Hortense wanted to send her diamonds to
the Mont-de-Piete; they would have brought in a few thousand francs,
but we needed ten thousand. Those ten thousand francs were to be had
free of interest for a year!--I said to myself, 'Hortense will be none
the wiser; I will go and get them.'
"Then the woman asked me to dinner through my father-in-law, giving me
to understand that Lisbeth had spoken of the matter, and I should have
the money. Between Hortense's despair on one hand, and the dinner on
the other, I could not hesitate.--That is all.
"What! could Hortense, at four-and-twenty, lovely, pure, and virtuous,
and all my pride and glory, imagine that, when I have never left her
since we married, I could now prefer--what?--a tawny, painted, ruddled
creature?" said he, using the vulgar exaggeration of the studio to
convince his wife by the vehemence that women like.
"Oh! if only your father had ever spoken so----!" cried the Baroness.
Hortense threw her arms round her husband's neck.
"Yes, that is what I should have done," said her mother. "Wenceslas,
my dear fellow, your wife was near dying of it," she went on very
seriously. "You see how well she loves you. And, alas--she is yours!"
She sighed deeply.
"He may make a martyr of her, or a happy woman," thought she to
herself, as every mother thinks when she sees her daughter married.
--"It seems to me," she said aloud, "that I am miserable enough to
hope to see my children happy.
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