The husband’s main revolts were on account of these too glaring costumes, the usefulness of which he was unable to see. Why dress himself thus above one’s means and position in life? What need was there to spend in such a manner the money that was so necessary for his business? He generally said that when one sold silks to other women, one should wear woolens oneself.
As a result of matrimony, Berthe was gradually acquiring her mother’s build. She was growing fatter, and resembled her more than she had ever done before. She was no longer the girl who did not seem to care about anything and who quietly submitted to the maternal cuffs; she had grown into a woman, who was rapidly becoming more obstinate every day, and who had formed the intention of making everything bow to her pleasure. Auguste looked at her at times, astounded at such a sudden change. At first, she had felt a vain joy in throning herself at the cashier’s desk, in a studied costume of elegant simplicity. Then she had soon wearied of trade, suffering from constant want of exercise, threatening to fall ill, yet resigning herself to it all the same, but with the attitude of a victim who sacrifices her life to the prosperity of her home. And, from that moment, a struggle at every hour of the day had commenced between her and her husband. She shrugged her shoulders behind his back, the same as her mother did behind her father’s; she went again through all the family quarrels which had disturbed her youth, treating her husband as the gentleman who had simply got to pay, overwhelming him with that contempt for the male sex which was, so to say, the basis of her education.
“Ah! mamma was right!” she would exclaim after each of their quarrels.
Yet, in the early days, Auguste had tried to please her. He liked peace, he longed for a quiet little home, he already had his whims like an old man, and had got thoroughly into the habits of his chaste and economical bachelor life. His old lodging on the “entresol” no longer sufficing, he had taken the suite of apartments on the second floor, overlooking the courtyard, and thought himself sufficiently insane in spending five thousand francs on furniture. Berthe, at first delighted with her room upholstered in thuja and blue silk, had shown the greatest contempt for it after visiting a friend who had just married a banker. Then quarrels arose with respect to the servants. The young woman, used to the waiting of poor semi-idiotic girls, who had their bread even cut for them, insisted on their doing things which set them crying in their kitchens for afternoons together. Auguste, not particularly tender-hearted as a rule, having imprudently gone and consoled one, had to turn her out of the place an hour later on account of madame’s tears, and her request that he should, choose between her and that creature.
