parents, who were in embarrassed circumstances, to give me to you,
because you were rich, and they obliged me to marry you, in spite of my
tears.

"So you bought me, and as soon as I was in your power, as soon as I had
become your companion, ready to attach myself to you, to forget your
coercive and threatening proceedings, in order that I might only
remember that I ought to be a devoted wife and to love you as much as it
might be possible for me to love you, you became jealous, you, as no man
has ever been before, with the base, ignoble jealousy of a spy, which
was as degrading for you as it was for me. I had not been married eight
months, when you suspected me of every perfidiousness, and you even told
me so. What a disgrace! And as you could not prevent me from being
beautiful, and from pleasing people, from being called in drawing-rooms,
and also in the newspapers, one of the most beautiful women in Paris,
you tried everything you could think of to keep admirers from me, and
you hit upon the abominable idea of making me spend my life in a
constant state of pregnancy, until the time when I should disgust every
man. Oh! do not deny it! I did not understand it for some time, but then
I guessed it. You even boasted about it to your sister, who told me of
it, for she is fond of me and was disgusted at your boorish coarseness.

"Ah! Remember our struggles, doors smashed in, and locks forced! For
eleven years you have condemned me to the existence of a brood mare on a
studfarm. Then as soon as I was pregnant, you grew disgusted with me,
and I saw nothing of you for months, and I was sent into the country, to
the family mansion, among fields and meadows, to bring forth my child.
And when I reappeared, fresh, pretty and indestructible, still seductive
and constantly surrounded by admirers, hoping that at last I should live
a little like a young rich woman who belongs to society, you were seized