We knew we were twins of one womb; she never dreamed of a
half-confidence between brothers of the same blood. After a short sigh,
natural to pure hearts when they first open to each other, she told me
of her first married life, her deceptions and disillusions, the
rebirth of her childhood's misery. Like me, she had suffered under
trifles; mighty to souls whose limpid substance quivers to the least
shock, as a lake quivers on the surface and to its utmost depths when
a stone is flung into it. When she married she possessed some girlish
savings; a little gold, the fruit of happy hours and repressed
fancies. These, in a moment when they were needed, she gave to her
husband, not telling him they were gifts and savings of her own. He
took no account of them, and never regarded himself her debtor. She
did not even obtain the glance of thanks that would have paid for all.
Ah! how she went from trial to trial! Monsieur de Mortsauf habitually
neglected to give her money for the household. When, after a struggle
with her timidity, she asked him for it, he seemed surprised and never
once spared her the mortification of petitioning for necessities. What
terror filled her mind when the real nature of the ruined man's
disease was revealed to her, and she quailed under the first outbreak
of his mad anger! What bitter reflections she had made before she
brought herself to admit that her husband was a wreck! What horrible
calamities had come of her bearing children! What anguish she felt at
the sight of those infants born almost dead! With what courage had she
said in her heart: "I will breathe the breath of life into them; I
will bear them anew day by day!" Then conceive the bitterness of
finding her greatest obstacle in the heart and hand from which a wife
should draw her greatest succor! She saw the untold disaster that
threatened him. As each difficulty was conquered, new deserts opened
before her, until the day when she thoroughly understood her husband's
condition, the constitution of her children, and the character of the