will do no good. [_Sits near the table_ R.] Let us talk--talk reasonably, now that we are a family party and Monsieur Martinel is absent.
MME. DE RONCHARD [_Sits_ R.]
If that man would only go back to Havre!
L?ON [_Sits_ L. _of table_]
That would not change anything even if he could go back to Havre.
PETITPR?
For my part, I think--
MME. DE RONCHARD [_interrupts_]
Do you wish to hear my opinion? Well, I think that they are preparing us for some unpleasant surprise; that they wish to entrap us, as one might say.
PETITPR?
But why? In whose interest? Jean Martinel is an honest man, and he loves my child. L?on, whose judgment I admire, although he is my son--
LEON
Thank you, father!
PETITPR?
L?on bears Jean as much affection as esteem. As to the uncle--
MME. DE RONCHARD
Don't talk about them, I pray. It is this woman who is seeking to entrap us. She has played some little comedy, and she chooses to-day above all others for its _d?nouement_. It is her stage climax; her masterpiece of treachery.
L?ON
As in "The Ambigu."
MME. DE RONCHARD
Do not laugh. I know these women. I have suffered enough at their hands.
PETITPR?
Oh, my poor Clarisse; if you really understood them, you would have held your husband better than you did.
MME. DE RONCHARD [_rises_]
What do you mean by "understanding" them? Pardon me--to live with that roisterer coming in upon me when and whence he pleased--I prefer my broken life and my loneliness--with you!
PETITPR?
No doubt you are right from your point of view of a married woman; but there are other points of view, perhaps less selfish and certainly superior, such as that of family interest.
MME. DE RONCHARD
Of family interest, indeed? Do you mean to say that I was wrong from the point of view of the family interest--you, a magistrate!
PETITPR?
My duties as a magistrate have made me very prudent, for I have seen pass under my eyes many equivocal and terrible situations, which not only agonized my conscience but gave me many cruel hours of indecision. Man is often so little responsible and circumstances are often so powerful. Our impenetrable nature is so capricious, our instincts are so mysterious that we must be tolerant and even indulgent in the presence of faults which are not really crimes, and which exhibit nothing vicious or abandoned in the man himself.
MME. DE RONCHARD
So, then, to deceive one's wife is not deceitful, and you say such a thing before your son? Truly, a pretty state of affairs! [_Crosses_ L.]
L?ON
Oh, I have my opinion also about that, my dear Aunt.
PETITPR? [_rises_]
It is not almost a crime,--it is one. But it is looked upon to-day as so common a thing that one scarcely punishes it at all. It is punished by divorce, which is a house of refuge for most men. The law prefers to separate them with decency--timidly, rather than drag them apart as in former times.
MME. DE RONCHARD
Your learned theories are revolting, and I wish--
L?ON [_rises_]
Ah, here is Monsieur Martinel.
SCENE III.
(_The same, and_ Monsieur Martinel.)
MARTINEL [_with great emotion_]
I come to fulfill an exceedingly difficult task. Jean, who has gone to his own house, before daring to present himself here, has sent Doctor Pellerin to me. I am commissioned by him to make you acquainted with the sad position in which Jean finds himself,--in which we all find ourselves.
MME. DE RONCHARD
Ah, ha! Now, I am going to learn something!
MARTINEL
By a letter which you will read presently, we have learned this evening, in this house, of a new misfortune. A woman of whose existence you are all aware was at the point of death.
MME. DE RONCHARD
Did I not predict that she would do just this thing?
L?ON
Let M. Martinel speak, my dear Aunt.
MME. DE RONCHARD
And now that this woman has seen him, how does she feel--his dying patient? Better, without a doubt?
MARTINEL [_quietly_]
She died, Madame, died before his eyes.
MME. DE RONCHARD
Died this evening! Impossible!
MARTINEL
Nevertheless, it is so, Madame.
L?ON [_aside_]
Poor little Musotte!
MARTINEL
There is a serious thing to be considered here. This woman left a child, and that child's father is Jean.
MME. DE RONCHARD [_stupefied_]
A child!
MARTINEL [_to_ Petitpr?]
Read the physician's letter, Monsieur. [_Hands_ Petitpr? _the letter, and_ Petitpr? _reads it_.]
MME. DE RONCHARD
He had a child and he has never confessed it; has never said anything about it; has hidden it from us! What infamy!
MARTINEL
He would have told you in due time.
MME.
