What is the meaning of monde?
Directions: Read the passage and answer the following question
Jacques De Randal, having dined at home alone, told his valet he might go, and then sat
down at a table to write his letters.
He finished out every year by writing and dreaming, making for himself a sort of review of things that had happened since last New Year’s Day, things that were now all over and dead: and, in proportion as the faces of his friends rose up before his eyes, he wrote them a few lines, a cordial ”Good morning” on the first of January.
So he sat down, opened a drawer, took out of it a woman’s photograph, gazed at it a few moments, and kissed it. Then, having laid it beside a sheet of notepaper, he began:
“My Dear Irene:
You must have by this time the little souvenir, which I sent you. I have shut myself up this evening in order to tell you –”
The pen here ceased to move. Jacques rose up and began walking up and down the room.
For the last six months, he had a mistress, not a mistress like the others, a woman with whom engages in a passing intrigue, of the theatrical world or the demi-monde, but a woman whom he loved and won. He was no longer a young man, although still comparatively young, and he looked on life seriously in a positive and practical spirit.
Accordingly, he drew up the balance sheet of his passion, as he drew up every year the balance sheet of friendships that were ended or freshly contracted, of circumstances and
persons that had entered his life. His first ardor of love having grown calmer, he asked himself, with the precision of a merchant making a calculation, what was the state of his heart with regard to her, and tried to form an idea of what it would be in the future. He found there a great and deep affection, made up of tenderness, gratitude, and the thousand subtleties, which gave birth to long and powerful attachments.
A ring of the bell made him start. He hesitated. Should he open? But he deemed it was his duty to open, on this New Year’s night, to the Unknown who knocks while passing, no matter whom it may be.
So he took a wax-candle, passed through the ante-chamber, removed the bolts, turned the key, drew the door back, and saw his mistress standing pale as a corpse leaning against the wall.
He stammered: “What is the matter with you?”
She replied: “Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Without servants?”
“Yes.”
“You are not going out?”
“No.”
She entered with the air of a woman who knew the house. As soon as she was in the drawing room, she sank into the sofa, and, covering her face with her hands, began to weep dreadfully.
He kneeled down at her feet, seized hold of her hands to remove them from her eyes, so that he might look at them, and exclaimed
“Irene, Irene, what is the matter with you? I implore of you to tell me what is the matter with you?”
Then in the midst of her sobs she murmured: “I can no longer live like this.”
He did not understand.
“Like this? What do you mean?”
“Yes. I can no longer live like this. I have endured so much. He struck me this afternoon.”
“Who – your husband?”
“Yes – my husband?”
“Ha!”
He was astonished, having never suspected that her husband could be brutal. He was a man of the world, of the better class, a clubman, a lover of horses, a theater-goer and an expert swordsman; he was known, talked about, appreciated everywhere, having an absence of education and of the real culture needed in order to think like all well-bred people, and finally a respect for all conventional prejudices.
He appeared to devote himself to his wife, as a man ought to do in the case of wealthy and well-bred people. He displayed enough anxiety about her wishes, her health, her dresses, and, beyond that, left perfectly free.
Randal, having become Irene’s friend, had a right to the affectionate handclasp which every husband endowed with good manners owes to his wife’s intimate acquaintances.Then, when Jacques, after having been for some time the friend, became the lover, his relations with the husband were even more cordial.
Jacques had never dreamed that there were storms in this household, and he was scared at this unexpected revelation.
He asked.
“How did it happen?Tell me.”