When I arrived a carriage was coming in and drawing up under the
portico. I saw Madame Murrah get out of it. She could not avoid showing
some annoyance on observing me. Rather surprised at her taking such an
early drive, I asked her to go into the drawing-room. She went there
before me, and, seeing me take an arm-chair, she sat down on the divan
in her usual indolent manner, and waited to hear what I had to say.
The scene which I am now going to relate to you, my dear Louis, was
certainly, according to our ideas, a remarkable one. I tell it you just
as it happened; but you must not forget that, for the Circassian woman,
there was nothing in it which was out of conformity with her principles
and the ideas of her race.
"I have come to talk with you," I said, "upon a serious subject, the
importance of which perhaps you do not comprehend; for, without
intending it, you are causing Kondjé-Gul a great deal of trouble."
"How am I causing my daughter trouble?" she answered, as if she had been
trying to understand.
"By continually telling her that I am going to leave her in order to get
married,--by telling her that you wish to go away, and have even decided
to take her with you. She is of course alarmed by all these imaginary
anxieties."
"If it is so decreed by Allah!" she said quietly, "who shall prevent
it?"
I had been expecting denials and subterfuges. This fatalistic utterance,
without answering my reproaches, took me quite aback and made me
tremble.
"But," I replied in a severe tone, "Allah could not command you to bring
unhappiness to your daughter."
"As you are going to be married----"
"What matters my marriage?" I answered. "It cannot in any way affect
Kondjé-Gul's happiness! She knows that I love her, and that she will
always retain the first place in my affections."
Madame Murrah shook her head for a minute in an undecided manner. The
argument which I had employed was a most simple one.
At last she said: "Your wife will be an infidel; and, according to your
laws, she will be entitled to demand my daughter's dismissal."
Dumb-founded at hearing her raise such objections, when I had fancied
that I only needed to express my commands, I gazed at her in complete
astonishment.
"But my wife will never know Kondjé-Gul!" I exclaimed. "She will live in
her own home, and Kondjé-Gul will live here, so that nothing will be
changed so far as we are concerned."