Ferdinand
While I was settling my mother in Brittany, Gertrude met General de
Grandchamp, who was seeking a governess for his daughter. She saw
nothing in this battered warrior, then fifty-eight years old, but a
money-box. She expected that she would soon be left a widow, wealthy
and in circumstances to claim her lover and her slave. She said to
herself that her marriage would be merely a bad dream, followed
quickly by a happy awakening. You see the dream has lasted twelve
years! But you know how women reason.
Ramel
They have a special jurisprudence of their own.
Ferdinand
Gertrude is a woman of the fiercest jealousy. She wishes for fidelity
in her lover to recompense her for her infidelity to her husband, and
as she has suffered martyrdom, she says, she wishes--
Ramel
To have you in the same house with her, that she may keep watch over
you herself.
Ferdinand
She has been successful in getting me here. For the last three years I
have been living in a small house near the factory. I should have left
the first week after my arrival, but that two days' acquaintance with
Pauline convinced me that I could not live without her.
Ramel
Your love for Pauline, it seems to me as a magistrate, makes your
position here somewhat less distasteful.
Ferdinand
My position? I assure you, it is intolerable, among the three
characters with whom I am cast. Pauline is daring, like all young
persons who are innocent, to whom love is a wholly ideal thing, and
who see no evil in anything, so long as it concerns a man whom they
intend to marry.
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