mong the following topics, which we have rhetorically amplified, and
which are most congenial to your feelings: "Madame," you must say, "I
will speak to you neither of your vows, nor of my love; for you have too
much sense and I have too much pride to make it possible that I should
overwhelm you with those execrations, which all husbands have a right
to utter under these circumstances; for the least of the mistakes that I
should make, if I did so, is that I would be fully justified. I will not
now, even if I could, indulge either in wrath or resentment. It is not
I who have been outraged; for I have too much heart to be frightened
by that public opinion which almost always treats with ridicule and
condemnation a husband whose wife has misbehaved. When I examine my
life, I see nothing there that makes this treachery deserved by me,
as it is deserved by many others. I still love you. I have never been
false, I will not say to my duty, for I have found nothing onerous in
adoring you, but not even to those welcome obligations which sincere
feeling imposes upon us both. You have had all my confidence and you
have also had the administration of my fortune. I have refused you
nothing. And now this is the first time that I have turned to you a
face, I will not say stern, but which is yet reproachful. But let us
drop this subject, for it is of no use for me to defend myself at
a moment when you have proved to me with such energy that there is
something lacking in me, and that I am not intended by nature to
accomplish the difficult task of rendering you happy. But I would ask
you, as a friend speaking to a friend, how could you have the heart to
imperil at the same time the lives of three human creatures: that of the
mother of my children, who will always be sacred to me; that of the
head of the family; and finally of him--who loves--[she perhaps at these
words will throw herself at your feet; you must not permit her to do so;
she is unworthy of kneeling there]. For you no longer love me, Eliza.
Well, my poor child [you must not call her _my poor child_ excepting
when the crime has not been committed]--why deceive ourselves? Why do
you not answer me? If love is extinguished between a married couple,
cannot friendship and confidence still survive? Are we not two
companions united in making the same journey? Can it be said that during
the journey the one must never hold out his hand to the other to raise
up a comrade or to prevent a