The instant the name "Madeleine" was confirmed, a low, suppressed gasp rippled through the audience.
Many instinctively sat bolt upright, leaning forward, bracing their binoculars to capture every minute shift in expression on the faces of the two actors onstage.
Monsieur Lavalner, who in the first act was so imposing, cold, and a symbol of absolute order and control, now had a "crack" appear on his face.
It was not merely surprise; it was a sudden jolt from the recollection of old dreams back to harsh reality, and an instinctive wariness at having a secret exposed.
As for Madeleine, her composure—which she had struggled to maintain from the moment she entered the drawing room—gave way to an uncontrollable sorrow upon facing her former lover, which finally solidified into a resolute frankness.
The audience's reaction to this scene of recognition was instantly and sharply divided along gender lines, yet equally intense.
The gentlemen, especially the older "Lavalner" among them, looked exceptionally grave.
Confronted by the sudden appearance of a forgotten mistress from a "disreputable" past, they felt a profound unease—a threat to their property and reputation.
Lavalner's stern line, "What have you come for?" and his subsequent icy skepticism, struck at their most secret fears.
They were afraid that past mistakes would come back to bite them at their most vulnerable moment, destroying the respectability they had so carefully maintained.
They exchanged glances, their mouths downturned, nodding slightly in silent agreement with Lavalner's "vigilance," deeming it necessary and reasonable.
One gentleman with a fine handlebar mustache whispered to his companion,
"See? These women always show up when you least expect it, bringing years of trouble!"
The ladies, however, were almost unanimously on Madeleine's side.
They saw a woman cruelly toyed with by fate, seduced and abandoned in her youth.
After years of solitary suffering, she now had to face her former lover's coldness and defensiveness.
Madeleine's passionate accusation, "Fate! Unfair fate commanded me to come!" caused many ladies to pull out handkerchiefs to wipe their eyes.
They wept for Madeleine's sorrow and were moved by the fierce resolve she displayed.
A young lady in an evening gown tightly gripped her companion's arm, her voice choked:
"My God, she is so pitiful! How can that man be so heartless!"
Another elderly noblewoman shook her head, fanning herself rapidly:
"This is our fate! Always forgotten, always suspected, even when we have borne everything!"
However, what left the entire audience, both men and women, with their brains practically seizing up, was the network of relationships that was fully revealed as the former lovers recognized each other.
It was so intricate and complicated that no one could untangle it immediately.
"Wait… Madeleine is Monsieur Lavalner's former mistress? The maid?"
"More than that! She just admitted that Édouard and Fanny are her children! Which means…"
"God! Young Master Édouard and Fanny are full siblings? Half-siblings, rather, on their mother's side?"
"And they were… Oh, my heavens! Young Master Édouard was in love with Fanny? That, that is also incestuous!"
"Why did you say 'also'?"
"You forgot! Édouard is also Madame Madeleine's stepson, and her lover!"
"Young Master Antoine, Madame Madeleine's son, also fell in love with Fanny!"
"Madeleine is the birth mother of the girl Antoine is in love with! And Antoine's mother is Madame Madeleine, and his father is Monsieur Lavalner…"
"Monsieur Lavalner is the biological father of Édouard and Fanny, and also Antoine's father…"
"Marcel is Lavalner's son, and also the leader of the striking workers at his mine!"
"Hold on, let me count: father's father is grandfather…"
"You can't even count it on your fingers! How many layers of taboo relationships are tangled up in this manor?"
The audience was in complete disarray.
Gentlemen forgot their etiquette, ladies forgot to fan themselves, and everyone tried to straighten out the messy knot—
But every attempt only uncovered a more shocking connection.
Sibling, stepmother-stepson, master-servant, former lover…
Almost every conceivable relationship that challenges moral boundaries was intertwined within this confined manor.
The spectators' faces were filled with disbelief, confusion, and a morbid excitement drawn by this extreme situation.
They could not imagine what kind of storm would finally brew when this layer of blood and emotional entanglement was added to the already complex web of conflicts.
The previous flashes of lightning seemed intended to illuminate all the ugliness, while the dull, oppressive thunder was the cold sigh of the God of Fate from behind the clouds.
The audience finally understood that these sound and light effects were no longer just a background; they had become an indispensable part of the play's emotional intensity.
They foreshadowed that this long-brewing "Thunderstorm" would inevitably sweep through everything in this manor with unstoppable force.
The actors on stage, Madame Berthe and François Gauthier-Luzarches, maintained this extreme emotional tension to the climax.
Madeleine's sorrow and fortitude clashed fiercely with Lavalner's shock and defensiveness in every shared glance and every line delivered.
And below the stage, nearly two thousand spectators were deeply caught in the shock of the complex character relationships and the immense suspense over the plot's direction…
They knew that the most cruel truth and the fiercest storm were still to come.
In the subsequent plot, the workers' representative Marcel bursts into the drawing room and confronts his biological father, Lavalner, fiercely.
However, Lavalner had already bribed the other three worker representatives to sign a contract to resume work and had fired Marcel.
To defend his father, Édouard violently slapped Marcel twice. Madeleine cried and led Marcel away from the manor.
Immediately after, "Édouard" and "Madame Madeleine"—the stepmother and stepson caught in an illicit affair—met again in the empty drawing room.
The atmosphere on stage was no longer one of painful ambiguity, but of desperate despair and mutual, ugly tearing apart.
The lighting was deliberately dimmed at this point, leaving only a few spotlights to create a secretive, oppressive mood.
Outside the window, faint thunder again provided an uneasy background sound for this conversation.
Madame Madeleine blocked Édouard, who intended to leave.
[Madame Madeleine (scoffing): "A man of your high education, now with the daughter of such a common person, a low-class woman—"
Édouard (erupting): "Nonsense! You are not fit to call her low-class, you are not fit, she is not like you, she—"
Madame Madeleine: "Be careful, be careful! Don't push a disappointed woman too hard, she is capable of anything."
Édouard (resolutely): "I have made up my mind."
Madame Madeleine: "Fine, you go! Be careful, now (looks out the window, muttering to herself, implying an ill omen) the storm is about to break!"
Édouard: "Thank you, I know."]
This fierce and desperate quarrel pushed the audience's emotions to a new climax.
They watched Édouard resolutely cut ties with his stepmother's dangerous relationship, grasping for the seemingly pure and flawless Fanny like a drowning man grasping a straw.
The gentlemen below the stage felt slightly relieved that Édouard was attempting to return to the "right path," yet they privately shook their heads at the nature of the "right path" he had chosen.
The ladies, meanwhile, were troubled by Madame Madeleine's utterly shattered pride and her all-too-clear destructive inclination.
Her line, "Be careful, be careful! Don't push a disappointed woman too hard," pierced everyone's heart.
A suffocating thought circled in every audience member's mind: the path to salvation Édouard believed he was taking would, in fact, lead to a darker abyss!
(End of Chapter)