ower of love and
of faith, those twin levers which move the world. And despite all the
struggles of his reason this bedroom of Nana's always filled him with
madness, and he would sink shuddering under the almighty dominion of
sex, just as he would swoon before the vast unknown of heaven.

Then when she felt how humble he was Nana grew tyrannously triumphant.
The rage for debasing things was inborn in her. It did not suffice
her to destroy them; she must soil them too. Her delicate hands left
abominable traces and themselves decomposed whatever they had broken.
And he in his imbecile condition lent himself to this sort of sport,
for he was possessed by vaguely remembered stories of saints who were
devoured by vermin and in turn devoured their own excrements. When
once she had him fast in her room and the doors were shut, she treated
herself to a man's infamy. At first they joked together, and she would
deal him light blows and impose quaint tasks on him, making him lisp
like a child and repeat tags of sentences.

"Say as I do: 'tonfound it! Ickle man damn vell don't tare about it!"

He would prove so docile as to reproduce her very accent.

"'Tonfound it! Ickle man damn vell don't tare about it!"

Or again she would play bear, walking on all fours on her rugs when she
had only her chemise on and turning round with a growl as though she
wanted to eat him. She would even nibble his calves for the fun of the
thing. Then, getting up again:

"It's your turn now; try it a bit. I bet you don't play bear like me."

It was still charming enough. As bear she amused him with her white skin
and her fell of ruddy hair. He used to laugh and go down on all fours,
too, and growl and bite her calves, while she ran from him with an
affectation of terror.

"Are we beasts, eh?" she would end by saying. "You've no notion how ugly
you are, my pet! Just think if they were to see you like that at the
Tuileries!"

But ere long these little games were spoiled. It was not cruelty in her
case, for she was still a good-natured girl; it was as though a passing
wind of madness were blowing ever more strongly in the shut-up bedroom.
A storm of lust disordered their brains, plunged them into the delirious
imaginations of the flesh. The old pious terrors of their sleepless
nights were now transforming themselves into a thirst for bestiality, a
furious longing to walk on all fours, to growl and to bite. One day when
he was playing bear she pushe