“Make no remarks!  I am leaving the house, and shall take Louise with me.  You must stay here with monsieur; take good care of him——­”

She went into her room, and wrote the following letter:—­

  “MONSIEUR LE COMTE,—­

  “The letter I enclose will sufficiently account for the
  determination I have come to.

  “When you read this, I shall have left your house and have found
  refuge with my mother, taking our child with me.

  “Do not imagine that I shall retrace my steps.  Do not imagine that
  I am acting with the rash haste of youth, without reflection, with
  the anger of offended affection; you will be greatly mistaken.

“I have been thinking very deeply during the last fortnight of life, of love, of our marriage, of our duties to each other.  I have known the perfect devotion of my mother; she has told me all her sorrows!  She has been heroical—­every day for twenty-three years.  But I have not the strength to imitate her, not because I love you less than she loves my father, but for reasons of spirit and nature.  Our home would be a hell; I might lose my head so far as to disgrace you—­disgrace myself and our child.

  “I refuse to be a Madame Marneffe; once launched on such a course,
  a woman of my temper might not, perhaps, be able to stop.  I am,
  unfortunately for myself, a Hulot, not a Fischer.

“Alone, and absent from the scene of your dissipations, I am sure of myself, especially with my child to occupy me, and by the side of a strong and noble mother, whose life cannot fail to influence the vehement impetuousness of my feelings.  There, I can be a good mother, bring our boy up well, and live.  Under your roof the wife would oust the mother; and constant contention would sour my temper.

“I can accept a death-blow, but I will not endure for twenty-five years, like my mother.  If, at the end of three years of perfect, unwavering love, you can be unfaithful to me with your father-in-law’s mistress, what rivals may I expect to have in later years?  Indeed, monsieur, you have begun your career of profligacy much earlier than my father did, the life of dissipation, which is a disgrace to the father of a family, which undermines the respect of his children, and which ends in shame and despair.

“I am not unforgiving.  Unrelenting feelings do not beseem erring creatures living under the eye of God.  If you win fame and fortune by sustained work, if you have nothing to do with courtesans and ignoble, defiling ways, you will find me still a wife worthy of you.

“I believe you to be too much a gentleman, Monsieur le Comte, to have recourse to the law.  You will respect my wishes, and leave me under my mother’s roof.  Above all, never let me see you there.  I have left all the money lent to you by that odious woman.—­ Farewell.

“HORTENSE HULOT.”