Comedy of Marriage and Other Tales. Guy de Maupassant

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?

      MME. DE SALLUS

      Not all at once, perhaps, but—eventually.

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      What you say is revolting to me.

      MME. DE SALLUS

      Nevertheless, it is quite true. You know that when a confectioner hires a greedy saleswoman he says to her, “Eat all the sweets you wish, my dear.” She stuffs herself for eight days, and then she is satisfied for the rest of her life.

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      Ah! Indeed! But why do you include me in that class?

      MME. DE SALLUS

      Really, I do not know—perhaps as a joke!

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      Please do not mock me.

      MME. DE SALLUS

      I say to myself, here is a man who is very much in love with me. So far as I am concerned, I am perfectly free, morally, since for two years past I have altogether ceased to please my husband. Now, since this man loves me, why should I not love him?

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      You are philosophic—and cruel.

      MME. DE SALLUS

      On the contrary, I have not been cruel. Of what do 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