Comedy of Marriage and Other Tales. Guy de Maupassant
you complain?
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Stop! you anger me with this continual raillery. Ever since I began to love you, you have tortured me in this manner, and now I do not even know whether you have the slightest affection for me.
MME. DE SALLUS
Well, you must admit that I have always been – good-natured.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Oh, you have played a queer little game! From the day I first met you I felt that you were coquetting with me, coquetting mysteriously, obscurely, coquetting as only you can without showing it to others. Little by little you conquered me with looks, with smiles, with pressures of the hand, without compromising yourself, without pledging yourself, without revealing yourself. You have been horribly upright – and seductive. I have loved you with all my soul, yes, sincerely and loyally, and to-day I do not know what feeling you have in the depths of your heart, what thoughts you have hidden in your brain; in fact, I know-I know nothing. I look at you, and I see a woman who seems to have chosen me, and seems also to have forgotten that she has chosen me. Does she love me, or is she tired of me? Has she simply made an experiment – taken a lover in order to see, to know, to taste, – without desire, hunger, or thirst? There are days when I ask myself if among those who love you and who tell you so unceasingly there is not one whom you really love.
MME. DE SALLUS
Good heavens! Really, there are some things into which it is not necessary to inquire.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Oh, how hard you are! Your tone tells me that you do not love me.
MME. DE SALLUS
Now, what are you complaining about? Of things I do not say? – because – I do not think you have anything else to reproach me with.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Forgive me, I am jealous.
MME. DE SALLUS
Of whom?
JACQUES DE RANDOL
I do not know. I am jealous of everything that I do not know about you.
MME. DE SALLUS
Yes, and without my knowing anything about these things, too.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Forgive me, I love you too much – so much that everything disturbs me.
MME. DE SALLUS
Everything?
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Yes, everything.
MME. DE SALLUS
Are you jealous of my husband?
JACQUES DE RANDOL [amazed]
What an idea!
MME. DE SALLUS [dryly]
Well, you are wrong.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Always this raillery!
MME. DE SALLUS No, I want to speak to you seriously about him, and to ask your advice.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
About your husband?
MME. DE SALLUS [seriously]
Yes, I am not laughing, or rather I do not laugh any more. [In lighter tone.] Then you are not jealous of my husband? And yet you know he is the only man who has authority over me.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
It is just because he has authority that I am not jealous. A woman’s heart gives nothing to the man who has authority.
MME. DE SALLUS
My dear, a husband’s right is a positive thing; it is a title-deed that he can lock up – just as my husband has for more than two years – but it is also one that he can use at any given moment, as lately he has seemed inclined to do.
JACQUES DE RANDOL [astonished]
You tell me that your husband —
MME. DE SALLUS
Yes.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Impossible!
MME. DE SALLUS [bridles]
And why impossible?
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Because your husband has – has – other occupations.
MME. DE SALLUS
Well, it pleases him to vary them, it seems.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Jesting apart, Madeline, what has happened?
MME. DE SALLUS
Ah! Ah! Then you are becoming jealous of him.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Madeline, I implore you; tell me, are you mocking me, or are you speaking seriously?
MME. DE SALLUS
I am speaking seriously, indeed, very seriously.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Then what has happened?
MME. DE SALLUS
Well, you know my position, although I have never told you all my past life. It is all very simple and very brief. At the age of nineteen I married the Count de Sallus, who fell in love with me after he had seen me at the Opéra-Comique. He already knew my father’s lawyer. He was very nice to me in those early days; yes, very nice, and I really believed he loved me. As for myself, I was very circumspect in my behavior toward him, very circumspect indeed, so that he could never cast a shadow of reproach on my name.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Well, did you love him?
MME. DE SALLUS
Good gracious! Why ask such questions?
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Then you did love him?
MME. DE SALLUS
Yes and no. If I loved him, it was the love of a little fool; but I certainly never told him, for positively I do not know how to show love.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
I can vouch for that!
MME. DE SALLUS
Well, it is possible that I cared for him sometimes, idiotically, like a timid, restless, trembling, awkward, little girl, always in fear of that disturbing thing – the love of a man – that disturbing thing that is sometimes so sweet! As for him, – you know him. He was a sweetheart, a society sweetheart, who are always the worst of all. Such men really have a lasting affection only for those girls who are fitting companions for clubmen – girls who have a habit of telling doubtful stories and bestowing depraved kisses. It seems to me that to attract and to hold such people, the nude and obscene are necessary both in word and in body – unless – unless – it is true that men are incapable of loving any woman for a length of time.
However, I soon became aware that he was indifferent to me, for he used to kiss me as a matter of course and look at me without realizing my presence; and in his manners, in his actions, in his conversation, he showed that I attracted him no longer. As soon as he came into the room he would throw himself upon the sofa, take up the newspaper, read it, shrug his shoulders, and when he read anything he did not agree with, he would express his annoyance audibly. Finally, one day, he yawned and stretched his arms in my face. On that day I understood that I was no longer loved. Keenly mortified I certainly was. But it hurt me so much that I did not realize it was necessary to coquet with him in order to retain his affection. I soon learned that he had a mistress, a woman of the world. Since then we have lived separate lives – after a very stormy explanation.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
What do you mean? What sort of explanation?
MME. DE SALLUS
Well —
JACQUES