"Seeing him go on thus," resumed Bertha, "I exclaimed, 'Charles, do you wish to leave me? if I am a burden to you, say so!' 'Yes,' cried he furiously, 'yes, you are a nuisance, and a burden I am tired of enduring. I tell you, I hate and detest you!--you have constrained me to entangle myself in a marriage as absurd as inimical to my happiness, and never will I forgive you for it.' 'But,' said I, 'what have I done? and with what do you reproach me?' 'Oh, with nothing,' said he, 'you are too good a manager for that; you dare not betray me, because you know that, if you were, I would kill both yourself and your paramour; it is not virtue, which makes you respect your duty as a wife, but fear;' and with these words, he dashed out of the room; and your poor broken-hearted child has come to pour her sorrows into the bosom of her father, and to say," added Bertha, sobbing as though her heart would break, "that she has none to love her, or pity, or protect her, but her own beloved parent." "There could be no other result," said Pierre Raimond; "that selfish heart, and haughty, obstinate spirit, were sure to make you pay dearly,--oh, how dearly one day or other, for the sacrifices he had imposed on himself in order to obtain your hand, for which he would then have paid any price. However, things cannot go on in this manner; you must see the propriety of my interfering to prevent this bad man from torturing the heart of my beloved child, who has behaved like an angel towards him: he shall not trample you under foot as the mere plaything of his whim and caprice!" "But what will you do? how can you alter my husband's conduct?" "Oh, make yourself perfectly easy, that I will compel a change on his part; thank God! I have still sufficient strength and energy left." "For mercy's sake, dear father, let us have no violent scenes!" "Fear not, my child, I shall oppose, not violence, but firmness to his tyranny and oppression; besides, I have both justice and reason on my side, and I stand up to defend the cause of my child: you see, Bertha, how quiet and composed I am! But, in the first place, we must quit this roof; fortunately I have lived so frugally upon what you made me accept, that I have managed to lay by a trifling sum, and that, added to the small amount the sale of my poor furniture will bring, will suffice to obtain my admission into Sainte Perine." "Oh, dearest father! never, never." "Bertha, my child, you know my opinion respecting those asylums, so fitly provided for and offered to honest poverty; and, besides, do you think, that under present circumstances I can accept the most trifling assistance from your husband?" "Certainly not! Oh, not for worlds, after all those cruel and degrading reproaches!" "Well, then, what must I do? how contrive to live?"