of her, a pomegranate flower, which they called, I cannot tell why,
a carnation.

I loved the arts; at Paris, in happier times, I made a collection
of paintings and engravings, which are now in a sure place, and
which will be delivered to you so soon as this is possible. I pray
you, dear sister, to keep them in memory of me._

He cut a lock of his hair, enclosed it in the letter, which he folded
and wrote outside:

_To the citoyenne Clemence Dezeimeries, nee Maubel,

La Reole._

He gave all the silver he had on him to the turnkey, begging him to
forward this letter to its destination, asked for a bottle of wine,
which he drank in little sips while waiting for the cart....

After supper Gamelin ran to the _Amour Peintre_ and burst into the blue
chamber where every night Elodie was waiting for him.

"You are avenged," he told her. "Jacques Maubel is no more. The cart
that took him to his death has just passed beneath your window, escorted
by torch-bearers."

She understood:

"Wretch! it is you have killed him, and he was not my lover. I did not
know him.... I have never seen him.... What was this man? He was young,
amiable ... innocent. And you have killed him, wretch! wretch!"

She fell in a faint. But, amid the shadows of this momentary death, she
felt herself overborne by a flood at once of horror and voluptuous
ecstasy. She half revived; her heavy lids lifted to show the whites of
the eyes, her bosom swelled, her hands beat the air, seeking for her
lover. She pressed him to her in a strangling embrace, drove her nails
into the flesh, and gave him with her bleeding lips, without a word,
without a sound, the longest, the most agonized, the most delicious of
kisses.

She loved him with all her flesh, and the more terrible, cruel,
atrocious she thought him, the more she saw him reeking with the blood
of his victims, the more consuming was her hunger and thirst for him.

XVII

The 24 Frimaire, at ten in the forenoon, under a clear bright sun that
was melting the ice formed in the night, the _citoyens_ Guenot and
Delourmel, delegates of the Committee of General Security, proceeded to
the Barnabites and asked to be conducted to the Committee of
Surveillance of the Section, in the Capitular hall, whose only occupant
for the moment was the _citoyen_ Beauvisage, who was piling logs on the
fire. But they did not see him just at first because of his short,
thickset stature.

I