“Look at this theatre. Is there not here
a human world created by us, unforeseen and unknown
to eternal fate, intelligible to our minds alone,
a sensual and intellectual distraction, which has been
invented solely by and for that discontented and restless
little animal, man?
“Look at that woman, Madame de Mascaret.
God intended her to live in a cave, naked or wrapped
up in the skins of wild animals. But is she not
better as she is? But, speaking of her, does any
one know why and how her brute of a husband, having
such a companion by his side, and especially after
having been boorish enough to make her a mother seven
times, has suddenly left her, to run after bad women?”
Grandin replied: “Oh! my dear fellow, this
is probably the only reason. He found that raising
a family was becoming too expensive, and from reasons
of domestic economy he has arrived at the same principles
which you lay down as a philosopher.”
Just then the curtain rose for the third act, and
they turned round, took off their hats and sat down.
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
