f
light.

When he had looked at her for some time, Bernard Grandin replied with a
jocular accent of sincere conviction: "You may well call her beautiful!"

"How old do you think she is?"

"Wait a moment. I can tell you exactly, for I have known her since she
was a child and I saw her make her debut into society when she was quite
a girl. She is--she is--thirty--thirty-six."

"Impossible!"

"I am sure of it."

"She looks twenty-five."

"She has had seven children."

"It is incredible."

"And what is more, they are all seven alive, as she is a very good
mother. I occasionally go to the house, which is a very quiet and
pleasant one, where one may see the phenomenon of the family in the
midst of society."

"How very strange! And have there never been any reports about her?"

"Never."

"But what about her husband? He is peculiar, is he not?"

"Yes and no. Very likely there has been a little drama between them,
one of those little domestic dramas which one suspects, never finds out
exactly, but guesses at pretty closely."

"What is it?"

"I do not know anything about it. Mascaret leads a very fast life now,
after being a model husband. As long as he remained a good spouse he had
a shocking temper, was crabbed and easily took offence, but since he has
been leading his present wild life he has become quite different, But
one might surmise that he has some trouble, a worm gnawing somewhere,
for he has aged very much."

Thereupon the two friends talked philosophically for some minutes
about the secret, unknowable troubles which differences of character or
perhaps physical antipathies, which were not perceived at first, give
rise to in families, and then Roger de Salnis, who was still looking
at Madame de Mascaret through his opera glasses, said: "It is almost
incredible that that woman can have had seven children!"

"Yes, in eleven years; after which, when she was thirty, she refused to
have any more, in order to take her place in society, which she seems
likely to do for many years."

"Poor women!"

"Why do you pity them?"

"Why? Ah! my dear fellow, just consider! Eleven years in a condition of
motherhood for such a woman! What a hell! All her youth, all her
beauty, every hope of success, every poetical ideal of a brilliant life
sacrificed to that abominable law of reproduction which turns the normal
woman into a mere machine for bringing children into the world."

"What would you have? It is only N