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--"