Honore de Balzac: Cousin Betty

1. PART I: THE PRODIGAL FATHER (continued)

Her weeping went to Madame Hulot's heart. She came out of her room and ran to her daughter, taking her in her arms, and asking her those questions, stupid with grief, which first rose to her lips.

"Now we have tears," said the Baron to himself, "and all was going so well! What is to be done with women who cry?"

"My child," said the Baroness, "listen to your father! He loves us all --come, come--"

"Come, Hortense, my dear little girl, cry no more, you make yourself too ugly!" said the Baron, "Now, be a little reasonable. Go sensibly home, and I promise you that Wenceslas shall never set foot in that woman's house. I ask you to make the sacrifice, if it is a sacrifice to forgive the husband you love so small a fault. I ask you--for the sake of my gray hairs, and of the love you owe your mother. You do not want to blight my later years with bitterness and regret?"

Hortense fell at her father's feet like a crazed thing, with the vehemence of despair; her hair, loosely pinned up, fell about her, and she held out her hands with an expression that painted her misery.

"Father," she said, "ask my life! Take it if you will, but at least take it pure and spotless, and I will yield it up gladly. Do not ask me to die in dishonor and crime. I am not at all like my husband; I cannot swallow an outrage. If I went back under my husband's roof, I should be capable of smothering him in a fit of jealousy--or of doing worse! Do no exact from me a thing that is beyond my powers. Do not have to mourn for me still living, for the least that can befall me is to go mad. I feel madness close upon me!

"Yesterday, yesterday, he could dine with that woman, after having read my letter?--Are other men made so? My life I give you, but do not let my death be ignominious!--His fault?--A small one! When he has a child by that woman!"