Bertha was wearied with the constancy and adoration of her husband.  She had only to express a desire to be at once obeyed, and this blind submission to all her wishes appeared to her servile in a man.  A man is born, she thought, to command, and not to obey; to be master, and not slave.  She would have preferred a husband who would come in in the middle of the night, still warm from his orgy, having lost at play, and who would strike her if she upbraided him.  A tyrant, but a man.  Some months after her marriage she suddenly took it into her head to have absurd freaks and extravagant caprices.  She wished to prove him, and see how far his constant complacence would go.  She thought she would tire him out.  It was intolerable to feel absolutely sure of her husband, to know that she so filled his heart that he had room for no other, to have nothing to fear, not even the caprice of an hour.  Perhaps there was yet more than this in Bertha’s aversion.  She knew herself, and confessed to herself that had Sauvresy wished, she would have been his without being his wife.  She was so lonely at her father’s, so wretched in her poverty, that she would have fled from her home, even for this.  And she despised her husband because he had not despised her enough!

People were always telling her that she was the happiest of women.  Happy!  And there were days when she wept when she thought that she was married.  Happy!  There were times when she longed to fly, to seek adventure and pleasure, all that she yearned for, what she had not had and never would have.  The fear of poverty—­which she knew well—­restrained her.  This fear was caused in part by a wise precaution which her father, recently dead, had taken.  Sauvresy wished to insert in the marriage-contract a settlement of five hundred thousand francs on his affianced.  The worthy Lechailin had opposed this generous act.

“My daughter,” he said, “brings you nothing.  Settle forty thousand francs on her if you will, not a sou more; otherwise there shall be no marriage.”

As Sauvresy insisted, the old man added: 

“I hope that she will be a good and worthy wife; if so, your fortune will be hers.  But if she is not, forty thousand francs will be none too little for her.  Of course, if you are afraid that you will die first, you can make a will.”

Sauvresy was forced to yield.  Perhaps the worthy school-master knew his daughter; if so he was the only one.  Never did so consummate a hypocrisy minister to so profound a perversity, and a depravity so inconceivable in a young and seemingly innocent girl.  If, at the bottom of her heart, she thought herself the most wretched of women, there was nothing of it apparent—­it was a well-kept secret.  She knew how to show to her husband, in place of the love she did not feel, the appearance of a passion at once burning and modest, betraying furtive glances and a flush as of pleasure, when he entered the room.