you cheat continually. Nature exterminates the weak; you condemn
them to live, and by so doing, consign them to a life of misery. The
whole weight of the burden of marriage, an institution on which society
is based, falls upon us; for the man liberty, duties for the woman. We
must give up our whole lives to you, you are only bound to give us a
few moments of yours. A man, in fact, makes a choice, while we blindly
submit. Oh, monsieur, to you I can speak freely. Marriage, in these
days, seems to me to be legalized prostitution. This is the cause of my
wretchedness. But among so many miserable creatures so unhappily yoked,
I alone am bound to be silent, I alone am to blame for my misery. My
marriage was my own doing."

She stopped short, and bitter tears fell in the silence.

"In the depths of my wretchedness, in the midst of this sea of
distress," she went on, "I found some sands on which to set foot and
suffer at leisure. A great tempest swept everything away. And here am I,
helpless and alone, too weak to cope with storms."

"We are never weak while God is with us," said the priest. "And if your
cravings for affection cannot be satisfied here on earth, have you no
duties to perform?"

"Duties continually!" she exclaimed, with something of impatience in
her tone. "But where for me are the sentiments which give us strength
to perform them? Nothing from nothing, nothing for nothing,--this,
monsieur, is one of the most inexorable laws of nature, physical or
spiritual. Would you have these trees break into leaf without the sap
which swells the buds? It is the same with our human nature; and in me
the sap is dried up at its source."

"I am not going to speak to you of religious sentiments of which
resignation is born," said the cure, "but of motherhood, madame,
surely--"

"Stop, monsieur!" said the Marquise, "with you I will be sincere. Alas!
in future I can be sincere with no one; I am condemned to falsehood.
The world requires continual grimaces, and we are bidden to obey
its conventions if we would escape reproach. There are two kinds of
motherhood, monsieur; once I knew nothing of such distinctions, but I
know them now. Only half of me has become a mother; it were better for
me if I had not been a mother at all. Helene is not _his_ child! Oh! do
not start. At Saint-Lange there are volcanic depths whence come lurid
gleams of light and earthquake shocks to shake the fragile edifices of
laws not based on nature. I ha