“Where have you been to-day, madame?”
“Why, wherever I chose, monsieur. I believe that I am not in the habit
of asking you where you go!”
“That is no argument, madame, and I have the right to ask you for an
account of your actions.”
“Oho! a right! I had that right too, but when I undertook to exert it,
it did not succeed!”
“I don’t know what you mean, madame. However, you do not answer my
question.”
“I have been to dine with Madame Dorcelles; there was no mystery about
it; I told the nurse, and I thought that you would call there for me.”
“You could not think that I would go to the house of a woman whom I do
not like; and you must have known too that you would not please me by
dining with this Madame Dorcelles, who has the reputation of being a
flirt and not a respectable mother of a family.”
“Reputation! Was it Madame Ernest who told you that Laure was a flirt?”
“Madame Ernest never speaks ill of anyone.”
“She has her reasons for that.”
“For heaven’s sake, let us drop Madame Ernest, whom I almost never see.”
“Oh! that is a matter of indifference to me now.”
“I can well believe it; you have other things to occupy your mind.”
“What do you mean by that, monsieur?”
“If you should find me escorting a woman home as I just now found you
with Monsieur Dulac, I should like to know what you would say?”
“Mon Dieu! do you mean to say that you are jealous, you, monsieur, who
considered it so absurd that I should be?”
“Without being jealous, madame, I may look to it that you do not expose
yourself to malicious gossip.”
“Oh! I am obliged to you, monsieur, but I am old enough to know how to
behave.”
“You are becoming most peculiar, Eugénie; I don’t know whose advice you
are following, but I cannot believe that you act thus of your own
accord; I doubt, however, whether this new method of treating me will
make either of us happy. Upon my word, I do not recognize you.”
“I have said that of you for a very long time, monsieur!”
“I can understand your not being the same to me; but with your children!
Why, you have not asked me anything about our son!”
“Could I guess that you had been to see him?”
“You leave little Henriette here, you abandon her to the care of a
maid!”
“As if one could always drag a child about, when one goes into society!”
“_Drag about!_ Ah! I prefer to believe, madame, that that word does not
come from you; it was probably Madame Dorcelles who taught it to you, in
speaking of her own children!”
“It is doubtless because Laure is one of my school friends that you do
not like her, and that you say unkind things about her; but I warn you,
monsieur, that that will not prevent me from seeing her and from going
to her house whenever I please.”
“But if I should forbid you?”
“That would be an additional reason for me to do it.”
“Magnificent, madame! Go your own way and I will go mine.”
“Go where you please, it is all one to me!”
I made the circuit of the room once more, then left madame, who
continued to adjust her curl papers.