“You are enduring pain?”
“I? No—not at all.”
As she turned around, her eyes fell on the dress, which she inspected. Then she told him not to stand on ceremony.
“Smoke, if you like! You can make yourself at home with me!”
And, with a great sigh:
“Ah! Blessed Virgin!—what a riddance!”[250]
Frederick was astonished at this exclamation. He replied, as he kissed her hand:
“All the same, you were free!”
This allusion to the facility with which the intrigue between them had been carried on hurt Madame Dambreuse.
“Ah! you don’t know the services that I did for him, or the misery in which I lived!”
“What!”
“Why, certainly! Was it a safe thing to have always near him that bastard, a daughter, whom he introduced into the house at the end of five years of married life, and who, were it not
