These things, of which I here make a summary, she told me in all their dark extent, with every piteous detail of conjugal battles lost and fruitless struggles.

“You would have to live here many months,” she said, in conclusion, “to understand what difficulties I have met with in improving Clochegourde; what persuasions I have had to use to make him do a thing which was most important to his interests.  You cannot imagine the childish glee he has shown when anything that I advised was not at once successful.  All that turned out well he claimed for himself.  Yes, I need an infinite patience to bear his complaints when I am half-exhausted in the effort to amuse his weary hours, to sweeten his life and smooth the paths which he himself has strewn with stones.  The reward he gives me is that awful cry:  ’Let me die, life is a burden to me!’ When visitors are here and he enjoys them, he forgets his gloom and is courteous and polite.  You ask me why he cannot be so to his family.  I cannot explain that want of loyalty in a man who is truly chivalrous.  He is quite capable of riding at full speed to Paris to buy me a set of ornaments, as he did the other day before the ball.  Miserly in his household, he would be lavish upon me if I wished it.  I would it were reversed; I need nothing for myself, but the wants of the household are many.  In my strong desire to make him happy, and not reflecting that I might be a mother, I began my married life by letting him treat me as a victim, I, who at that time by using a few caresses could have led him like a child—­but I was unable to play a part I should have thought disgraceful.  Now, however, the welfare of my family requires me to be as calm and stern as the figure of Justice —­and yet, I too have a heart that overflows with tenderness.”

“But why,” I said, “do you not use this great influence to master him and govern him?”

“If it concerned myself only I should not attempt either to overcome the dogged silence with which for days together he meets my arguments, nor to answer his irrational remarks, his childish reasons.  I have no courage against weakness, any more than I have against childhood; they may strike me as they will, I cannot resist.  Perhaps I might meet strength with strength, but I am powerless against those I pity.  If I were required to coerce Madeleine in some matter that would save her life, I should die with her.  Pity relaxes all my fibres and unstrings my nerves.  So it is that the violent shocks of the last ten years have broken me down; my feelings, so often battered, are numb at times; nothing can revive them; even the courage with which I once faced my troubles begins to fail me.  Yes, sometimes I am beaten.  For want of rest—­I mean repose—­and sea-baths by which to recover my nervous strength, I shall perish.  Monsieur de Mortsauf will have killed me, and he will die of my death.”

“Why not leave Clochegourde for a few months?  Surely you could take your children and go to the seashore.”