The Comte and Comtesse Mascaret were sitting side by side in the
carriage which was taking them home from the Opera, without speaking but
suddenly the husband said to his wife: “Gabrielle!”
“What do you want?”
“Don't you think that this has lasted long enough?”
“What?”
“The horrible punishment to which you have condemned me for the last six
years?”
“What do you want? I cannot help it.”
“Then tell me which of them it is.”
“Never.”
“Think that I can no longer see my children or feel them round me,
without having my heart burdened with this doubt. Tell me which of
them it is, and I swear that I will forgive you and treat it like the
others.”
“I have not the right to do so.”
“Do you not see that I can no longer endure this life, this thought
which is wearing me out, or this question which I am constantly asking
myself, this question which tortures me each time I look at them? It is
driving me mad.”
“Then you have suffered a great deal?” she said.
“Terribly. Should I, without that, have accepted the horror of living
by your side, and the still greater horror of feeling and knowing that
there is one among them whom I cannot recognize and who prevents me from
loving the others?”
“Then you have really suffered very much?” she repeated.
And he replied in a constrained and sorrowful voice:
“Yes, for do I not tell you every day that it is intolerable torture to
me? Should I have remained in that house, near you and them, if I
did not love them? Oh! You have behaved abominably toward me. All the
affection of my heart I have bestowed upon my children, and that you
know. I am for them a father of the olden time, as I was for you a
husband of one of the families of old, for by instinct I have remained a
natural man, a man of former days. Yes, I will confess it, you have made
me terribly jealous, because you are a woman of another race, of another
soul, with other requirements. Oh! I shall never forget the things you
said to me, but from that day I troubled myself no more about you. I did
not kill you, because then I should have had no means on earth of ever
discovering which of our--of your children is not mine. I have waited,
but I have suffered more than you would believe, for I can no longer
venture to love them, except, perhaps, the two eldest; I no longer
venture to look at them, to call them to me, to kiss them; I cannot take
them on my knee without asking myself, 'Can it be this one?' I have
been correct in my behavior toward you for six years, and even kind
and complaisant. Tell me the truth, and I swear that I will do nothing
unkind.”
He thought, in spite of the darkness of the carriage, that he could
perceive that she was moved, and feeling certain that she was going to
speak at last, he said: “I beg you, I beseech you to tell me,” he said.
“I have been more guilty than you think perhaps,” she replied, “but I
could no longer endure that life of continual motherhood, and I had only
one means of driving you from me. I lied before God and I lied, with my
hand raised to my children's head, for I never have wronged you.”
He seized her arm in the darkness, and squeezing it as he had done on
that terrible day of their drive in the Bois de Boulogne, he stammered:
“Is that true?”
“It is true.”
But, wild with grief, he said with a groan: “I shall have fresh doubts
that will never end! When did you lie, the last time or now? How am I to
believe you at present? How can one believe a woman after that? I shall
never again know what I am to think. I would rather you had said to me,
'It is Jacques or it is Jeanne.'”
The carriage drove into the courtyard of the house and when it had drawn
up in front of the steps the count alighted first, as usual, and offered
his wife his arm to mount the stairs. As soon as they reached the first
floor he said: “May I speak to you for a few moments longer?” And she
replied, “I am quite willing.”
They went into a small drawing-room and a footman, in some surprise,
lighted the wax candles. As soon as he had left the room and they were
alone the count continued: “How am I to know the truth? I have begged
you a thousand times to speak, but you have remained dumb, impenetrable,
inflexible, inexorable, and now to-day you tell me that you have been
lying. For six years you have actually allowed me to believe such a
thing! No, you are lying now, I do not know why, but out of pity for me,
perhaps?”
She replied in a sincere and convincing manner: “If I had not done so, I
should have had four more children in the last six years!”
“Can a mother speak like that?”
“Oh!” she replied, “I do not feel that I am the mother of children who
never have been born; it is enough for me to be the mother of those that
I have and to love them with all my heart. I am a woman of the civilized
world, monsieur--we all are--and we are no longer, and we refuse to be,
mere females to restock the earth.”
She got up, but he seized her hands. “Only one word, Gabrielle. Tell me
the truth!”
“I have just told you. I never have dishonored you.”
He looked her full in the face, and how beautiful she was, with her gray
eyes, like the cold sky. In her dark hair sparkled the diamond coronet,
like a radiance. He suddenly felt, felt by a kind of intuition, that
this grand creature was not merely a being destined to perpetuate the
race, but the strange and mysterious product of all our complicated
desires which have been accumulating in us for centuries but which
have been turned aside from their primitive and divine object and have
wandered after a mystic, imperfectly perceived and intangible beauty.
There are some women like that, who blossom only for our dreams, adorned
with every poetical attribute of civilization, with that ideal luxury,
coquetry and esthetic charm which surround woman, a living statue that
brightens our life.
Her husband remained standing before her, stupefied at his tardy
and obscure discovery, confusedly hitting on the cause of his former
jealousy and understanding it all very imperfectly, and at last lie
said: “I believe you, for I feel at this moment that you are not lying,
and before I really thought that you were.”
She put out her hand to him: “We are friends then?”
He took her hand and kissed it and replied: “We are friends. Thank you,
Gabrielle.”
Then he went out, still looking at her, and surprised that she was still
so beautiful and feeling a strange emotion arising in him.