Juliette would look at me, greatly astonished. An uneasy smile would play on her lips. She would murmur:
“Come, my dear, you say silly things. Don’t cry, come!”
While going out, I would continue to lament: “A beast would have pity on me! Yes, a beast!”
At other times, she would send Celestine for me, and I would find her in bed, cold, sad and tired. I could see that someone had been there just a moment ago, someone who had just left; I could see it in everything that surrounded me—in the bed just made, in the toilette articles arranged with overscrupulous care, in all the carefully removed traces which in my imagination reappeared again in all their hidden and sorrowful reality. I would linger in the dressing room, rummage among the drawers, examine objects, even lower myself to a shameful scrutiny of her personal belongings. … Juliette would call me:
“Come over here, my dear! What are you doing there?”
Oh! If I could only reconstruct his image, find the least trace of that man! I inhaled the air, inflated my nostrils, hoping to come upon the strong male scent, and it seemed to me that the shadow of a mighty torso spread itself over the hangings, that I distinguished huge, athletic arms, quivering thighs with bulging muscles.
“Are you coming?” Juliette would repeat.
On those nights Juliette would talk of nothing but the soul, the sky, the birds, telling me that she was in need of an ideal, of celestial dreams. Huddled in my arms, chaste as a child, she would say, with a sigh:
“Oh, how nice it is to sit like this! Tell me something beautiful, my Jean, some such thing as one reads about in poetry. I love your voice so much; it is so musical … speak to me long. You are so good, you comfort me so well! I would like to live all my life like this, always in your arms, without stirring, listening to you! Do you know what else I would like to have? Ah, I am dreaming of it all the time! I would like to have a nice little baby girl who should be like a cherub, all pink and blonde! I would nurse her myself and you would sing her some pretty little songs to put her to sleep! My Jean, when I am dead you will find in my jewelry case a little pink writing book with gold ornaments. That’s for you. Take it. There I have written down my thoughts, and you’ll see whether I loved you or not! You’ll see! Ah! Tomorrow one must get up again, go out … how annoying! Rock me, speak to me, tell me that you love my soul … my soul! …”
And she would fall asleep, and in her sleep look so white, so pure, that the bed curtains would seem like wings attached to her.
Night came on, the suburb grew quiet. From afar, belated carriages were returning, and on the sidewalk two policemen paced with heavy, dragging strides, keeping in step. … Several times the door of the furnished house opened and closed; I heard some creaky noise, the rustling of a woman’s dress, whispering voices in the hallway. But it was not Juliette. The silent house seemed to have been asleep a long while. I left the sofa, lit my lamp, looked at the clock; it was three o’clock.
“She won’t come! Now it’s all over. She won’t come!”
I stood at the window. The street was deserted, the dark sky hung over the houses like a leaden lid. Over yonder in the direction of Boulevard Haussman large vehicles were coming downhill, shaking the night with their loud jolting. … A rat darted from one sidewalk to the other and disappeared into a hole in the gutter. … I saw a homeless dog with hanging head and tail between its hind legs passing, stopping at the doors, smelling the gutter, dolefully walking away.
I shook with fever, my brain was inflamed, my hands were moist and again I felt a stifling sensation in my chest.
“She won’t come! Where is she? Did she go back to her house? Where, in what filthy hole of this great impure night is she wallowing?”
What made me particularly angry was that she did not let me know ahead of time. She had received my card. She knew she was not coming. And she did not send me a single word! I had cried, implored, begged her on my knees … and not a word from her! How many tears, how much blood must one shed to soften that heart of flint? How could she run after pleasure with her ears still full of the echoes of my sobs, her mouth still moist with my entreating kisses? The most wretched women, the most detestable creatures at some time or other call a temporary halt to their life of dissipation and prey; there are moments when they permit the sun to penetrate their chilled hearts, when turning their eyes to heaven they pray for love that pardons and redeems! But Juliette … never! Something more insensible than fate, something more relentless than death was driving her, was eternally drawing and spurring her on without respite, without pause, from impure to criminal love, from that which dishonors to that which kills! The more days passed, the more marks of infamy debauchery left on her. With her passion, formerly so normal and healthy, were now mingled a depraved inquisitiveness and that savage unsatiableness, that overstimulation of irrepressible lust which comes as result of excessive and sterile pleasures. Except on the nights when exhaustion invested the sordid reality of her existence with unexpected forms of the purest ideal, one could see upon her the imprints of a thousand different and refined corruptions, of a thousand grotesque perversions practiced upon her by those palled by vice and age. Words and cries often escaped
