"Although--oh, the dear child is lacking neither in love nor in admiration for her husband, who is a hero; but our poor human nature has strange revulsions--I tell you, you alone, in confidence; since my daughter has reason for hope of becoming a mother, she feels--alas! it is frightful, let me whisper it to you--she feels a sort of apprehension at the sight of her husband, whose terrible affliction you know of!-- We must, at all costs, prevent her husband having the slightest suspicion of the--temporary--feeling that he inspires, and the young wife is obliged to put the strongest restraint upon herself in order to show nothing. Just how far this incessant constraint is consistent with the happy maintenance of her condition, and with hope for its normal outcome, who shall say? This is what we are asking ourselves, this is our anxiety." "Oh, dear, dear madame, how sorry I am for you!" "You understand that I would not wish to have to be sorry for you, in my turn, for a reason like this. It was to avoid it that I came here, as much humiliated by my apprehensions as I was proud on the day of the marriage. You have no plan of the sort, you tell me, my child? So much the better! But I have become excessively apprehensive; I am afraid of characters like yours, which may be inclined to do too well. Sometimes a little pride enters into the good or the noble things that we do. Do you understand?" XXXV Mme. de Blauve had taken her leave with these words, and Odette, still breathless at the thought that there could be any question of her marrying, a little ruffled, even, remembered only the secret discomfiture confessed to by the mother of the poor little bride. It was one more cause of horror added to all those of which she was the daily witness. Her calamity had doubtless shaken Mme. de Blauve's spirit to the point of causing in her mind a sort of hallucination as to the fate which might be threatening the young widow. Or else Mme. de Blauve had made the most of slight rumors with no basis of truth, as a pretext for coming to confess her own anxiety. Or else--a conjecture which barely touched Odette's mind--Mme. de Blauve, as she had herself intimated, always erring through pride, felt a frightful satisfaction in the dangers with which she and her family were perpetually menaced, jealously guarding this bitter eminence, lest it might be seized upon by others! For one can come even to such a point.