“Oh! how often have I noticed that joy in you!  I have seen it in your eyes and guessed it.  You loved your children as victories, and not because they were of your own blood.  They were victories over me, over my youth, over my beauty, over my charms, over the compliments which were paid me and over those that were whispered around me without being paid to me personally.  And you are proud of them, you make a parade of them, you take them out for drives in your break in the Bois de Boulogne and you give them donkey rides at Montmorency.  You take them to theatrical matinees so that you may be seen in the midst of them, so that the people may say:  ‘What a kind father’ and that it may be repeated——­”

He had seized her wrist with savage brutality, and he squeezed it so violently that she was quiet and nearly cried out with the pain and he said to her in a whisper: 

“I love my children, do you hear?  What you have just told me is disgraceful in a mother.  But you belong to me; I am master—­your master—­I can exact from you what I like and when I like—­and I have the law-on my side.”

He was trying to crush her fingers in the strong grip of his large, muscular hand, and she, livid with pain, tried in vain to free them from that vise which was crushing them.  The agony made her breathe hard and the tears came into her eyes.  “You see that I am the master and the stronger,” he said.  When he somewhat loosened his grip, she asked him:  “Do you think that I am a religious woman?”

He was surprised and stammered “Yes.”

“Do you think that I could lie if I swore to the truth of anything to you before an altar on which Christ’s body is?”

“No.”

“Will you go with me to some church?”

“What for?”

“You shall see.  Will you?”

“If you absolutely wish it, yes.”

She raised her voice and said:  “Philippe!” And the coachman, bending down a little, without taking his eyes from his horses, seemed to turn his ear alone toward his mistress, who continued:  “Drive to St. Philippe-du-Roule.”  And the-victoria, which had reached the entrance of the Bois de Boulogne returned to Paris.

Husband and wife did not exchange a word further during the drive, and when the carriage stopped before the church Madame de Mascaret jumped out and entered it, followed by the count, a few yards distant.  She went, without stopping, as far as the choir-screen, and falling on her knees at a chair, she buried her face in her hands.  She prayed for a long time, and he, standing behind her could see that she was crying.  She wept noiselessly, as women weep when they are in great, poignant grief.  There was a kind of undulation in her body, which ended in a little sob, which was hidden and stifled by her fingers.