s no passion in that wild
embrace.

"You have saved me!" she cried, and tears of joy flowed fast.

"I will tell you everything, my friend. For you will be my friend, will
you not? I am rich, you think, very rich; I have everything I want, or
I seem as if I had everything. Very well, you must know that M. de
Nucingen does not allow me the control of a single penny; he pays all
the bills for the house expenses; he pays for my carriages and opera
box; he does not give me enough to pay for my dress, and he reduces
me to poverty in secret on purpose. I am too proud to beg from him. I
should be the vilest of women if I could take his money at the price at
which he offers it. Do you ask how I, with seven hundred thousand francs
of my own, could let myself be robbed? It is because I was proud, and
scorned to speak. We are so young, so artless when our married life
begins! I never could bring myself to ask my husband for money; the
words would have made my lips bleed, I did not dare to ask; I spent my
savings first, and then the money that my poor father gave me, then I
ran into debt. Marriage for me is a hideous farce; I cannot talk about
it, let it suffice to say that Nucingen and I have separate rooms, and
that I would fling myself out of the window sooner than consent to any
other manner of life. I suffered agonies when I had to confess to my
girlish extravagance, my debts for jewelry and trifles (for our poor
father had never refused us anything, and spoiled us), but at last I
found courage to tell him about them. After all, I had a fortune of my
own. Nucingen flew into a rage; he said that I should be the ruin of
him, and used frightful language! I wished myself a hundred feet down
in the earth. He had my dowry, so he paid my debts, but he stipulated at
the same time that my expenses in future must not exceed a certain fixed
sum, and I gave way for the sake of peace. And then," she went on, "I
wanted to gratify the self-love of some one whom you know. He may have
deceived me, but I should do him the justice to say that there was
nothing petty in his character. But, after all, he threw me over
disgracefully. If, at a woman's utmost need, _somebody_ heaps gold upon
her, he ought never to forsake her; that love should last for ever!
But you, at one-and-twenty, you, the soul of honor, with the unsullied
conscience of youth, will ask me how a woman can bring herself to accept
money in such a way? _Mon Dieu_! is it not natural