e universe there is not a second one like her. This
woman has given herself to you and has created with you the mysterious
union that is called Love. Her eye seems to you more vast than space,
more charming than the world, that clear eye smiling with her tenderness.
This woman loves you. When she speaks to you her voice floods you with
joy.

"And suddenly she disappears! Think of it! She disappears, not only for
you, but forever. She is dead. Do you understand what that means? Never,
never, never, not anywhere will she exist any more. Nevermore will that
eye look upon anything again; nevermore will that voice, nor any voice
like it, utter a word in the same way as she uttered it.

"Nevermore will a face be born that is like hers. Never, never! The molds
of statues are kept; casts are kept by which one can make objects with
the same outlines and forms. But that one body and that one face will
never more be born again upon the earth. And yet millions and millions of
creatures will be born, and more than that, and this one woman will not
reappear among all the women of the future. Is it possible? It drives one
mad to think of it.

"She lived for twenty-years, not more, and she has disappeared forever,
forever, forever! She thought, she smiled, she loved me. And now nothing!
The flies that die in the autumn are as much as we are in this world. And
now nothing! And I thought that her body, her fresh body, so warm, so
sweet, so white, so lovely, would rot down there in that box under the
earth. And her soul, her thought, her love--where is it?

"Not to see her again! The idea of this decomposing body, that I might
yet recognize, haunted me. I wanted to look at it once more.

"I went out with a spade, a lantern and a hammer; I jumped over the
cemetery wall and I found the grave, which had not yet been closed
entirely; I uncovered the coffin and took up a board. An abominable odor,
the stench of putrefaction, greeted my nostrils. Oh, her bed perfumed
with orris!

"Yet I opened the coffin, and, holding my lighted lantern down into it I
saw her. Her face was blue, swollen, frightful. A black liquid had oozed
out of her mouth.

"She! That was she! Horror seized me. But I stretched out my arm to draw
this monstrous face toward me. And then I was caught.

"All night I have retained the foul odor of this putrid body, the odor of
my well beloved, as one retains the perfume of a woman after a love
embrace.

"Do with me what