ous
of goodness and gentleness, she understood the putty face and lifeless
attitude of the wife of Olivier, and she knew it was possible to be
happy without killing one's husband. Then, she did not see herself in a
very good light, and lived in cruel indecision.

Laurent, on his side, passed through several different phases of love
and fever. First of all he enjoyed profound tranquility; he seemed as
if relieved of an enormous weight. At times he questioned himself with
astonishment, fancying he had had a bad dream. He asked himself whether
it was really true that he had flung Camille into the water, and had
seen his corpse on the slab at the Morgue.

The recollection of his crime caused him strange surprise; never could
he have imagined himself capable of murder. He so prudent, so cowardly,
shuddered at the mere thought, ice-like beads of perspiration stood
out on his forehead when he reflected that the authorities might have
discovered his crime and guillotined him. Then he felt the cold knife on
his neck. So long as he had acted, he had gone straight before him, with
the obstinacy and blindness of a brute. Now, he turned round, and at the
sight of the gulf he had just cleared, grew faint with terror.

"Assuredly, I must have been drunk," thought he; "that woman must have
intoxicated me with caresses. Good heavens! I was a fool and mad! I
risked the guillotine in a business like that. Fortunately it passed off
all right. But if it had to be done again, I would not do it."

Laurent lost all his vigor. He became inactive, and more cowardly and
prudent than ever. He grew fat and flabby. No one who had studied this
great body, piled up in a lump, apparently without bones or muscles,
would ever have had the idea of accusing the man of violence and
cruelty.

He resumed his former habits. For several months, he proved himself a
model clerk, doing his work with exemplary brutishness. At night, he
took his meal at a cheap restaurant in the Rue Saint-Victor, cutting his
bread into thin slices, masticating his food slowly, making his repast
last as long as possible. When it was over, he threw himself back
against the wall and smoked his pipe. Anyone might have taken him for
a stout, good-natured father. In the daytime, he thought of nothing; at
night, he reposed in heavy sleep free from dreams. With his face fat and
rosy, his belly full, his brain empty, he felt happy.

His frame seemed dead, and Therese barely entered his