Now this for example. … The faint glimmer of the night-lamp flickers feebly upon the curtains and the furniture; Juliette is asleep, early in the morning, the morning after our first night. One of her arms, bare, rests upon the sheet; the other, also bare, is gracefully coiled up under her nape. All around her face—which reflects the pallid light of the bed, a face which looks like that of a murdered person, with eyes encircled by dark rings—her loose black hair is scattered, sinuous and flowing like waves! I contemplate her eagerly. … She is sleeping close to me, with a deep calm sleep, like a child. And for the first time possession occasions no regret, no disgust in me; for the first time I am able to look at a woman who has just given herself to me. I cannot express my feelings at this moment. What I feel is something indefinable, something exceedingly sweet and at the same time very grave and holy, a sort of religious ecstasy similar to the one which I experienced at the time of my first communion. … I recognize the same mystic transport, the same great and sacred awe; it is like another revelation of God taking place in the transplendent light of my soul. … It seems to me that God has come down to me for the second time. … She sleeps, in the silence of the room, with her mouth half-open, her nostrils motionless; she sleeps with a sleep so gentle that I cannot even hear her breathing. … A flower on the mantelpiece is there, withering, and a whiff of its dying fragrance reaches me. I can’t hear Juliette at all, she is only asleep, she is breathing, she is alive and yet I can’t hear her. I move nearer to her and gently bend over her, almost touching her with my lips, and in an almost inaudible voice I call her.
“Juliette!”
Juliette does not stir. But I feel her breath, fainter than that of the flower, her breath always so fresh, with which at this moment there is mingled, like a waft of warmth, her fragrant breath which blends with an imperceptible odor of decay.
“Juliette!”
Juliette does not stir. But the sheet which follows the curves of her body, showing the shape of her limbs, loosens itself into a rigid crease, and the sheet looks to me like a shroud. And the thought of death suddenly comes to my mind and lingers there. I begin to be afraid that Juliette is dead.
“Juliette!”
Juliette does not stir. My whole being is now plunged into a frenzy of fear, and while in my ears the distant knell resounds, around the bed I see the light of a thousand funeral tapers trembling under the vibrations of a de profundis prayer. My hair stands on end, my teeth chatter and I shout, I shout:
“Juliette! Juliette!”
At last Juliette moves her head, heaves a sigh and murmurs, as if in a dream:
“Jean! … My Jean!”
Forcefully I grasp her into my arms as if to defend her against someone; I draw her toward me and trembling, with my blood running cold, I beg her:
“Juliette! … My own Juliette … don’t sleep. … Oh, please don’t sleep! … You frighten me! … Let me see your eyes; talk to me, talk to me! … And pinch me, pinch yourself, too, pinch me hard. … But don’t sleep anymore, please. …”
She cuddles into my arms, whispers some unintelligible words and falls asleep again, her head hanging on my shoulder. … But the apparition of death, stronger than the awakening of love, persists, and although I feel the regular beating of Juliette’s heart against my own, it does not vanish until day.
How often since that time, when with her, I have felt the frigid touch of death in her fiery kisses! … And how often in the midst of rapture there appeared to me the sudden and capering image of the singer at the Bouffes! … How many times did his lustful laugh drown the ardent words of Juliette! … How often I have heard him say to me, while his image kept leaping above me: “Go ahead, glut yourself upon this imbecile body, upon this unclean body which I defiled! … Go on! … Go on! … wherever you touch your lips you will breathe the impure odor of my own; wherever your caresses may wander upon this body of a prostitute they will encounter the filthy marks of my own manhandling. … Go ahead, wash her, your Juliette, wash her in the lustral water of your love, cleanse her with the acid of your mouth. … Strip off her skin with your teeth, if you will; you will efface nothing, never, because the mark of infamy with which I have branded her is ineffaceable.”
And I often had a passionate desire to question Juliette about this singer whose vision haunted me so much. But I had not the courage. I contented myself with trying to get at the truth in an ingenious, roundabout way: often, in the midst of conversation I would mention a name unexpectedly, hoping, yes hoping that Juliette would be a little put out by it, that she would blush, would feel embarrassed and would say: “Yes, that’s the one.” I thus exhausted the list of names of all the singers in all the theatres, without gaining the least evidence of perturbation in Juliette’s impenetrable attitude.
It took us almost three months to install ourselves completely. The upholsterers could never get through with their work and Juliette’s caprices often called for changes that took a long time to accomplish. Every day she would come back
