whole body and with all her soul to the very
depths of her poor, weak soul, and with all her heart, that poor heart of
some grateful animal. It was really a delightful and innocent picture of
simple passion, of carnal and yet modest passion, such as nature had
implanted in mankind, before man had complicated and disfigured it by all
the various shades of sentiment. But he soon grew tired of this ardent,
beautiful, dumb creature, and did not spend more than an hour during the
day with her, thinking it sufficient if he came home at night, and she
began to suffer in consequence. She used to wait for him from morning
till night with her eyes on the clock; she did not even look after the
meals now, for he took all his away from home, Clermont, Chatel-Guyon,
Royat, no matter where, as long as he was not obliged to come home.

"She began to grow thin; every other thought, every other wish, every
other expectation, and every confused hope disappeared from her mind, and
the hours during which she did not see him became hours of terrible
suffering to her. Soon he ceased to come home regularly of nights; he
spent them with women at the casino at Royat and did not come home until
daybreak. But she never went to bed before he returned. She remained
sitting motionless in an easy-chair, with her eyes fixed on the hands of
the clock, which turned so slowly and regularly round the china face on
which the hours were painted.

"She heard the trot of his horse in the distance and sat up with a start,
and when he came into the room she got up with the movements of an
automaton and pointed to the clock, as if to say: 'Look how late it is!'

"And he began to be afraid of this amorous and jealous, half-witted
woman, and flew into a rage, as brutes do; and one night he even went so
far as to strike her, so they sent for me. When I arrived she was
writhing and screaming in a terrible crisis of pain, anger, passion, how
do I know what? Can one tell what goes on in such undeveloped brains?

"I calmed her by subcutaneous injections of morphine, and forbade her to
see that man again, for I saw clearly that marriage would infallibly kill
her by degrees.

"Then she went mad! Yes, my dear friend, that idiot went mad. She is
always thinking of him and waiting for him; she waits for him all day and
night, awake or asleep, at this very moment, ceaselessly. When I saw her
getting thinner and thinner, and as she persisted in never taking her
eyes off t