Guy de Maupassant

“ JEAN
By him.
MUSOTTE
Listen, Jean: when I am no more, ask your wife from me, from the mouth of a dead woman, to adopt him, this dear little morsel of humanity-to love him as I would have loved him; to be a mother to him in my stead. If she is tender and kind, she will consent. Tell her how you saw me suffer—that my last prayer, my last supplication on earth was offered up for her. Will you do this?
JEAN
I promise you that I will.
MUSOTTE
Ah! How good you are! Now I fear nothing; my poor little darling is safe, and I am happy and calm. Ah, how calm I am! ”

“ I knew that I could never be your wife [smiles] , Musotte, me, Madame Martinel—oh, no!
JEAN
My poor, dear girl. How brutal and hard we men are, without thinking of it and without wishing to be so!
MUSOTTE
Don't say that. I was not made for you. I was only a little model; and you, you were a rising artist, and I never thought that you would belong to me forever. [Jean sheds tears.] No, no, don't cry; you have nothing to reproach yourself with. You have always been so good to me. It is only God who has been cruel to me. ”

“ JACQUES DE RANDOL
How little you understand certain kinds of men! Men like your husband, once inoculated with the poison of love,—which in them is nothing but brutal desire,—men like him, I say, when a woman they desire escapes or resists them, become raging beasts. They behave like madmen, like men possessed, with arms outstretched and lips wide open. They must love some one, no matter whom just as a mad dog with open jaws bites anything and everybody. The Santelli has unchained this raging brute, and you find yourself face to face with his dripping jaws. ”

“ JACQUES DE RANDOL
I do not know. I only know this life is wearing me out.
MME. DE SALLUS
It is just because there are so many obstacles in the way of your love that it does not fade.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Oh! Madeline, can you say that?
MME. DE SALLUS [softening]
Believe me, dear, if your love has to endure these hardships, it is because it is not lawful love.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Well, I never met a woman as positive as you. Then you think that if chance made me your husband, I should cease to love you? ”

“ Just what every man replies when he no longer loves the woman who reproaches him. You shrugged your shoulders, smiled impatiently, told me I was mad, and then expounded to me—I must admit, in a most skillful manner—those grand principles of freedom in love that are adopted by every husband who deceives his wife and thinks she will not deceive him. You gave me to understand that marriage is not a bond, but simply an association of mutual interests, a social rather than a moral alliance; that it does not demand friendship or affection between married couples, provided there be no scandal. ”

“ MARTINEL
It is very simple. If he had known sooner of the danger this woman was in, do you think that he would have waited until the last moment, and have chosen this very evening—this supreme moment—to say good-bye to this poor, dying woman, and to reveal to you the existence of his illegitimate son? No, men hide these unfortunate children when and how they please. You know that as well as I, Monsieur. To run the risk of throwing us all into such a state of emotion and threatening his own future, as he has done, it would seem that Jean must be a madman, and he is by no means that. ”

“ JEAN
Musotte!
MUSOTTE
Let me go on. I remained at Saint-Malo without revealing my condition. Then I came back to Paris, and here some months afterward the little one was born—the child! When I fully understood what had happened to me, I experienced at first such fear; yes, such fear! Then I remembered that he was bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh; that you had given him life, and that he was a pledge from you. But one is so stupid when one knows nothing. One's ideas change just as one's moods change, and I became contented all at once ”

“ JACQUES DE RANDOL
Madeline you torture me.
MME. DE SALLUS [quickly]
And what about me? Do you think that I do not suffer? I know that I am not exactly a faithful woman since I received your addresses, but I have, and shall retain, a single heart. It is either you or he. It will never be you and he. For me that would be infamy—the greatest infamy of a guilty woman, the sharing of her heart—a thing that debases her. One may fall, perhaps, because there are ditches along the wayside and it is not always easy to follow the right path. ”

“ You must give the letter to Jean.
MARTINEL
Well, what will he do?
LÉON
He alone is the judge of his own actions. We have no right to hide anything from him.
MARTINEL
Supposing he consults me?
LÉON
He will not do it. In such situations a man consults only his conscience.
MARTINEL
But he treats me like a father. If he hesitates a moment between his attention to his wife and the effacement of his happiness, what shall I tell him to do?
LÉON
Just what you would do yourself in like case.
MARTINEL
My impulse would be to go to the woman. What would be yours? ”

“ I have no right even to a key to my own door. Everything belongs to him—the key, the door, and even the woman who hates him. It is monstrous! Can you imagine such a horrible situation? That a woman should not be mistress of herself, should not even have the sacred right of preserving her person from a loathsome stain? And all this is the consequence of the infamous law which you men have made!
JACQUES DE RANDOL [appealingly]
My darling! I fully understand what you must be suffering; but how can I help it? No magistrate can protect you; no statute can preserve you. ”

“ LÉON
I understand you, Aunt. You make a very pointed and delicate allusion to Jean's past. Well, what of it? If he did have one of his models for a mistress, he loved her, and loved her sincerely for three years—
MME. DE RONCHARD
You mean to tell me a man can love such women?
LÉON
Every woman can be loved, my dear Aunt; and this woman certainly deserved to be loved more than most women. ”

“ JACQUES DE RANDOL
Will you ever understand me? Listen to me. When I first realized that I adored you, I made a solemn vow concerning what might happen between you and me. The man who falls in love with a woman such as you, a woman married yet deserted; a slave in fact yet morally free, institutes between her and himself a bond which only she can break. The woman risks everything. ”

“ Now, Henriette Lévêque, or Musotte, if you prefer that term, has not only been faithful to Jean during the course of her love affair with him; has not only been devoted and adoring, and full of a tenderness which was ever watchful, but at the very hour of her rupture with him, she gave proof of her greatness of soul. She accepted everything without reproach, without recrimination; the poor little girl understood everything—understood that all was finished and finished forever. ”

“ JEAN [stands]
Listen to me. It is necessary that at this moment there should not be between us the shadow of a misunderstanding. All our life depends upon it. You are my wife, but I admit that you are absolutely free after what has happened. I will do as you wish. I am ready to agree to everything you desire, even to a divorce if you demand it. But what will happen to me after that I do not know, for I love you so that the thought of losing you after winning you will throw me mercilessly into some desperate resolve. [Sees Gilberte moved.] ”

“ JEAN
With a love that I feel is ineffaceable.
GILBERTE
Did you love her?
JEAN
I did indeed love her. I experienced a tender attachment for a gentle and devoted girl. [In a low voice, with passion.] Listen: that which I am going to tell you is unworthy, perhaps infamous, but I am only a human being, feeble as anyone else. Well, just now, in the presence of this poor, dying girl, my eyes were filled with tears and my sobs choked me—all my being vibrated with sorrow ”

“ You were very sarcastic upon the subject of those poor, silly women who object to their husbands being gallant toward other women, since, according to you, such gallantry is one of the laws of the polished society to which you belong. You laughed at the foolish man who does not dare to pay compliments to a woman in the presence of his own wife, and ridiculed the gloomy look of a wife whose eyes follow her husband into every corner, imagining that because the poor man disappears into an adjoining room he is at the feet of a rival. ”

“ LÉON
As in “The Ambigu.”
MME. DE RONCHARD
Do not laugh. I know these women. I have suffered enough at their hands.
PETITPRÉ
Oh, my poor Clarisse; if you really understood them, you would have held your husband better than you did.
MME. DE RONCHARD [rises]
What do you mean by “understanding” them? Pardon me—to live with that roisterer coming in upon me when and whence he pleased—I prefer my broken life and my loneliness—with you!
PETITPRÉ
No doubt you are right from your point of view of a married woman ”

“ LÉON
Oh, I have my opinion also about that, my dear Aunt.
PETITPRÉ [rises]
It is not almost a crime,—it is one. But it is looked upon to-day as so common a thing that one scarcely punishes it at all. It is punished by divorce, which is a house of refuge for most men. The law prefers to separate them with decency—timidly, rather than drag them apart as in former times.
MME. DE RONCHARD
Your learned theories are revolting, and I wish—
LÉON [rises]
Ah, here is Monsieur Martinel.
SCENE III.
(The same, and Monsieur Martinel.) ”

“ THE CAKE
Let us say that her name was Madame Anserre so as not to reveal her real name.
She was one of those Parisian comets which leave, as it were, a trail of fire behind them. She wrote verses and novels; she had a poetic heart, and was rarely beautiful. She opened her doors to very few—only to exceptional people, those who are commonly described as princes of something or other. To be a visitor at her house constituted a claim, a genuine claim to intellect: at least this was the estimate set on her invitations. Her husband played the part of an obscure satellite. ”

“ But turn to the other picture and look at the woman of the stage. There is not one who has not at least five or six love affairs on the carpet; idiotic follies, causing bankruptcy, scandal, and suicides. Men love them; yes, they love these women because these women know how to inspire love, and because they are loving women. Yes, indeed, they know how to conquer men; they understand the seduction of a smile; they know how to attract, seize, and wrap us up in their hearts, how to enslave us with a look, and they need not be beautiful at that. ”

“ Besides, darling, men must needs be, and are, what we make them. In a state of society where women are all true gentlewomen all men would become gentlemen.
Mark my words; just observe and reflect.
Look at two women meeting in the street. What an attitude each assumes toward the other! What disparaging looks! What contempt they throw into each glance! How they toss their heads while they inspect each other to find something to condemn! And, if the footpath is narrow, do you think one woman will make room for another, or will beg pardon as she sweeps by? ”

“ According to you, I am beautiful, I am young, and yet condemned by my husband to live, and watch him live, as if I were a widow. Look at me [rises] , is it just to consign me to play the rôle of an abandoned Ariadne, while my husband runs from this woman to that woman, and this girl to that girl? [Grows excited.] A faithful wife! I cry you mercy! Is a faithful wife compelled to sacrifice all her life, all her happiness, all her affections, everything, in fact, every privilege, every expectation, every claim, which is hers by birth and for which she has been born? ”

“ MME. FLACHE [goes toward Musotte]
Yes, Mademoiselle, just as if he were a little Jesus. Do you wish to know what I think about him, this young man lying here? You will lead him to the altar for his marriage. He is a jewel, like yourself, my dear.
MUSOTTE
Do you really think him pretty?
MME. FLACHE
On the honor of a midwife, I have seldom brought into the world one so pretty. It is a pleasure to know that one has brought to the light such a little Cupid as he is. ”