She would have preferred that her misery should have been more quiet and less declamatory.
All the friends of her husband had been in love with her, and had built great hopes upon her forlorn condition, but unfaithful husbands do not always make guilty wives.

The reverse is rather more frequently the case, so little is this poor world submitted to the rules of logic.

In short, Madame de Trecoeur, after her husband's death was left forlorn, exhausted, and broken down, but spotless.
From this melancholy union, a daughter had been born, named Julia, and whom her father, notwithstanding all Clotilde's efforts of resistance, had spoilt to excess.

Monsieur de Trecoeur's idolatry for his daughter was well-known, and the world, with its habitual weakness of judgment, forgave him readily his scandalous existence in consideration of that merit, which is not always a great one.

It is not, indeed, a very difficult matter to love one's children; it is sufficient for that not to be a monster.