"I never laughed at you in all my life." "You did as much, at least.

Did you not bid me busy myself with women's affairs?
Did you not bid me leave you to follow your own judgment?
You have followed it--to a pretty purpose, as God lives! These gentlemen of the King's will cause you to follow it a little farther," she pursued, with heartless, loathsome sarcasm.

"You will follow it as far as the scaffold at Toulouse.

That, you will tell me, is your own affair.

But what provision have you made for your wife and daughter?
Did you marry me and get her to leave us to perish of starvation?
Or are we to turn kitchen wenches or sempstresses for our livelihood ?" With a groan, the Vicomte sank down upon the bed, and covered his face with his hands.
"God pity me!" he cried, in a voice of agony--an agony such as the fear of death could never have infused into his brave soul; an agony born of the heartlessness of this woman who for twenty years had shared his bed and board, and who now in the hour of his adversity failed him so cruelly--so tragically.
"Aye," she mocked in her bitterness, "call upon God to pity you, for I shall not." She paced the room now, like a caged lioness, her face livid with the fury that possessed her.