Part 15 (1/2)

NOURVADY.

Is it really a woman of your superiority who speaks of the proprieties of society? Are not women like you above all that? Was I to come delicately and hypocritically to offer your husband the sum he stood in need of? ”Arrange your affairs, my dear friend; you can give me back that trifle when you are able.” I should certainly have acted like that if I had not loved you; loving you, ought I to do it, that is to say, to speculate upon your grat.i.tude, upon the impossibility of your husband discharging his debt, and upon fresh and unavoidable necessities? That is a course that would have been unworthy of him, of me, and of you. No, you know it well, the proprieties and dignity are nothing any longer, when pa.s.sion or necessity predominates. Did your grandmother respect the dignity of her daughter when she gave her up to a prince?

LIONNETTE.

Sir!...

NOURVADY.

You do not fear words! There they are, those words, saying quite well all they have to say. Why do you rebel against them? Did your husband respect the dignity of his mother, the traditions of his family, the proprieties of the society in which he moved, when he issued a public summons to that irreproachable mother, to enable him to marry you? And you, yourself, while following your mother's counsel, did you say to that man: ”My dignity is entirely opposed to marrying you under those circ.u.mstances, disowned, repulsed, disgraced by your mother”? Ah! well, I too, if I had met you when you were a young girl, I should have loved you as I love you now; and if my father had wished to prevent my marrying you, I should have acted like the Count. I envy him the sacrifice he was able to make for you, and that I can never make now.

LIONNETTE (_half mockingly, half sincerely_).

It may be so, but now it is too late. I am no longer open to marriage, and, unfortunately for you, I have no longer a mother.

NOURVADY.

But you may become a widow.

LIONNETTE.

Then, you really hate the Count?

NOURVADY.

Yes, almost as much as I love you.

LIONNETTE.

And you would like to prove it to him?

NOURVADY.

That is the second of my dreams. In the service that I rendered you, I knew perfectly well the insult I should inflict upon him, and much as I counted on your visit here, I was waiting in my house first for that of Mr. G.o.dler and Mr. Trevele, whom I had left expressly at your house yesterday until the Count returned home.

LIONNETTE.

How agreeable and convenient it is to be open and sincere and to play your cards so openly. Ah, well, sir, if my husband has not yet sent his two friends, it is because he wishes first to send you your money. He is gone in search of it.

NOURVADY.

He will not find it.

LIONNETTE.

I shall find it myself, without the ignominy which you antic.i.p.ated. The Count will make a public rest.i.tution of the sum that you advanced in private, and will add to that rest.i.tution all that is required to make you justify your hatred.

NOURVADY.

He will strike me?