She thought of her husband’s splendid courage and her little Paule’s lost dowry. In what had all these sacrifices ended? And was money to be henceforth the only thing that could command respect and esteem? But her sufferings were not yet at an end. Madame Dulaurens, with that ease which society life supplies, went on boldly, with a smile on her lips: “Captain Guibert has had a magnificent career. Decorated so young! You know that nobody appreciates his worth more than I. How you must have suffered through this long, long Madagascar campaign! We thought of you so often and pitied and envied you at the same time. And tell me, has he quite gotten over the effects of those dreadful fevers which take so long to cure?” The cup was full. Madame Guibert could not answer. If she had tried to speak she would have Burst into tears. They had touched the sacred place in her heart, her children. To sacrifice your fortune to save the honor of your name, to give your sons for your country, to expose them to death, only to hear wicked, lying allusions, discrediting disinterestedness and heroism, and to have to accept them in the face of that coterie which is called society! But Madame Dulaurens went on savagely defending her own and giving her unhappy defenceless victim one wound after another. “I cannot tell you anything definite, Madame, one way or the other. I will faithfully submit your offer to my daughter and let you know her answer soon. It is the fashion nowadays to consult young girls about their inclinations. But I foresee that the prospect of a separation cannot fail to frighten the dear child, for she has been accustomed to be near me, near us. We have never left each other. I admire your strength of mind. One of your girls is a nun in Paris, is she not? Two of your sons are in Tonkin. Captain Guibert is going back to Algiers. How brave you are, and what an example to all those mothers who love their children too much!” “And so you think I love them less than those other mothers do,” Madame Guibert would have liked to answer. “Every time they left me my heart was torn, yet I bore them as I could, all those heartrending good-byes, and I said nothing, fearing to weaken them who were leaving me to go abroad and fill a wider sphere, or to hamper them by keeping them beside me. I have always encouraged them to use all the talents that God gave them. And what you do not know, Madame, is that separation, far from lessening a mother’s and a son’s love, purifies and ennobles it. It takes away their natural selfishness and invests them with that immortal beauty of sacrifice, in which joy and devotion are mingled.” But her lips remained speechless. Later she remembered all the minutest details of this scene, only to be intensely humiliated by it and even to see in it, in her religious feeling, the punishment of the too great pride that she had in the number and qualities of her children. Madame Dulaurens had not stopped talking long.