"'I know all your uncle would say to me;he is not better informed than my own conscience.Conscience is the interpreter of God to man.Iknow that if I am not reconciled to Octave,I shall be damned;that is the sentence of religious law.Civil law condemns me to obey,cost what it may.If my husband does not reject me,the world will regard me as pure,as virtuous,whatever I may have done.Yes,that much is sublime in marriage;society ratifies the husband's forgiveness;but it forgets that the forgiveness must be accepted.Legally,religiously,and from the world's point of view I ought to go back to Octave.Keeping only to the human aspect of the question,is it not cruel to refuse him happiness,to deprive him of children,to wipe his name out of the Golden Book and the list of peers?My sufferings,my repugnance,my feelings,all my egoism--for I know that I am an egoist --ought to be sacrificed to the family.I shall be a mother;the caresses of my child will wipe away many tears!I shall be very happy;I certainly shall be much looked up to.I shall ride,haughty and wealthy,in a handsome carriage!I shall have servants and a fine house,and be the queen of as many parties as there are weeks in the year.The world will receive me handsomely.I shall not have to climb up again to the heaven of aristocracy,I shall never have come down from it.So God,the law,society are all in accord.
"'"What are you rebelling against?"I am asked from the height of heaven,from the pulpit,from the judge's bench,and from the throne,whose august intervention may at need be invoked by the Count.Your uncle,indeed,at need,would speak to me of a certain celestial grace which will flood my heart when I know the pleasure of doing my duty.
"'God,the law,the world,and Octave all wish me to live,no doubt.
Well,if there is no other difficulty,my reply cuts the knot:I will not live.I will become white and innocent again;for I will lie in my shroud,white with the blameless pallor of death.This is not in the least "mulish obstinacy."That mulish obstinacy of which you jestingly accused me is in a woman the result of confidence,of a vision of the future.Though my husband,sublimely generous,may forget all,I shall not forget.Does forgetfulness depend on our will?When a widow re-marries,love makes a girl of her;she marries a man she loves.But I cannot love the Count.It all lies in that,do not you see?
"'Every time my eyes met his I should see my sin in them,even when his were full of love.The greatness of his generosity would be the measure of the greatness of my crime.My eyes,always uneasy,would be for ever reading an invisible condemnation.My heart would be full of confused and struggling memories;marriage can never move me to the cruel rapture,the mortal delirium of passion.I should kill my husband by my coldness,by comparisons which he would guess,though hidden in the depths of my conscience.Oh!on the day when I should read a trace of involuntary,even of suppressed reproach in a furrow on his brow,in a saddened look,in some imperceptible gesture,nothing could hold me:I should be lying with a fractured skull on the pavement,and find that less hard than my husband.It might be my own over-susceptibility that would lead me to this horrible but welcome death;I might die the victim of an impatient mood in Octave caused by some matter of business,or be deceived by some unjust suspicion.
Alas!I might even mistake some proof of love for a sign of contempt!
"'What torture on both sides!Octave would be always doubting me,Idoubting him.I,quite involuntarily,should give him a rival wholly unworthy of him,a man whom I despise,but with whom I have known raptures branded on me with fire,which are my shame,but which Icannot forget.
"'Have I shown you enough of my heart?No one,monsieur,can convince me that love may be renewed,for I neither can nor will accept love from any one.A young bride is like a plucked flower;but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over.You,who are a florist,you know whether it is ever possible to restore the broken stem,to revive the faded colors,to make the sap flow again in the tender vessels of which the whole vegetative function lies in their perfect rigidity.If some botanist should attempt the operation,could his genius smooth out the folds of the bruised corolla?If he could remake a flower,he would be God!God alone can remake me!I am drinking the bitter cup of expiation;but as I drink it I painfully spell out this sentence:Expiation is not annihilation.
"'In my little house,alone,I eat my bread soaked in tears;but no one sees me eat nor sees me weep.If I go back to Octave,I must give up my tears--they would offend him.Oh!monsieur,how many virtues must a woman tread under foot,not to give herself,but to restore herself to a betrayed husband?Who could count them?God alone;for He alone can know and encourage the horrible refinements at which the angels must turn pale.Nay,I will go further.A woman has courage in the presence of her husband if he knows nothing;she shows a sort of fierce strength in her hypocrisy;she deceives him to secure him double happiness.But common knowledge is surely degrading.Supposing I could exchange humiliation for ecstasy?Would not Octave at last feel that my consent was sheer depravity?Marriage is based on esteem,on sacrifices on both sides;but neither Octave nor I could esteem each other the day after our reunion.He would have disgraced me by a love like that of an old man for a courtesan,and I should for ever feel the shame of being a chattel instead of a lady.I should represent pleasure,and not virtue,in his house.These are the bitter fruits of such a sin.I have made myself a bed where I can only toss on burning coals,a sleepless pillow.
"'Here,when I suffer,I bless my sufferings;I say to God,"I thank Thee!"But in my husband's house I should be full of terror,tasting joys to which I have no right.
