“Gustave and I saw each other frequently after that. With all my heart, I shared the love I thought I had truly inspired in him, so often did he repeat it. One day, my mother informed me that the man I loved, having first obtained her consent, had asked her to propose our union to me. I did not dissimulate my joy and answered that I would be happy to become Gustave’s wife. But when the woman who brought me into the world wanted me to understand that this young man, who occupied a position in society well above ours, could not unite with me in a legitimate way, I hid my head in my hands and wept with an indignant heart, for it was only as a mistress and not as a wife that Gustave wanted me.
“I did not wish to see him anymore.
“Some time had passed when one day my mother told me: ‘But my dear daughter, since you are repulsed by a condition that so many young ladies seek in this country, why don’t you contract a marriage of conscience? Gustave is proposing this to you.’ ‘What is a marriage of conscience?’ I asked my mother. ‘It is,’ she answered, ‘a pact which is outside the law, but to which a priest gives all the character of a legitimate engagement.’ ‘Well then, Mother, I have no further objection,’ I told her. ‘An engagement taken at the foot of the altar must always suffice, it seems to me; who would dare violate its sanctity? I do not understand why one must have the sanction of the law in that case.’ My mother, full of joy, agreed with me and left our home immediately.
“A few days later I was united with my lover.
“My happiness did not last. Hardly a year had gone by after our union when Gustave, whose inconstant character had become clear to me, seemed to be doing his best to fill my heart with all the anguish of the most frightful jealousy, for I was madly in love with that man. How many times did I follow him to those balls I have already mentioned, not to find ease for my pain but to make it more harrowing still? There I would see Gustave lavish his attention on other women, perhaps less pretty than me, while I, not daring to confess my suffering to anyone and blushing to see myself thus disdained by my husband, would withdraw, alone and pensive, to a corner of the room. I found myself repeating to myself these verses I had read somewhere and that were engraved in my memory, as they seemed to have been written to paint the state of my own souclass="underline"
“At last, I joyfully welcomed the day I became a mother, and I thought that this sacred title I had just acquired would make my husband’s affections return to me. Alas, it was only an illusion, and reality was soon to drive it quickly from my heart...
“I soon learned that Gustave, regardless of the vows that united us, was about to contract another marriage. I did not want to believe it. But when I spoke to him about it, he confessed that financial motives were forcing him to take on this new engagement, but as for the rest, he would never cease to have for me all the attentions that could make a woman happy. ‘Oh,’ I said to him bitterly, ‘do you really think that I could be happy if I must live with the certitude that I have a rival whom you yourself have acknowledged? Besides, you cannot abandon me like this. The priest received our vows, did he not? Is it in your power to untie the indissoluble knot that binds us to each other? Can you be so ignorant of the duties imposed on us by the laws of marriage?’ ‘You are forgetting,’ he answered smiling, ‘that we are united only by a marriage of conscience.’ ‘So your conscience does not trouble you?’ I asked him. ‘No,’ he answered coldly. Then I threw myself at his feet. To bring him back to more honorable feelings, I showed him our child, that angel who only yesterday flew out of my arms to increase the cohorts of those who ceaselessly praise the name of the Creator. Annoyed by my moans and sobs, Gustave banished me from his presence.
“I never saw him again.
“A week ago I learned that his new marriage was celebrated with great pomp; a week ago God stripped me of the little reason that I still retained; and whenever I happen to regain some sanity, it is only to measure the extent of my misfortune.”
Then, suddenly, the madwoman’s tears dried up. She let out a frightful laugh that disturbed the sanctity of the place in which we stood. She crossed the balustrade again and hurried out of the temple as quickly as she had come in, through the door facing the altar to Mary.
I followed her as she stopped on the sidewalk in front of the church. At this moment, an elegant carriage drawn by two spirited horses passed rapidly by on the street. A young lady of great beauty and an elegantly dressed gentleman were sitting inside. After staring into the carriage, the madwoman cried out, “That’s him!” and I saw her rush out in front of the horses.
“Stop!” people cried from all sides. It was too late. The coachman was able to control his horses and they stopped, but not before they horribly trampled the body of the unfortunate woman writhing under their hooves. I looked at the people inside the carriage; the young lady appeared to be shuddering in pity; an extreme pallor covered the face of the elegant man, whose whole body was frighteningly motionless at this moment.
The bloody corpse of the young woman was soon carried under the peristyle of City Hall.
“Was she demented?” asked the lady in the carriage with a voice full of compassion.
“Yes, madam,” I cried, “she went mad because a coward took advantage of her naiveté and shamefully deceived her; and that coward, madam, is—”
“Whip the horses! Go!” shouted the pale man, suddenly emerging from his stupor.
The coachman obeyed this order, the horses galloped off... and the young lady leaned out vainly in my direction to grasp the last words I had just pronounced...
Translated from the French by David and Nicole Ball
The Little Convent Girl
by Grace King
(Originally published in 1893)
The River
She was coming down on the boat from Cincinnati, the little convent girl. Two sisters had brought her aboard. They gave her in charge of the captain, got her a state-room, saw that the new little trunk was put into it, hung the new little satchel up on the wall, showed her how to bolt the door at night, shook hands with her for good-by (good-bys have really no significance for sisters), and left her there. After a while the bells all rang, and the boat, in the awkward elephantine fashion of boats, got into midstream. The chambermaid found her sitting on the chair in the state-room where the sisters had left her, and showed her how to sit on a chair in the saloon. And there she sat until the captain came and hunted her up for supper. She could not do anything of herself; she had to be initiated into everything by someone else.
She was known on the boat only as “the little convent girl.” Her name, of course, was registered in the clerk’s office, but on a steamboat no one thinks of consulting the clerk’s ledger. It is always the little widow, the fat madam, the tall colonel, the parson, etc. The captain, who pronounced by the letter, always called her the little convent girl. She was the beau-ideal of the little convent girl. She never raised her eyes except when spoken to. Of course she never spoke first, even to the chambermaid, and when she did speak it was in the wee, shy, furtive voice one might imagine a just-budding violet to have; and she walked with such soft, easy, carefully calculated steps that one naturally felt the penalties that must have secured them — penalties dictated by a black code of deportment.