Bertha was wearied with the constancy and adoration of her husband.
She had only to express a desire to be at once obeyed, and this
blind submission to all her wishes appeared to her servile in a man.
A man is born, she thought, to command, and not to obey; to be
master, and not slave. She would have preferred a husband who
would come in in the middle of the night, still warm from his orgy,
having lost at play, and who would strike her if she upbraided him.
A tyrant, but a man. Some months after her marriage she suddenly
took it into her head to have absurd freaks and extravagant caprices.
She wished to prove him, and see how far his constant complacence
would go. She thought she would tire him out. It was intolerable
to feel absolutely sure of her husband, to know that she so filled
his heart that he had room for no other, to have nothing to fear,
not even the caprice of an hour. Perhaps there was yet more than
this in Bertha's aversion. She knew herself, and confessed to
herself that had Sauvresy wished, she would have been his without
being his wife. She was so lonely at her father's, so wretched in
her poverty, that she would have fled from her home, even for this.
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