But I am forgetting. Mother had to take part in the dance too, as it was the only one she knew and it unrolled tender memories. She braced herself, then started off, her features gently composed, leaning on my father, who accommodated his step to hers while seeming to guide her. "Let's see, that's not it ..." and they set out again--one, two, three, four--heavy, both of them, with their reputation as a happy, united couple, and laden with the looks that follow them.
The engaged couples have disappeared, swallowed up by the nearest dark corners, where passion is of scarlet and nothing exists but arms and lips and bodies surmised. When the music will have finished and they will have reappeared, the chatter and the sharp raw laugh of the young fiancée will be heard; she will open her eyes wide, like this; her childish mouth will be seen, and her slim figure, which retains an air of awkward shyness. "How unsophisticated she is," they will say in gratitude to her for being an example of the velvety purity of the young girls.
The last measures. They are all perspiring, out of breath, soberly triumphant, and as they go back to their chairs each man gives a last squeeze of the slender arm he is about to relinquish.
My father is entirely engrossed in his guests; he has led mamma, dizzy, back to her chair, and has moved off. As she sits there with her eyelashes fluttering, you would think she has returned from a wonderful long journey. "I am happy, happy," she is reflecting. "I have such a good husband." The wounds of every day are closed--they have to be overlooked--and if any cloud darkens the horizon, it is that she is thinking of me: "But that is what marriage means, my little daughter; you'll see, it is just a big renunciation: you will change, you too, and do like the rest; look at me; am I unhappy?"
No, you are not unhappy, my poor little mother, with your injured voice, your charitable eyes, and your lifeless gestures; you are dead; it is twenty years since you have had a will of your own, a desirous look, a single manifestation of impatience, a stray impulse, an hour, anything you can call your own; it is twenty years since you renounced. But your husband never goes out, he has his wife and children, he earns your living, a comfortable living; everyone respects him, and "one cannot have everything."