Page:Clermont - Roche (1798, volume 4).djvu/292

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

fidy, of meanness; insisted she had infringed her duty in having had any concealment from him; and peremptorily commanded her to tell him (if she hoped for his forgiveness), whither she had sent her lovely charge; this she as peremptorily refused doing. Words, in consequence of that refusal, grew high between them; and the party which had accompanied him to the chateau, were dismissed abruptly from it by him. As a justification of his conduct, and an excuse for it, he assured them that his wife's temper would not permit him to have them with pleasure to themselves any longer under his roof.


When freed from their observation, and the little restraint which they had imposed upon him, he treated the unhappy Madame D'Alembert with the utmost brutality. To avoid his inhumanity, she never stirred from her chamber, except compelled to do so by his commands; and now endeavoured to beguile her wretchedness by beginning her promised narrative to Madeline—a narrative,