nervation, pleasure, and death. The
poor woman walked slowly, oppressed by the shadows, amidst which
appeared, by the flickering light of her candle, extravagant plants,
recalling monsters, living creatures, hideous deformities. All at once
she caught sight of the picture of Christ. She opened the door
separating her from it, and fell on her knees. She prayed to him,
wildly, at first, stammering forth words of true, passionate, and
despairing invocations. Then, the ardor of her appeal slackening, she
raised her eyes towards him, and was struck with anguish. He resembled
Pretty-boy so strongly, in the trembling light of this solitary candle,
lighting the picture from below, that it was no longer Christ--it was
her lover who was looking at her. They were his eyes, his forehead, the
expression of his face, his cold and haughty air.

She stammered: "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!" and the name "George" rose to her
lips. All at once she thought that at that very moment, perhaps, George
had her daughter. He was alone with her somewhere. He with Susan! She
repeated: "Jesus, Jesus!" but she was thinking of them--her daughter and
her lover. They were alone in a room, and at night. She saw them. She
saw them so plainly that they rose up before her in place of the
picture. They were smiling at one another. They were embracing. She rose
to go towards them, to take her daughter by the hair and tear her from
his clasp. She would seize her by the throat and strangle her, this
daughter whom she hated--this daughter who was joining herself to this
man. She touched her; her hands encountered the canvas; she was pressing
the feet of Christ. She uttered a loud cry and fell on her back. Her
candle, overturned, went out.

What took place then? She dreamed for a long time wild, frightful
dreams. George and Susan continually passed before her eyes, with Christ
blessing their horrible loves. She felt vaguely that she was not in her
room. She wished to rise and flee; she could not. A torpor had seized
upon her, which fettered her limbs, and only left her mind on the alert,
tortured by frightful and fantastic visions, lost in an unhealthy
dream--the strange and sometimes fatal dream engendered in human minds
by the soporific plants of the tropics, with their strange and
oppressive perfumes.

The next morning Madame Walter was found stretched out senseless, almost
asphyxiated before "Jesus Walking on the Waters." She was so ill that
her life was feared f