ried! Buried! She! In that hole! Some people came--female
friends. I made my escape, and ran away; I ran, and then I walked
through the streets, and went home, and the next day I started on a
journey."

* * * * *

"Yesterday I returned to Paris, and when I saw my room again--our room,
our bed, our furniture, everything that remains of the life of a human
being after death, I was seized by such a violent attack of fresh grief,
that I was very near opening the window and throwing myself out into the
street. As I could not remain any longer among these things, between
these walls which had enclosed and sheltered her, and which retained a
thousand atoms of her, of her skin and of her breath in their
imperceptible crevices, I took up my hat to make my escape, and just as
I reached the door, I passed the large glass in the hall, which she had
put there so that she might be able to look at herself every day from
head to foot as she went out, to see if her toilet looked well, and was
correct and pretty, from her little boots to her bonnet.

"And I stopped short in front of that looking-glass in which she had so
often been reflected. So often, so often, that it also must have
retained her reflection. I was standing there, trembling, with my eyes
fixed on the glass--on that flat, profound, empty glass--which had
contained her entirely, and had possessed her as much as I had, as my
passionate looks had. I felt as if I loved that glass. I touched it, it
was cold. Oh! the recollection! sorrowful mirror, burning mirror,
horrible mirror, which makes us suffer such torments! Happy are the men
whose hearts forget everything that it has contained, everything that
has passed before it, everything that has looked at itself in it, that
has been reflected in its affection, in its love! How I suffer!

"I went on without knowing it, without wishing it; I went towards the
cemetery. I found her simple grave, a white marble cross, with these few
words:

"'_She loved, was loved, and died._'

"She is there, below, decayed! How horrible! I sobbed with my forehead
on the ground, and I stopped there for a long time, a long time. Then I
saw that it was getting dark, and a strange, a mad wish, the wish of a
despairing lover seized me. I wished to pass the night, the last night
in weeping on her grave. But I should be seen and driven out. How was I
to manage? I was cunning, and got up, and began to roam about in that