be, intended to go
to the commissary of police. Then, they either fought or implored one
another to do nothing.

In their anger, they shouted out that they would run and reveal
everything, and terrified each other to death. After this they
shuddered, they humbled themselves, and promised with bitter tears to
maintain silence. They suffered most horribly, but had not the courage
to cure themselves by placing a red-hot iron on the wound. If they
threatened one another to confess the crime, it was merely to strike
terror into each other and drive away the thought, for they would never
have had strength to speak and seek peace in punishment.

On more than twenty occasions, they went as far as the door of the
commissariat of police, one following the other. Now it was Laurent who
wanted to confess the murder, now Therese who ran to give herself
up. But they met in the street, and always decided to wait, after an
interchange of insults and ardent prayers.

Every fresh attack made them more suspicious and ferocious than before.
From morning till night they were spying upon one another. Laurent
barely set his foot outside the lodging in the arcade, and if,
perchance, he did absent himself, Therese never failed to accompany him.
Their suspicions, their fright lest either should confess, brought
them together, united them in atrocious intimacy. Never, since their
marriage, had they lived so tightly tied together, and never had they
experienced such suffering. But, notwithstanding the anguish they
imposed on themselves, they never took their eyes off one another. They
preferred to endure the most excruciating pain, rather than separate for
an hour.

If Therese went down to the shop, Laurent followed, afraid that she
might talk to a customer; if Laurent stood in the doorway, observing the
people passing through the arcade, Therese placed herself beside him to
see that he did not speak to anyone. When the guests were assembled on
Thursday evenings, the murderers addressed supplicating glances to each
other, listening to one another in terror, one accomplice expecting the
other to make some confession, and giving an involving interpretation to
sentences only just commenced.

Such a state of warfare could not continue any longer.

Therese and Laurent had both reached the point of pondering on the
advisability of extricating themselves from the consequences of their
first crime, by committing a second. It became absolutely nece