Between La Roche and Dijon they took breakfast in the dining-car, and left Choulette in it, alone with his pipe, his glass of benedictine, and his irritation.

In the carriage, Madame Marmet talked with peaceful tenderness of the husband she had lost.  He had married her for love; he had written admirable verses to her, which she had kept, and never shown to any one.  He was lively and very gay.  One would not have thought it who had seen him later, tired by work and weakened by illness.  He studied until the last moment.  Two hours before he died he was trying to read again.  He was affectionate and kind.  Even in suffering he retained all his sweetness.  Madame Martin said to her: 

“You have had long years of happiness; you have kept the reminiscence of them; that is a share of happiness in this world.”

But good Madame Marmet sighed; a cloud passed over her quiet brow.

“Yes,” she said, “Louis was the best of men and the best of husbands.  Yet he made me very miserable.  He had only one fault, but I suffered from it cruelly.  He was jealous.  Good, kind, tender, and generous as he was, this horrible passion made him unjust, ironical, and violent.  I can assure you that my behavior gave not the least cause for suspicion.  I was not a coquette.  But I was young, fresh; I passed for beautiful.  That was enough.  He would not let me go out alone, and would not let me receive calls in his absence.  Whenever we went to a reception, I trembled in advance with the fear of the scene which he would make later in the carriage.”

And the good Madame Marmet added, with a sigh: 

“It is true that I liked to dance.  But I had to renounce going to balls; it made him suffer too much.”

Countess Martin expressed astonishment.  She had always imagined Marmet as an old man, timid, and absorbed by his thoughts; a little ridiculous, between his wife, plump, white, and amiable, and the skeleton wearing a helmet of bronze and gold.  But the excellent widow confided to her that, at fifty-five years of age, when she was fifty-three, Louis was just as jealous as on the first day of their marriage.

And Therese thought that Robert had never tormented her with jealousy.  Was it on his part a proof of tact and good taste, a mark of confidence, or was it that he did not love her enough to make her suffer?  She did not know, and she did not have the heart to try to know.  She would have to look through recesses of her mind which she preferred not to open.

She murmured carelessly: 

“We long to be loved, and when we are loved we are tormented or worried.”

The day was finished in reading and thinking.  Choulette did not reappear.  Night covered little by little with its gray clouds the mulberry-trees of the Dauphine.  Madame Marmet went to sleep peacefully, resting on herself as on a mass of pillows.  Therese looked at her and thought: 

“She is happy, since she likes to remember.”