id:

"Listen to me; I have always forbidden you to read these papers, and I
know that you have obeyed me. Yes, I had scruples of delicacy. It is not
that you are an ignorant girl, like so many others, for I have allowed
you to learn everything concerning man and woman, which is assuredly bad
only for bad natures. But to what end disclose to you too early these
terrible truths of human life? I have therefore spared you the history
of our family, which is the history of every family, of all humanity; a
great deal of evil and a great deal of good."

He paused as if to confirm himself in his resolution and then resumed
quite calmly and with supreme energy:

"You are twenty-five years old; you ought to know. And then the life we
are leading is no longer possible. You live and you make me live in a
constant nightmare, with your ecstatic dreams. I prefer to show you the
reality, however execrable it may be. Perhaps the blow which it will
inflict upon you will make of you the woman you ought to be. We will
classify these papers again together, and read them, and learn from them
a terrible lesson of life!"

Then, as she still continued motionless, he resumed:

"Come, we must be able to see well. Light those other two candles
there."

He was seized by a desire for light, a flood of light; he would have
desired the blinding light of the sun; and thinking that the light of
the three candles was not sufficient, he went into his room for a pair
of three-branched candelabra which were there. The nine candles were
blazing, yet neither of them, in their disorder--he with his chest
bare, she with her left shoulder stained with blood, her throat and arms
bare--saw the other. It was past two o'clock, but neither of them had
any consciousness of the hour; they were going to spend the night in
this eager desire for knowledge, without feeling the need of sleep,
outside time and space. The mutterings of the storm, which, through the
open window, they could see gathering, grew louder and louder.

Clotilde had never before seen in Pascal's eyes the feverish light which
burned in them now. He had been overworking himself for some time past,
and his mental sufferings made him at times abrupt, in spite of his
good-natured complacency. But it seemed as if an infinite tenderness,
trembling with fraternal pity, awoke within him, now that he was about
to plunge into the painful truths of existence; and it was something
emanating from himself, s