holidays together: she had never known the real Anne de la Trave, the one who was now meeting Jean Azévédo in the deserted shooting-hut between Saint Clair and Argelouse. “What is the matter? You aren’t eating. You mustn’t leave anything: it would be a shame considering the price it costs. Is it the heat? You aren’t going to faint, I hope. Or perhaps you’re feeling sick ... already?” She smiled ... with her lips only. She said she was thinking about Anne’s adventure (she had to talk about Anne). And as Bernard said he was not bothering himself any longer now that she had the matter in hand, his wife asked him why his parents were opposed to the marriage. He thought she was laughing at him, and begged her not to begin her paradoxes. “In the first place, you know very well they are Jews: Mother knew his grandfather, the one who refused to be baptised.” But Thérèse pretended that these Portuguese-Jewish names were the oldest in Bordeaux: “The Azévédos were great people when our ancestors were miserable shepherds, shivering with fever by their marshes.” “Look here, Thérèse: don’t argue for the pleasure of arguing: all Jews are the same ... and besides they’re a degenerate family--consumptive to the marrow, everybody knows it.” She lit a cigarette with a gesture that had always offended Bernard: “Well, then, tell me what your grandfather, and your great-grandfather died of. When you married me did you bother to enquire what illness carried off my mother? Don’t you suppose that we should find enough consumptives and syphilitics among our ancestors to poison the universe?” “You go too far, Thérèse, let me tell you. Even when you’re joking and trying to get a rise out of me, you ought to respect the family.” He positively gobbled with annoyance, trying to be impressive and, at the same time, not to look foolish. But she persisted: “Really, our families make me laugh: they’re too ridiculous. They’re terribly shocked when a thing like this is publicly known, but they’re quite indifferent to all the horrors no one talks about.... Why, you yourself use the expression ‘secret diseases,’ don’t you? Surely the diseases most dangerous to the race are just precisely those. Our families never think of them, though they are so very clever at bundling anything unpleasant out of sight. If it wasn’t for the servants we should know nothing about them: fortunately there are the servants....” “I shan’t answer you. When you start off like this, the best thing to do is to wait until you’ve finished. With me, it doesn’t matter so very much. But it won’t do at all at home, you know. We don’t make jokes about the family.” The family! Thérèse let her cigarette go out. With staring eyes, she saw before her that cage with its innumerable and living bars, a cage set with ears and eyes, in which she would crouch motionless, her chin on her knees, and her arms clasping her legs, and wait for death.