desertion, a rupture like her own; she will take him away from me to
Switzerland or Italy. He is beginning now to say it is ridiculous that
he knows nothing of Europe. I can guess what those words mean, flung
out in advance. If Calyste is not cured of her in three months I don't
know what he may become; but as for me, I will kill myself."

"But your soul, my unhappy child? Suicide is a mortal sin."

"Don't you understand? She may give him a child. And if Calyste loved
the child of that woman more than mine--Oh! that's the end of my
patience and all my resignation."

She fell into a chair. She had given vent to the deepest thought in
her heart; she had no longer a hidden grief; and secret sorrow is like
that iron rod that sculptors put within the structure of their clay,
--it supports, it is a force.

"Come, go home, dear sufferer. In view of such misery the abbe will
surely give me absolution for the venial sins which the deceits of the
world compel us to commit. Leave me now, my daughter," she said, going
to her /prie-Dieu/. "I must pray to our Lord and the Blessed Virgin
for you, with special supplication. Good-bye, my dear Sabine; above
all things, do not neglect your religious duties if you wish us to
succeed."

"And if we do triumph, mother, we shall only save the family. Calyste
has killed within me the holy fervor of love,--killed it by sickening
me with all things. What a honey-moon was mine, in which I was made to
feel on that first day the bitterness of a retrospective adultery!"