s committing a folly;
love is responsible for many such idiocies.
But since this woman deceived me I loathed the cruel medallion. I can not
tell with what sadness I removed that iron circlet, and what a sigh
escaped me when it was gone.
"Ah! poor wounds!" I said, "you will soon heal, but what balm is there
for that other deeper wound?"
I had reason to hate this woman; she was, so to speak, mingled with the
blood of my veins; I cursed her, but I dreamed of her. What could I do
with a dream? By what effort of the will could I drown a memory of flesh
and blood? Lady Macbeth, having killed Duncan, saw that the ocean would
not wash her hands clean again; it would not have washed away my wounds.
I said to Desgenais: "When I sleep, her head is on my pillow."
My life had been wrapped up in this woman; to doubt her was to doubt all;
to deny her, to curse all; to lose her, to renounce all. I no longer went
out; the world seemed peopled with monsters, with horned deer and
crocodiles. To all that was said to distract my mind, I replied:
"Yes, that is all very well, but you may rest assured I shall do nothing
of the kind."
I sat in my window and said:
"She will come, I am sure of it; she is coming, she is turning the corner
at this moment, I can feel her approach. She can no more live without me
than I without her. What shall I say? How shall I receive her?"
Then the thought of her perfidy occurred to me.
"Ah! let her come! I will kill her!"
Since my last letter I had heard nothing of her.
"What is she doing?" I asked myself. "She loves another? Then I will love
another also. Whom shall I love?"
While thinking, I heard a far distant voice crying:
"Thou, love another? Two beings who love, who embrace, and who are not
thou and I! Is such a thing possible? Are you a fool?"
"Coward!" said Desgenais, "when will you forget that woman? Is she such a
great loss? Take the first comer and console yourself."
"No," I replied, "it is not such a great loss. Have I not done what I
ought? Have I not driven her away from here? What have you to say to
that? The rest concerns me; the bull wounded in the arena can lie down in
a corner with the sword of the matador 'twixt his shoulders, and die in
peace. What can I do, tell me? What do you mean by first comer? You will
show me a cloudless sky, trees and houses, men who talk, drink, sing,
women who dance and horses that gallop. All that is not life, it is the
noise of lif
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