He had grown red with surprise and anger, and he growled between his closed teeth:  “Yes, tell me everything.”

He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a big, red beard, a handsome man, a nobleman, a man of the world, who passed as a perfect husband and an excellent father, and now for the first time since they had started she turned towards him, and looked him full in the face:  “Ah!  You will hear some disagreeable things, but you must know that I am prepared for everything, that I fear nothing, and you less than anyone, to-day.”

He also was looking into her eyes, and already he was shaking with passion, and he said in a low voice:  “You are mad.”  “No, but I will no longer be the victim of the hateful penalty of maternity, which you have inflicted on me for eleven years!  I wish to live like a woman of the world, as I have a right to do, as all women have the right to do.”

He suddenly grew pale again, and stammered:  “I do not understand you.”  “Oh! yes; you understand me well enough.  It is now three months since I had my last child, and as I am still very beautiful, and as, in spite of all your efforts you cannot spoil my figure, as you just now perceived, when you saw me on the outside flight of steps, you think it is time that I should become pregnant again.”  “But you are talking nonsense!” “No, I am not.  I am thirty, and I have had seven children, and we have been married eleven years, and you hope that this will go on for ten years longer, after which you will leave off being jealous.”

He seized her arm and squeezed it, saying:  “I will not allow you to talk to me like that, for long.”  “And I shall talk to you till the end, until I have finished all I have to say to you, and if you try to prevent me, I shall raise my voice so that the two servants, who are on the box, may hear.  I only allowed you to come with me for that object, for I have these witnesses who will oblige you to listen to me, and to contain yourself; so now, pay attention to what I say.  I have always felt an antipathy for you, and I have always let you see it, for I have never lied, Monsieur.  You married me in spite of myself; you forced my parents, who were in embarrassed circumstances, to give me to you, because you were rich, and they obliged me to marry you, in spite of my tears.

“So you bought me, and as soon as I was in your power, as soon as I had become your companion, ready to attach myself to you, to forget your coercive and threatening proceedings, in order that I might only remember that I ought to be a devoted wife and to love you as much as it might be possible for me to love you, you became jealous, you, as no man has ever been before, with the base, ignoble jealousy of a spy, which was as degrading for you as it was for me.  I had not been married eight months, when you suspected me of every perfidiousness, and you even told me so.  What a disgrace!  And as you could not prevent me from being beautiful, and from pleasing people,