"The carriage is waiting," resumed Seguin, in a voice which he strove to
render calm. "Let us make haste, let us go."
Valentine looked at him in stupefaction. "Come, be reasonable," said she.
"How can I leave this child when I have nobody to whom I can trust her?"
"The carriage is waiting for us," he repeated, quivering; "let us go at
once."
And as his wife this time contented herself with shrugging her shoulders,
he was seized with one of those sudden fits of madness which impelled him
to the greatest violence, even when people were present, and made him
openly display his rankling poisonous sore, that absurd jealousy which
had upset his life. As for that poor little puny, wailing child, he would
have crushed her, for he held her to be guilty of everything, and indeed
it was she who was now the obstacle to that excursion he had planned,
that pleasure trip which he had promised himself, and which now seemed to
him of such supreme importance. And 'twas so much the better if friends
were there to hear him. So in the vilest language he began to upbraid his
wife, not only reproaching her for the birth of that child, but even
denying that the child was his.
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