Short Stories, vol 6 | Page 9

affection
for them, with all your aversion to me, and in spite of your ignoble
fears, which were momentarily allayed by your pleasure in seeing me
lose my symmetry.
"Oh! how often have I noticed that joy in you! I have seen it in your
eyes and guessed it. You loved your children as victories, and not
because they were of your own blood. They were victories over me,
over my youth, over my beauty, over my charms, over the compliments
which were paid me and over those that were whispered around me
without being paid to me personally. And you are proud of them, you
make a parade of them, you take them out for drives in your break in
the Bois de Boulogne and you give them donkey rides at Montmorency.
You take them to theatrical matinees so that you may be seen in the
midst of them, so that the people may say: 'What a kind father' and that
it may be repeated----"
He had seized her wrist with savage brutality, and he squeezed it so
violently that she was quiet and nearly cried out with the pain and he
said to her in a whisper:
"I love my children, do you hear? What you have just told me is
disgraceful in a mother. But you belong to me; I am master--your
master --I can exact from you what I like and when I like--and I have
the law-on my side."
He was trying to crush her fingers in the strong grip of his large,
muscular hand, and she, livid with pain, tried in vain to free them from

that vise which was crushing them. The agony made her breathe hard
and the tears came into her eyes. "You see that I am the master and the
stronger," he said. When he somewhat loosened his grip, she asked him:
"Do you think that I am a religious woman?"
He was surprised and stammered "Yes."
"Do you think that I could lie if I swore to the truth of anything to you
before an altar on which Christ's body is?"
"No."
"Will you go with me to some church?"
"What for?"
"You shall see. Will you?"
"If you absolutely wish it, yes."
She raised her voice and said: "Philippe!" And the coachman, bending
down a little, without taking his eyes from his horses, seemed to turn
his ear alone toward his mistress, who continued: "Drive to St.
Philippe-du- Roule." And the-victoria, which had reached the entrance
of the Bois de Boulogne returned to Paris.
Husband and wife did not exchange a word further during the drive,
and when the carriage stopped before the church Madame de Mascaret
jumped out and entered it, followed by the count, a few yards distant.
She went, without stopping, as far as the choir-screen, and falling on
her knees at a chair, she buried her face in her hands. She prayed for a
long time, and he, standing behind her could see that she was crying.
She wept noiselessly, as women weep when they are in great, poignant
grief. There was a kind of undulation in her body, which ended in a
little sob, which was hidden and stifled by her fingers.
But the Comte de Mascaret thought that the situation was lasting too
long, and he touched her on the shoulder. That contact recalled her to
herself, as if she had been burned, and getting up, she looked straight
into his eyes. "This is what I have to say to you. I am afraid of nothing,
whatever you may do to me. You may kill me if you like. One of your
children is not yours, and one only; that I swear to you before God,
who hears me here. That was the only revenge that was possible for me
in return for all your abominable masculine tyrannies, in return for the
penal servitude of childbearing to which you have condemned me. Who
was my lover? That you never will know! You may suspect every one,
but you never will find out. I gave myself to him, without love and

without pleasure, only for the sake of betraying you, and he also made
me a mother. Which is the child? That also you never will know. I have
seven; try to find out! I intended to tell you this later, for one has not
avenged oneself on a man by deceiving him, unless he knows it. You
have driven me to confess it today. I have now finished."
She hurried through the church toward the open door, expecting to hear
behind her the quick step: of her husband whom she had defied and to
be knocked to the ground by a blow of his fist, but she heard nothing
and reached her carriage. She