A knife glistens in Juliette’s hands. … She is going to kill herself with it. … I grasp her arms, I shout: “No, no, Juliette, no, I don’t want you to! … I love you! … No, no. … I don’t want you to!”
My arms are brought together in an embrace, but I enclose nothing but space. … I look around me, frightened, the place is empty! … I look again. … The gas is burning with a yellow flame over the dressing table … rumpled skirts are strewn all over the carpet … shoes lie scattered about. … And pale daylight is stealing into the room through the open spaces in the shutters. … I begin to fear in earnest that Juliette may kill herself, for otherwise why should this vision arise before me? … On tiptoe, quietly I walk toward the door and listen. … A feeble sigh reaches my ear, then a wailing, then a sob. … And like a fool I rush into the room. … A voice speaks to me in the darkness, the voice of Juliette:
“Ah! my Jean! My dear little Jean!”
And chastely, as Christ kissed Magdalene, I kissed her on the forehead.
VIII
“Lirat! Ah, at last it is you! For a week I have been looking for you, have been writing to you, have been calling you, have been waiting for you. … Lirat, my dear Lirat, save me!”
“What? My God! What’s wrong?”
“I want to kill myself.”
“Kill yourself! Well, that’s an old story. Come, there is no danger.”
“I want to kill myself! I want to kill myself! …”
Lirat looked at me, blinked his eyes and paced up and down the study with long strides.
“My poor Mintié!” he said, “if you were a statesman, a stockbroker or. … Well, I don’t know … say a grocer, an art critic, or a journalist, I would say to you: ‘You are unhappy and you have had enough of life, my boy! Go ahead, kill yourself!’ And with these words I would leave you. But here you have that rare opportunity of being an artist, you possess that divine gift of seeing, understanding, feeling things which others can’t see, can’t understand and can’t feel! There are harmonies in nature which exist only for you and which others will never hear … you have all the real joys of life, the only joys, the noble, grand and pure ones, the joys which make you forget men and which render you almost Godlike. And because some woman has deceived you, you want to renounce all that? She has deceived you; it is evident that she has deceived you. … Well, what else did you expect her to do? And what concern is it of yours, even if she has? …”
“Please don’t jeer at me. You don’t know anything, Lirat. You don’t suspect anything. I am lost, dishonored!”
“Dishonored, my friend? Are you sure of it? Do you have unclean debts? You’ll pay them off!”
“It is not a question of that! I am dishonored! dishonored, do you understand? It has been four months since I have given Juliette any money … four months! And here I live, I eat, have my amusements. Every evening … before dinner … late at night. … Juliette re-enters the house. She is worn-out, pale, her hair disheveled. From what dens, what alcoves, what arms is she returning? Upon what pillows has her head reclined! Sometimes I see pieces of bedclothes insolently hanging on the top of her hair. … She no longer feels ashamed of it, she does not even take the trouble to lie about it … one might think it had been arranged between us. She undresses, and I believe she takes a perverse delight in showing me her ill-fastened skirts, her unlaced corset, all the disorder of her rumpled clothes, of her loosened garments which come off, falling to the ground about her, and lie conspicuously on the floor, filling the bedroom with the breath of other people!
“I tremble with rage and want to sink my teeth into her body; my wrath is kindled to a frenzy and boils within me—I feel like killing her. And I say nothing! Often I even come up to her to embrace her … but she pushes me away: ‘No, leave me alone, I am tired!’ At first, when this abominable life started, I used to beat her … for you must know, Lirat, there isn’t a disgraceful act that I have not committed. I have exhausted every form of indecency—yes, I beat her! She bent her back … and hardly uttered a complaint. One evening I seized her by the throat, I threw her to the ground. Oh! I had quite made up my mind to finish her. While I was strangling her, I turned my head away for fear that I might be moved to pity, fixed my gaze upon a flower design on the carpet, and in order to hear nothing, neither her wailing nor rattling, I shrieked out inarticulate words, like a possessed one. How long did it last? Soon she ceased struggling … her muscles relaxed. … I felt her vitality giving out under my fingers … a few more convulsions … and that was the end. … She did not stir anymore. And suddenly I saw her black-blue face, her contracted eyes, her mouth, large and wide open, her rigid body, her motionless arms. And like a madman I rushed into every room of the apartment, calling the servants: ‘Help, help, I have killed Madame! I have killed Madame!’
“I fled, tumbling down the stairway, without a hat, dashed into the caretakers: ‘Go upstairs quickly, I have killed Madame!’ Then I darted out on the street, in a frenzy. The whole night I was running without knowing whither, rushing
