At last Mme. Favoral found herself alone with her children and free to give herself up to the most frightful despair.
She dropped heavily upon a seat; and, drawing to her bosom Maxence and Gilberte, "0 my children!" she sobbed, covering them with her kisses and her tears, - " my children, we are most unfortunate."
Not less distressed than herself, they strove, nevertheless, to mitigate her anguish, to inspire her with sufficient courage to bear this crushing trial; and kneeling at her feet, and kissing her hands, "Are we not with you still, mother?" they kept repeating.
But she seemed not to hear them.
"It is not for myself that I weep," she went on. "I! what had I still to wait or hope for in life? Whilst you, Maxence, you, my poor Gilberte! - If, at least, I could feel myself free from blame!
But no. It is my weakness and my want of courage that have brought on this catastrophe. I shrank from the struggle. I purchased my domestic peace at the cost of your future in the world. I forgot that a mother has sacred duties towards her children."
Mme. Favoral was at this time a woman of some forty-three years, with delicate and mild features, a countenance overflowing with kindness, and whose whole being exhaled, as it were, an exquisite perfume of noblesse and distinction.
Happy, she might have been beautiful still, - of that autumnal beauty whose maturity has the splendors of the luscious fruits of the later season.
But she had suffered so much! The livid paleness of her complexion, the rigid fold of her lips, the nervous shudders that shook her frame, revealed a whole existence of bitter deceptions, of exhausting struggles, and of proudly concealed humiliations.
And yet every thing seemed to smile upon her at the outset of life.
She was an only daughter; and her parents, wealthy silk-merchants, had brought her up like the daughter of an archduchess desired to marry some sovereign prince.
But at fifteen she had lost her mother. Her father, soon tired of his lonely fireside, commenced to seek away from home some diversion from his sorrow.
He was a man of weak mind, - one of those marked in advance to play the part of eternal dupes. Having money, he found many friends.
Having once tasted the cup of facile pleasures, he yielded readily to its intoxication. Suppers, cards, amusements, absorbed his time, to the utter detriment of his business. And, eighteen months after his wife's death, he had already spent a large portion of his fortune, when he fell into the hands of an adventuress, whom, without regard for his daughter, he audaciously brought beneath his own roof.
In provincial cities, where everybody knows everybody else, such infamies are almost impossible. They are not quite so rare in Paris, where one is, so to speak, lost in the crowd, and where the restraining power of the neighbor's opinion is lacking.
For two years the poor girl, condemned to bear this illegitimate stepmother, endured nameless sufferings.
She had just completed her eighteenth year, when, one evening, her father took her aside.
"I have made up my mind to marry again," he said; "but I wish first to provide you with a husband. I have looked for one, and found him.
He is not very brilliant perhaps; but he is, it seems, a good, hard-working, economical fellow, who'll make his way in the world.
I had dreamed of something better for you; but times are hard, trade is dull: in short, having only a dowry of twenty thousand francs to give you, I have no right to be very particular. To-morrow I'll bring you my candidate."
And, sure enough, the next day that excellent father introduced M.
Vincent Favoral to his daughter.
She was not pleased with him; but she could hardly have said that she was displeased.
He was, at the age of twenty-five, which he had just reached, a man so utterly lacking in individuality, that he could scarcely have excited any feeling either of sympathy or affection.
Suitably dressed, he seemed timid and awkward, reserved, quite diffident, and of mediocre intelligence. He confessed to have received a most imperfect education, and declared himself quite ignorant of life. He had scarcely any means outside his profession.
He was at this time chief accountant in a large factory of the Faubourg St. Antoine, with a salary of four thousand Francs a year.
The young girl did not hesitate a moment. Any thing appeared to her preferable to the contact of a woman whom she abhorred and despised.
She gave her consent; and, twenty days after the first interview, she had become Mme. Favoral.
Alas! six weeks had not elapsed, before she knew that she had but exchanged her wretched fate for a more wretched one still.
Not that her husband was in any way unkind to her (he dared not, as yet); but he had revealed himself enough to enable her to judge him.