But Count de Mascaret thought that the situation was lasting too long,
and he touched her on the shoulder. That contact recalled her to
herself, as if she had been burnt, and getting up, she looked straight
into his eyes. "This is what I have to say to you. I am afraid of
nothing, whatever you may do to me. You may kill me if you like. One of
your children is not yours, and one only; that I swear to you before
God, who hears me here. That is the only revenge which was possible for
me, in return for all your abominable tyrannies of the male, in return
for the penal servitude of childbearing to which you have condemned me.
Who was my lover? That you will never know! You may suspect everyone,
but you will never find out. I gave myself up to him, without love and
without pleasure, only for the sake of betraying you, and he also made
me a mother. Which is his child? That also you will never know. I have
seven; try and find out! I intended to tell you this later, for one has
not avenged oneself on a man by deceiving him, unless he knows it. You
have driven me to confess it to-day. I now have finished."

She hurried through the church, towards the open door, expecting to hear
behind her the quick steps of her husband whom she had defied, and to be
knocked to the ground by a blow of his fist, but she heard nothing, and
reached her carriage. She jumped into it at a bound, overwhelmed with
anguish, and breathless with fear; so she called out to the coachman:
"Home!" and the horses set off at a quick trot.


II

Countess de Mascaret was waiting in her room for dinner time, like a
criminal sentenced to death, awaits the hour of his execution. What was