m one to the other, ice-like
perspiration moistened his back.

"He is quite right," he murmured, "they all resemble one another. They
resemble Camille."

He retired a step or two, and seated himself on the divan, unable to
remove his eyes from the studies of heads. The first was an old man with
a long white beard; and under this white beard, the artist traced the
lean chin of Camille. The second represented a fair young girl, who
gazed at him with the blue eyes of his victim. Each of the other three
faces presented a feature of the drowned man. It looked like Camille
with the theatrical make-up of an old man, of a young girl, assuming
whatever disguise it pleased the painter to give him, but still
maintaining the general expression of his own countenance.

There existed another terrible resemblance among these heads: they all
appeared suffering and terrified, and seemed as though overburdened with
the same feeling of horror. Each of them had a slight wrinkle to the
left of the mouth, which drawing down the lips, produced a grimace. This
wrinkle, which Laurent remembered having noticed on the convulsed face
of the drowned man, marked them all with a sign of vile relationship.

Laurent understood that he had taken too long a look at Camille at the
Morgue. The image of the drowned man had become deeply impressed on his
mind; and now, his hand, without his being conscious of it, never failed
to draw the lines of this atrocious face which followed him everywhere.

Little by little, the painter, who was allowing himself to fall back
on the divan, fancied he saw the faces become animated. He had five
Camilles before him, five Camilles whom his own fingers had powerfully
created, and who, by terrifying peculiarity were of various ages and of
both sexes. He rose, he lacerated the pictures and threw them outside.
He said to himself that he would die of terror in his studio, were he to
people it with portraits of his victim.

A fear had just come over him: he dreaded that he would no more be able
to draw a head without reproducing that of the drowned man. He wished to
ascertain, at once, whether he were master of his own hand. He placed a
white canvas on his easel; and, then, with a bit of charcoal, sketched
out a face in a few lines. The face resembled Camille. Laurent swiftly
effaced this drawing and tried another.

For an hour he struggled against futility, which drove along his
fingers. At each fresh attempt, he went ba