erred a husband who
would come in in the middle of the night, still warm from his orgy,
having lost at play, and who would strike her if she upbraided him.
A tyrant, but a man. Some months after her marriage she suddenly
took it into her head to have absurd freaks and extravagant caprices.
She wished to prove him, and see how far his constant complacence
would go. She thought she would tire him out. It was intolerable
to feel absolutely sure of her husband, to know that she so filled
his heart that he had room for no other, to have nothing to fear,
not even the caprice of an hour. Perhaps there was yet more than
this in Bertha's aversion. She knew herself, and confessed to
herself that had Sauvresy wished, she would have been his without
being his wife. She was so lonely at her father's, so wretched in
her poverty, that she would have fled from her home, even for this.
And she despised her husband because he had not despised her enough!

People were always telling her that she was the happiest of women.
Happy! And there were days when she wept when she thought that she
was married. Happy! There were times when she longed to fly, to
seek adventure and pleasure, all that she yearned for, what she had
not had and never would have. The fear of poverty--which she knew
well--restrained her. This fear was caused in part by a wise
precaution which her father, recently dead, had taken. Sauvresy
wished to insert in the marriage-contract a settlement of five
hundred thousand francs on his affianced. The worthy Lechailin had
opposed this generous act.

"My daughter," he said, "brings you nothing. Settle forty thousand
francs on her if you will, not a sou more; otherwise there shall be
no marriage."

As Sauvresy insisted, the old man added:

"I hope that she will be a good and worthy wife; if so, your fortune
will be hers. But if she is not, forty thousand francs will be none
too little for her. Of course, if you are afraid that you will die
first, you can make a will."

Sauvresy was forced to yield. Perhaps the worthy school-master
knew his daughter; if so he was the only one. Never did so
consummate a hypocrisy minister to so profound a perversity, and a
depravity so inconceivable in a young and seemingly innocent girl.
If, at the bottom of her heart, she thought herself the most
wretched of women, there was nothing of it apparent--it was a
well-kept secret. She knew how to show to her husband, in place
of the love she did