Later I learned what it was to have debts, but then I was too utterly ignorant of life to suspect my position; the money saved out of my fortune went to pacify my husband's creditors.Monsieur de Maufrigneuse was forty-eight years of age when I married him; but those years were like military campaigns, they ought to count for twice what they were.Ah! what a life I led for ten years! If any one had known the suffering of this poor, calumniated little woman! To be watched by a mother jealous of her daughter! Heavens! You who make dramas, you will never invent anything as direful as that.Ordinarily, according to the little that I know of literature, a drama is a suite of actions, speeches, movements which hurry to a catastrophe; but what I speak of was a catastrophe in action.It was an avalanche fallen in the morning and falling again at night only to fall again the next day.I am cold now as I speak to you of that cavern without an opening, cold, sombre, in which I lived.I, poor little thing that Iwas! brought up in a convent like a mystic rose, knowing nothing of marriage, developing late, I was happy at first; I enjoyed the goodwill and harmony of our family.The birth of my poor boy, who is all me--you must have been struck by the likeness? my hair, my eyes, the shape of my face, my mouth, my smile, my teeth!--well, his birth was a relief to me; my thoughts were diverted by the first joys of maternity from my husband, who gave me no pleasure and did nothing for me that was kind or amiable; those joys were all the keener because Iknew no others.It had been so often rung into my ears that a mother should respect herself.Besides, a young girl loves to play the mother.I was so proud of my flower--for Georges was beautiful, a miracle, I thought! I saw and thought of nothing but my son, I lived with my son.I never let his nurse dress or undress him.Such cares, so wearing to mothers who have a regiment of children, were all my pleasure.But after three or four years, as I was not an actual fool, light came to my eyes in spite of the pains taken to blindfold me.Can you see me at that final awakening, in 1819? The drama of 'The Brothers at enmity' is a rose-water tragedy beside that of a mother and daughter placed as we then were.But I braved them all, my mother, my husband, the world, by public coquetries which society talked of,--and heaven knows how it talked! You can see, my friend, how the men with whom I was accused of folly were to me the dagger with which to stab my enemies.Thinking only of my vengeance, I did not see or feel the wounds I was inflicting on myself.Innocent as a child, I was thought a wicked woman, the worst of women, and I knew nothing of it!
The world is very foolish, very blind, very ignorant; it can penetrate no secrets but those which amuse it and serve its malice: noble things, great things, it puts its hand before its eyes to avoid seeing.But, as I look back, it seems to me that I had an attitude and aspect of indignant innocence, with movements of pride, which a great painter would have recognized.I must have enlivened many a ball with my tempests of anger and disdain.Lost poesy! such sublime poems are only made in the glowing indignation which seizes us at twenty.Later, we are wrathful no longer, we are too weary, vice no longer amazes us, we are cowards, we fear.But then--oh! I kept a great pace! For all that I played the silliest personage in the world; I was charged with crimes by which I never benefited.But I had such pleasure in compromising myself.That was my revenge! Ah! I have played many childish tricks! I went to Italy with a thoughtless youth, whom Icrushed when he spoke to me of love, but later, when I herd that he was compromised on my account (he had committed a forgery to get money) I rushed to save him.My mother and husband kept me almost without means; but, this time, I went to the king.Louis XVIII., that man without a heart, was touched; he gave me a hundred thousand francs from his privy purse.The Marquis d'Esgrignon--you must have seen him in society for he ended by making a rich marriage--was saved from the abyss into which he had plunged for my sake.That adventure, caused by my own folly, led me to reflect.I saw that I myself was the first victim of my vengeance.My mother, who knew I was too proud, too d'Uxelles, to conduct myself really ill, began to see the harm that she had done me and was frightened by it.She was then fifty-two years of age; she left Paris and went to live at Uxelles.There she expiates her wrong-doing by a life of devotion and expresses the utmost affection for me.After her departure I was face to face, alone, with Monsieur de Maufrigneuse.Oh! my friend, you men can never know what an old man of gallantry can be.What a home is that of a man accustomed to the adulation of women of the world, when he finds neither incense nor censer in his own house! dead to all! and yet, perhaps for that very reason, jealous.I wished--when Monsieur de Maufrigneuse was wholly mine--I wished to be a good wife, but I found myself repulsed with the harshness of a soured spirit by a man who treated me like a child and took pleasure in humiliating my self-respect at every turn, in crushing me under the scorn of his experience, and in convicting me of total ignorance.He wounded me on all occasions.He did everything to make me detest him and to give me the right to betray him; but I was still the dupe of my own hope and of my desire to do right through several years.Shall I tell you the cruel saying that drove me to further follies? 'The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse has gone back to her husband,' said the world.'Bah! it is always a triumph to bring the dead to life; it is all she can now do,' replied my best friend, a relation, she, at whose house I met you--""Madame d'Espard!" cried Daniel, with a gesture of horror.
