own fortune, free to do as she liked, to gratify every caprice? He thus
lived upon his faith in the marriage contract, with unbounded confidence
and old-fashioned loyalty.

According to general opinion, Madame de Bergenheim was a very fortunate
woman, to whom virtue must be so easy that it could hardly be called a
merit. Happiness, according to society, consists in a box at the Opera,
a fine carriage, and a husband who pays the bills without frowning. Add
to the above privileges, a hundred thousand francs' worth of diamonds,
and a woman has really no right to dream or to suffer. There are,
however, poor, loving creatures who stifle under this happiness as if
under one of those leaden covers that Dante speaks of; they breathe, in
imagination, the pure, vital air that a fatal instinct has revealed to
them; they struggle between duty and desire; they gaze, like captive
doves and with a sorrowful eye, upon the forbidden region where it would
be so blissful to soar; for, in fastening a chain to their feet, the law
did not bandage their eyes, and nature gave them wings; if the wings tear
the chain asunder, shame and misfortune await them! Society will never
forgive the heart that catches a glimpse of the joys it is unacquainted
with; even a brief hour in that paradise has to be expiated by implacable
social damnation and its everlasting flames.




CHAPTER XIV

GERFAUT'S ALLEGORY

There almost always comes a moment when a woman, in her combat against