me for that object, for I have these witnesses who will
oblige you to listen to me and to contain yourself, so now pay attention
to what I say. I have always felt an antipathy to you, and I have always
let you see it, for I have never lied, monsieur. You married me in spite
of myself; you forced my parents, who were in embarrassed
circumstances, to give me to you, because you were rich, and they
obliged me to marry you in spite of my tears.
"So you bought me, and as soon as I was in your power, as soon as I
had become your companion, ready to attach myself to you, to forget
your coercive and threatening proceedings, in order that I might only
remember that I ought to be a devoted wife and to love you as much as
it might be possible for me to love you, you became jealous, you, as no
man has ever been before, with the base, ignoble jealousy of a spy,
which was as degrading to you as it was to me. I had not been married
eight months when you suspected me of every perfidiousness, and you
even told me so. What a disgrace! And as you could not prevent me
from being beautiful and from pleasing people, from being called in
drawing-rooms and also in the newspapers one of the most beautiful
women in Paris, you tried everything you could think of to keep
admirers from me, and you hit upon the abominable idea of making me
spend my life in a constant state of motherhood, until the time should
come when I should disgust every man. Oh, do not deny it. I did not
understand it for some time, but then I guessed it. You even boasted
about it to your sister, who told me of it, for she is fond of me and was
disgusted at your boorish coarseness.
"Ah! Remember how you have behaved in the past! How for eleven
years you have compelled me to give up all society and simply be a

mother to your children. And then you would grow disgusted with me
and I was sent into the country, the family chateau, among fields and
meadows. And when I reappeared, fresh, pretty and unspoiled, still
seductive and constantly surrounded by admirers, hoping that at last I
should live a little more like a rich young society woman, you were
seized with jealousy again, and you began once more to persecute me
with that infamous and hateful desire from which you are suffering at
this moment by my side. And it is not the desire of possessing me--for I
should never have refused myself to you, but it is the wish to make me
unsightly.
"And then that abominable and mysterious thing occurred which I was
a long time in understanding (but I grew sharp by dint of watching your
thoughts and actions): You attached yourself to your children with all
the security which they gave you while I bore them. You felt