s dying--Herschel says it is of
cold; who holds in his hand the drop of condensed vapor and watches it
as it dries up, as a fisher watches a grain of sand in his hand? That
mighty law of attraction that suspends the world in space, torments
it--and consumes it in endless desire--every planet that carries its
load of misery and groans on its axle--calls to each other across the
abyss, and each wonders which will stop first. God controls them; they
accomplish assiduously and eternally their appointed and useless task;
they whirl about, they suffer, they burn, they become extinct and they
light up with new flame; they descend and they reascend, they follow
and yet they avoid one another, they interlace like rings; they carry
on their surface thousands of beings who are ceaselessly renewed; the
beings move about, cross one another's paths, clasp one another for an
hour, and then fall, and others rise in their place.

"Where life fails, life hastens to the spot; where air is wanting, air
rushes; no disorder, everything is regulated, marked out, written down
in lines of gold and parables of fire; everything keeps step with the
celestial music along the pitiless paths of life; and all for nothing!
And we, poor nameless dreams, pale and sorrowful apparitions, helpless
ephemera, we who are animated by the breath of a second in order that
death may exist, we exhaust ourselves with fatigue in order to prove
that we are living for a purpose, and that something indefinable is
stirring within us.

"We hesitate to turn against our breasts a little piece of steel, or to
blow out our brains with a little instrument no larger than our hands;
it seems to us that chaos would return again; we have written and
revised the laws both human and divine, and we are afraid of our
catechisms; we suffer thirty years without murmuring and imagine that we
are struggling; finally suffering becomes the stronger, we send a pinch
of powder into the sanctuary of intelligence, and a flower pierces the
soil above our grave."

As I finished these words I directed the knife I held in my hand against
Brigitte's bosom. I was no longer master of myself, and in my delirious
condition I know not what might have happened; I threw back the
bed-clothing to uncover the heart, when I discovered on her white bosom
a little ebony crucifix.

I recoiled, seized with sudden fear; my hand relaxed, my weapon fell to
the floor. It was Brigitte's aunt who had given her that