no,
there can be no doubt of it; she who has loved, can not live without
love; she who has seen death clings to life. Brigitte loves me and will
perhaps die of love; I will kill myself and another will have her.

"Another, another!" I repeated, bending over her until my head touched
her shoulder. "Is she not a widow? Has she not already seen death? Have
not these little hands prepared the dead for burial? Her tears for
the second will not flow as long as those shed for the first. Ah! God
forgive me! While she sleeps why should I not kill her? If I should
awaken her now and tell her that her hour had come, and that we were
going to die with a last kiss, she would consent. What does it matter?
Is it certain that all does not end with that?"

I found a knife on the table and I picked it up.

"Fear, cowardice, superstition! What do they know about it who talk
of something else beyond? It is for the ignorant common people that
a future life has been invented, but who really believes in it?
What watcher in the cemetery has seen Death leave his tomb and hold
consultation with a priest? In olden times there were phantoms; they
are interdicted by the police in civilized cities, and no cries are now
heard issuing from the earth except from those buried in haste. Who has
silenced death, if it has ever spoken? Because funeral processions are
no longer permitted to encumber our streets, does the celestial spirit
languish?

"To die, that is the final purpose, the end. God has established it, man
discusses it; but over every door is written: 'Do what thou wilt, thou
shalt die.' What will be said if I kill Brigitte? Neither of us will
hear. In to-morrow's journal would appear the intelligence that Octave
de T-----had killed his mistress, and the day after no one would speak
of it. Who would follow us to the grave? No one who, upon returning to
his home, could not enjoy a hearty dinner; and when we were extended
side by side in our narrow, bed, the world could walk over our graves
without disturbing us.

"Is it not true, my well-beloved, is it not true that it would be well
with us? It is a soft bed, that bed of earth; no suffering can reach us
there; the occupants of the neighboring tombs will not gossip about us;
our bones will embrace in peace and without pride, for death is solace,
and that which binds does not also separate. Why should annihilation
frighten thee, poor body, destined to corruption? Every hour that
strikes dra