"And yet he went there; he is there!--That woman is bent on breaking
all our hearts! Only yesterday my brother and Celestine pledged their
all to pay off seventy thousand francs on notes of hand signed for
that good-for-nothing creature.--Yes, mamma, my father would have been
arrested and put into prison. Cannot that dreadful woman be content
with having my father, and with all your tears? Why take my Wenceslas?
--I will go to see her and stab her!"
Madame Hulot, struck to the heart by the dreadful secrets Hortense was
unwittingly letting out, controlled her grief by one of the heroic
efforts which a magnanimous mother can make, and drew her daughter's
head on to her bosom to cover it with kisses.
"Wait for Wenceslas, my child; all will be explained. The evil cannot
be so great as you picture it!--I, too, have been deceived, my dear
Hortense; you think me handsome, I have lived blameless; and yet I
have been utterly forsaken for three-and-twenty years--for a Jenny
Cadine, a Josepha, a Madame Marneffe!--Did you know that?"
"You, mamma, you! You have endured this for twenty----"
She broke off, staggered by her own thoughts.
"Do as I have done, my child," said her mother. "Be gentle and kind,
and your conscience will be at peace. On his death-bed a man may say,
'My wife has never cost me a pang!' And God, who hears that dying
breath, credits it to us. If I had abandoned myself to fury like you,
what would have happened? Your father would have been embittered,
perhaps he would have left me altogether, and he would not have been
withheld by any fear of paining me.
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