do not disgrace yourself for Marneffe's
sake; do not yield to his threats.

"I love you as I have never loved! I remember all the sacrifices
you have made for your Valerie; she is not, and never will be,
ungrateful; you are, and will ever be, my only husband. Think no
more of the twelve hundred francs a year I asked you to settle on
the dear little Hector who is to come some months hence; I will
not cost you anything more. And besides, my money will always be
yours.

"Oh, if you only loved me as I love you, my Hector, you would
retire on your pension; we should both take leave of our family,
our worries, our surroundings, so full of hatred, and we should go
to live with Lisbeth in some pretty country place--in Brittany, or
wherever you like. There we should see nobody, and we should be
happy away from the world. Your pension and the little property I
can call my own would be enough for us. You say you are jealous;
well, you would then have your Valerie entirely devoted to her
Hector, and you would never have to talk in a loud voice, as you
did the other day. I shall have but one child--ours--you may be
sure, my dearly loved old veteran.

"You cannot conceive of my fury, for you cannot know how he
treated me, and the foul words he vomited on your Valerie. Such
words would disgrace my paper; a woman such as I am--Montcornet's
daughter--ought never to have heard one of them in her life. I
only wish you had been there, that I might have punished him with
the sight of the mad passion I felt for you. My father would have
killed the wretch; I can only do as women do--love you devotedly!
Indeed, my love, in the state of exasperation in which I am, I
cannot possibly give up seeing you. I must positively see you, in
secret, every day! That is what we are, we women. Your resentment
is mine. If you love me, I implore you, do not let him be
promoted; leave him to die a second-class clerk.

"At this moment I have lost my head; I still seem to hear him
abusing me. Betty, who had meant to leave me, has pity on me, and
will stay for a few days.

"My dear kind love, I do not know yet what is to be done. I see
nothing for it but flight. I always delight in the country
--Brittany, Languedoc, what you will, so long as I am free to love
you. Poor dear, how I pity you! Forced now to go back to your old
Adeline, to that lachrymal urn--for, as he no doubt told