l never
leave her again for a moment, I will still stick to her petticoats, I
will roll at her feet, and ask her pardon, for I thirst for her kisses
and her love.

To-night in a few hours, I shall be with her, I shall go into _our_ room
and lie in _our_ bed, and I will cover the cheeks of my fair-haired
darling with such kisses, that she will no longer think me mad, and if
she cries out, if she defends herself and spurns me, I shall kill her; I
have made up my mind to that.

I know that I shall strike her with the Arab knife that is on one of the
console-tables, in our room among other knick-knacks. I see the spot
where I shall plunge in the sharp blade, into the nape of her neck,
which is covered with little soft pale golden curls, that are the same
color as the hair of her head. It attracted me so at one time, during
the chaste period of our engagement, that I used to wish to bite it, as
if it had been some fruit. I shall do it some day in the country, when
she is bathed in a ray of sunlight, which makes her look dazzling in her
pink muslin dress, some day on a towing-path, when the nightingales are
singing, and the dragonflies, with their reflections of blue and silver
are flying about.

There, there, I shall skillfully plunge it in up to the hilt, like those
who know how to kill....

PART XXIII

And after I had killed her, what then?

As the judges would not be able to explain such an extraordinary crime
to themselves, they would of course say that I was mad, medical men
would examine me and would immediately agree that I ought at once to be
kept under supervision, taken care of and placed in a lunatic asylum.

And for years, perhaps, because I was strong, and because such a
vigorous animal would survive the calamity intact, although my intellect
might give way, I should remain a prey to these chimeras, carry that
fixed idea of her lies, her impurity and her shame about with me, that
would be my one recollection, and I should suffer unceasingly.

I am writing all this perfectly coolly and in full possession of my
reason; I have perfect prescience of what my resolve entails, and of
this blind rush towards death. I feel that my very minutes are numbered,
and that I no longer have anything in my skull, in which some fire,
though I do not quite know what it is, is burning, except a few
particles of what used to be my brain.

Just as a short time ago, I should certainly have murdered Elaine, if
she had been