fortune; sixty thousand francs a year in forests, which the Revolution
overlooked (or had not been able to sell) in the Nivernais, with the
noble chateau of d'Anzy. Monsieur de Maufrigneuse was steeped in debt.
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 I
was! 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 I
knew 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