Once or twice during this great scene, Mme. de Renal was on the verge of feeling some sympathy for the very real unhappiness of this man who had been her friend for the past twelve years. But true passion is selfish. Besides, she was expecting at any moment an avowal of the anonymous letter he had received the night before, and that avowal was not forthcoming. Mme. de Renal's sense of security suffered for not knowing what ideas that letter might have suggested to the man on whom her fate depended. For in the provinces, husbands are the masters of public opinion. A husband who complains about his wife's conduct covers himself with ridicule (a thing that is becoming less dangerous every day in France); but his if he doesn't give her any money, is reduced to the condition of a working woman, at fifteen sous a day, and even then, virtuous women will hesitate to employ her.

In spite of everything, an odalisk in a harem may love the sultan; he is omnipotent; she can have no hope of escaping his authority by a series of little ruses. The master's vengeance is terrible, bloody, yet military, generous. A blow of the dagger ends all. In the nineteenth century, a husband kills his wife with blows of public scorn; by closing every door to her.