er moved about excitedly in her chair, and exclaimed:

"This is horrible--why, it is perfectly horrible!

"See whether you can find anything else to read to me, darling."

Berthe again made a search; and farther down among the reports of
criminal cases, she read:

"'Gloomy Drama. A shop girl, no longer young, allowed herself to be led
astray by a young man. Then, to avenge herself on her lover, whose heart
proved fickle, she shot him with a revolver. The unhappy man is maimed
for life. The jury, all men of moral character, condoning the illicit
love of the murderess, honorably acquitted her.'"

This time the old grandmother appeared quite shocked, and, in a trembling
voice, she said:

"Why, you people are mad nowadays. You are mad! The good God has given
you love, the only enchantment in life. Man has added to this gallantry
the only distraction of our dull hours, and here you are mixing up with
it vitriol and revolvers, as if one were to put mud into a flagon of
Spanish wine."

Berthe did not seem to understand her grandmother's indignation.

"But, grandmamma, this woman avenged herself. Remember she was married,
and her husband deceived her."

The grandmother gave a start.

"What ideas have they been filling your head with, you young girls of
today?"

Berthe replied:

"But marriage is sacred, grandmamma."

The grandmother's heart, which had its birth in the great age of
gallantry, gave a sudden leap.

"It is love that is sacred," she said. "Listen, child, to an old woman
who has seen three generations, and who has had a long, long experience
of men and women. Marriage and love have nothing in common. We marry to
found a family, and we form families in order to constitute society.
Society cannot dispense with marriage. If society is a chain, each family
is a link in that chain. In order to weld those links, we always seek
metals of the same order. When we marry, we must bring together suitable
conditions; we must combine fortunes, unite similar races and aim at the
common interest, which is riches and children. We marry only once my
child, because the world requires us to do so, but we may love twenty
times in one lifetime because nature has made us like this. Marriage, you
see, is law, and love is an instinct which impels us, sometimes along a
straight, and sometimes along a devious path. The world has made laws to
combat our instincts--it was necessary to make them; but our
instincts are always stro