The Law and the Lady

"My gun is there in the corner. I have only to tie a string to the trigger and to put the muzzle to my mouth--No! My mother is alive; my mother's love is sacred. I have no right to take the life which she gave me. I must suffer and submit. Oh, Helena! Helena!"

The third extract--one among many similar passages--had been written about two months before the death of the prisoner's wife.

"More reproaches addressed to me! There never was such a woman for complaining; she lives in a perfect atmosphere of ill-temper and discontent.

"My new offenses are two in number: I never ask her to play to me now; and when she puts on a new dress expressly to please me, I never notice it. Notice it! Good Heavens! The effort of my life is not to notice her in anything she does or says. How could I keep my temper, unless I kept as much as possible out of the way of private interviews with her? And I do keep my temper. I am never hard on her; I never use harsh language to her. She has a double claim on my forbearance---she is a woman, and the law has made her my wife. I remember this; but I am human. The less I see of her--except when visitors are present--the more certain I can feel of preserving my self-control.

"I wonder what it is that makes her so utterly distasteful to me? She is a plain woman; but I have seen uglier women than she whose caresses I could have endured without the sense of shrinking that comes over me when I am obliged to submit to her caresses. I keep the feeling hidden from her. She loves me, poor thing--and I pity her. I wish I could do more; I wish I could return in the smallest degree the feeling with which she regards me. But no--I can only pity her. If she would be content to live on friendly terms with me, and never to exact demonstrations of tenderness, we might get on pretty well. But she wants love. Unfortunate creature, she wants love!

"Oh, my Helena! I have no love to give her. My heart is yours.

"I dreamed last night that this unhappy wife of mine was dead. The dream was so vivid that I actually got out of my bed and opened the door of her room and listened.

"Her calm, regular breathing was distinctly audible in the stillness of the night. She was in a deep sleep: I closed the door again and lighted my candle and read. Helena was in all my thoughts; it was hard work to fix my attention on the book. But anything was better than going to bed again, and dreaming perhaps for the second time that I too was free.