ttle like a young rich woman who belongs to society, you were seized
by jealousy again, and you recommenced to persecute me with that
infamous and hateful desire from which you are suffering at this moment,
by my side. And it is not desire of possessing me, for I should never
have refused myself to you, but it is the wish to make me unsightly.

"Besides this, that abominable and mysterious circumstance took place,
which I was a long time in penetrating (but I grew acute 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 in
my womb. You felt affection for them, with all your aversion for me, and
in spite of your ignoble fears, which were momentarily allayed by your
pleasure in seeing me grow stouter.

"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 who whispered round me, without paying them
to me. 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 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 vice which was crushing them; the agony made her pant, and the
tears came into her eyes. "You see that I am the master, and the
stronger," he said. And when he somewhat loosened his grasp, 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." "