depths of the love which gives and immolates itself. And now
their long, tear-drenched tenderness, their pure idyl of suffering, was
ending in this brutal separation; she on her side saved, radiant amidst
the hosannas of the triumphant Basilica; and he lost, sobbing with
wretchedness, bowed down in the depths of the dark crypt in an icy,
grave-like solitude. It was as though he had just lost her again, and
this time forever and forever.

All at once Pierre felt the sharp stab which this thought dealt his
heart. He at last understood his pain--a sudden light illumined the
terrible crisis of woe amidst which he was struggling. He had lost Marie
for the first time on the day when he had become a priest, saying to
himself that he might well renounce his manhood since she, stricken in
her sex by incurable illness, would never be a woman. But behold! she
_was_ cured. Behold! she _had_ become a woman. She had all at once
appeared to him very strong, very beautiful, living, and desirable. He,
who was dead, however, could not become a man again. Never more would he
be able to raise the tombstone which crushed and imprisoned his flesh.
She fled away alone, leaving him in the cold grave. The whole wide world
was opening before her with smiling happiness, with the love which laughs
in the sunlit paths, with the husband, with children, no doubt. Whereas
he, buried, as it were to his shoulders, had naught of his body free,
save his brain, and that remained free, no doubt, in order that he might
suffer the more. She had still been his so long as she had not belonged
to another; and if he had been enduring such agony during the past hour,
it was only through this final rending which, this time, parted her from
him forever and forever.

Then rage shook Pierre from head to foot. He was tempted to return to the
Basilica, and cry the truth aloud to Marie. The miracle was a lie! The
helpful beneficence of an all-powerful Divinity was but so much illusion!
Nature alone had acted, life had conquered once again. And he would have
given proofs: he would have shown how life, the only sovereign, worked
for health amid all the sufferings of this terrestrial sphere. And then
they would have gone off together; they would have fled far, far away,
that they might be happy. But a sudden terror took possession of him.
What! lay hands upon that little spotless soul, kill all belief in it,
fill it with the ruins which worked such havoc in his own soul? I