"What could I do? I have been obliged to suffer what I could not prevent! As long as there was anything to be sold, my husband sold it, so that he might go to the tavern with his mistress--everything, even to my little girl's Sunday frock."
"But your daily earnings, why did you give them to him? Why did you not hide them?"
"I did hide them; but he beat me so much that I was obliged to give them up. It was not on account of the blows that I yielded, but because I said to myself, in the end he will wound me so seriously that I shall not be able to work for some time. Suppose he breaks my arm, then what will become of me--who will take care of and feed my children? If I am forced to go the hospital, they will die of hunger then. Thus you can imagine, my brother, I preferred to give my money to my husband, not on account of the beating, but that I might not be wounded, and remain _able to work_."
"Poor woman. Bah! they talk of martyrdom--it is you who are a martyr!"
"And yet I have never harmed any one; I only ask to work to take care of my children; but what would you? There are the happy and unhappy, as there are the good and the wicked."
"Yes, and it is astonishing how happy the good are! But you have finally got rid of that scoundrel of a husband?"
"I hope so, for he did not leave me until he had sold my bedstead, and the cradle of my two little children. But I think he wished to do something worse."
"I say him, but it was rather this bad woman who urged him; it is on that account I speak of it. 'I say,' one day he said to me, 'when in a family there is a pretty girl of fifteen like ours, it is very stupid not to make use of her beauty.'"
"Oh! good! I understand. After having sold the clothes, he wished to sell the body."
"When he said that, Fortune, my blood boiled; and, to be just, I made him blush with shame at my reproaches: and as this bad woman wished to meddle in our quarrel by asserting that my husband could do with his daughter as he pleased, I treated her so badly, the wretch, that my husband beat me, and since that time I have not seen them."
"Look here, Jeanne, there are folks condemned to ten years' imprisonment, who would not have done like your husband; at least, they only despoil strangers."