Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts by Honoré de Balzac
page 41 of 201 (20%)
Ferdinand
Gertrude is a woman of the fiercest jealousy. She wishes for fidelity
in her lover to recompense her for her infidelity to her husband, and
as she has suffered martyrdom, she says, she wishes--

Ramel
To have you in the same house with her, that she may keep watch over
you herself.

Ferdinand
She has been successful in getting me here. For the last three years I
have been living in a small house near the factory. I should have left
the first week after my arrival, but that two days' acquaintance with
Pauline convinced me that I could not live without her.

Ramel
Your love for Pauline, it seems to me as a magistrate, makes your
position here somewhat less distasteful.

Ferdinand
My position? I assure you, it is intolerable, among the three
characters with whom I am cast. Pauline is daring, like all young
persons who are innocent, to whom love is a wholly ideal thing, and
who see no evil in anything, so long as it concerns a man whom they
intend to marry. The penetration of Gertrude is very acute, but we
manage to elude it through Pauline's terror lest my name should be
divulged; the sense of this danger gives her strength to dissemble!
But now Pauline has just refused Godard, and I do not know what may be
the consequences.

DigitalOcean Referral Badge