MME. DE RONCHARD [approaches servant quickly]

Baptiste, Baptiste! Who is asking for M. Martinel?

SERVANT

I do not know, Madame. It was the hall porter who came upstairs.

MME. DE RONCHARD

Well, run now and look without showing yourself, and come back and tell us at once.

PETITPRÉ [who has risen at the entrance of the servant]

No, I will permit no spying; let us wait. We shall not have to wait long now. [To the servant.] You may go. [Exit servant.]

MME. DE RONCHARD [to PetitprÉ]

I do not understand you at all. You are absolutely calm. One would think that your daughter's happiness was nothing to you. For myself, I am profoundly agitated.

PETITPRÉ

That will do no good. [Sits near the table R.] Let us talk—talk reasonably, now that we are a family party and Monsieur Martinel is absent.

MME. DE RONCHARD [Sits R.]

If that man would only go back to Havre!

LÉON [Sits L. of table]

That would not change anything even if he could go back to Havre.

PETITPRÉ

For my part, I think—

MME. DE RONCHARD [interrupts]

Do you wish to hear my opinion? Well, I think that they are preparing us for some unpleasant surprise; that they wish to entrap us, as one might say.

PETITPRÉ

But why? In whose interest? Jean Martinel is an honest man, and he loves my child. LÉon, whose judgment I admire, although he is my son—

LEON

Thank you, father!

PETITPRÉ

LÉon bears Jean as much affection as esteem. As to the uncle—

MME. DE RONCHARD

Don't talk about them, I pray. It is this woman who is seeking to entrap us. She has played some little comedy, and she chooses to-day above all others for its dÉnouement. It is her stage climax; her masterpiece of treachery.

LÉON

As in “The Ambigu.”

MME. DE RONCHARD

Do not laugh. I know these women. I have suffered enough at their hands.

PETITPRÉ

Oh, my poor Clarisse; if you really understood them, you would have held your husband better than you did.

MME. DE RONCHARD [rises]

What do you mean by “understanding” them? Pardon me—to live with that roisterer coming in upon me when and whence he pleased—I prefer my broken life and my loneliness—with you!

PETITPRÉ

No doubt you are right from your point of view of a married woman; but there are other points of view, perhaps less selfish and certainly superior, such as that of family interest.

MME. DE RONCHARD

Of family interest, indeed? Do you mean to say that I was wrong from the point of view of the family interest—you, a magistrate!

PETITPRÉ

My duties as a magistrate have made me very prudent, for I have seen pass under my eyes many equivocal and terrible situations, which not only agonized my conscience but gave me many cruel hours of indecision. Man is often so little responsible and circumstances are often so powerful. Our impenetrable nature is so capricious, our instincts are so mysterious that we must be tolerant and even indulgent in the presence of faults which are not really crimes, and which exhibit nothing vicious or abandoned in the man himself.

MME. DE RONCHARD

So, then, to deceive one's wife is not deceitful, and you say such a thing before your son? Truly, a pretty state of affairs! [Crosses L.]

LÉON

Oh, I have my opinion also about that, my dear Aunt.

PETITPRÉ [rises]

It is not almost a crime,—it is one. But it is looked upon to-day as so common a thing that one scarcely punishes it at all. It is punished by divorce, which is a house of refuge for most men. The law prefers to separate them with decency—timidly, rather than drag them apart as in former times.

MME. DE RONCHARD

Your learned theories are revolting, and I wish—

LÉON [rises]

Ah, here is Monsieur Martinel.