idea
of remarrying Therese, and particularly to make them believe that this
idea originated with themselves, and was their own.

The comedy was long and delicate to perform. Therese and Laurent
took the parts adapted to them, and proceeded with extreme prudence,
calculating the slightest gesture, and the least word. At the bottom
of their hearts, they were devoured by a feeling of impatience that
stiffened and strained their nerves. They lived in a state of constant
irritation, and it required all their natural cowardice to compel them
to show a smiling and peaceful exterior.

If they yearned to bring the business to an end, it was because they
could no longer remain separate and solitary. Each night, the drowned
man visited them, insomnia stretched them on beds of live coal and
turned them over with fiery tongs. The state of enervation in which they
lived, nightly increased the fever of their blood, which resulted in
atrocious hallucinations rising up before them.

Therese no longer dared enter her room after dusk. She experienced the
keenest anguish, when she had to shut herself until morning in this
large apartment, which became lit-up with strange glimmers, and peopled
with phantoms as soon as the light was out. She ended by leaving her
candle burning, and by preventing herself falling asleep, so as to
always have her eyes wide open. But when fatigue lowered her lids, she
saw Camille in the dark, and reopened her eyes with a start. In the
morning she dragged herself about, broken down, having only slumbered
for a few hours at dawn.

As to Laurent, he had decidedly become a poltroon since the night he
had taken fright when passing before the cellar door. Previous to that
incident he had lived with the confidence of a brute; now, at the least
sound, he trembled and turned pale like a little boy. A shudder of
terror had suddenly shaken his limbs, and had clung to him. At night,
he suffered even more than Therese; and fright, in this great, soft,
cowardly frame, produced profound laceration to the feelings. He watched
the fall of day with cruel apprehension. On several occasions, he failed
to return home, and passed whole nights walking in the middle of the
deserted streets.

Once he remained beneath a bridge, until morning, while the rain poured
down in torrents; and there, huddled up, half frozen, not daring to rise
and ascend to the quay, he for nearly six hours watched the dirty water
running in the whitish sh