were prepared for the worst.
“One day she was carried into the house cold, lifeless, dead. She had fallen unconscious in the garden. The doctor certified that life was extinct. I kept watch for two nights and a day; with my own hands I laid her in the coffin which I accompanied to the cemetery, where it was placed in the family vault, in Lorraine in the depth of the country.
“It had been my wish to have her buried with her jewellery, bracelets, necklaces, rings—all of the presents I had given her—and dressed in her first ball dress.
“You may easily imagine my state of mind when I got back home. She was the only one left, for my wife had been dead for many years. Half mad, completely exhausted, I went up to my room and sank into an easy-chair, incapable of thought, too weak to move. I was nothing but a suffering, vibrating machine, a thing that had been flayed alive; my soul was like an open wound.
“My old valet, Prosper, who had helped to lay Juliette in her coffin, and dress her for her last sleep, silently entered the room and asked:
“ ‘Will Monsieur have something?’
“I shook my head.
“ ‘Monsieur is wrong. Something will happen to Monsieur if he does not take care. Will Monsieur allow me to put him to bed?’
“I answered: ‘No, leave me alone,’ and he retired.
“The hours slipped by unperceived. Oh! What a terrible night! It was cold, the fire had died out in the huge grate, and the wind, the winter wind, frozen and laden with ice, beat against the windowpanes with a fiendish regularity.
“The hours slipped by unperceived. There I was, unable to sleep, broken, crushed, with eyes wide open, legs outstretched, body limp and inanimate, and my mind stupefied. Suddenly the big front door bell rang. The start I gave made the chair creak under me. The solemn, heavy sound rang through the empty building as through a vault. I turned round to see what time it was and found it was two o’clock. Who could possibly be coming at that time?
“Impatiently the bell rang again twice. No doubt the servants were afraid to get up. I took a candle, went downstairs and was going to ask: ‘Who’s there?’ but felt ashamed of such weakness and slowly drew the heavy bolts. My heart was beating rapidly, I was afraid. I opened the door abruptly and distinguished a white figure standing in the darkness, rather like a phantom.
“I drew back, paralysed with anguish, stammering:
“ ‘Who—who—who are you?’
“A voice replied: ‘It is I, father.’
“It was my daughter.
“I really thought I must be mad, and I retreated backward before the advancing spectre: I moved away, making a sign with my hand as if to drive the phantom away, that peculiar gesture which you have already noticed and which I have never got rid of.
“ ‘Don’t be frightened, father; I was not dead,’ the apparition said. ‘Somebody tried to steal my rings and cut off one of my fingers; the blood began to flow and that brought me to life again.’ And then I saw that she was covered with blood.
“I fell on my knees, choking with sobs and panting for breath.
“When I had regained a little self-control, though I was still too distraught to realise the terrible happiness that had befallen me, I made her go up to my room, put her in the easy-chair, and pulled the bell violently for Prosper to light the fire, get something to drink, and summon assistance.
“The man entered, stared at my daughter, gasped with alarm and horror, and dropped dead on the ground.
“It was he who had opened the vault, who had mutilated and then left my child, unable to destroy the traces of his theft. He had not even taken the trouble to replace the coffin in its niche, feeling quite convinced that I would not suspect him in whom I trusted absolutely.
“You see, sir, what an unhappy couple we are.”
He was silent. Night had fallen, enveloping the little desolate mournful valley in its gloom, and a kind of mysterious dread came over me at being in the company of these strange beings: the dead returned from the grave, and the father with his alarming gestures.
What could I say? I murmured:
“What a horrible thing!”
Then, after a moment’s silence, I added: “Let us go back, I think it’s rather cold.” And we returned to the hotel.
Confessing
The noon sun poured fiercely down upon the fields. They stretched in undulating folds between the clumps of trees that marked each farmhouse; the different crops, ripe rye and yellowing wheat, pale-green oats, dark-green clover, spread a vast striped cloak, soft and rippling, over the naked body of the earth.
In the distance, on the crest of a slope, was an endless line of cows, ranked like soldiers, some lying down, others standing, their large eyes blinking in the burning light, chewing the cud and grazing on a field of clover as broad as a lake.
Two women, mother and daughter, were walking with a swinging step, one behind the other, towards this regiment of cattle. Each carried two zinc pails, slung outwards from the body on a hoop from a cask; at each step the metal sent out a dazzling white flash under the sun that struck full upon it.
The women did not speak. They were on their way to milk the cows. When they arrive, they set down one of their pails and approach the first two cows, making them stand up with a kick in the ribs from wooden-shod feet. The beast rises slowly, first on its forelegs, then with more difficulty raises its large hind quarters, which seem to be weighted down by the enormous udder of livid pendulous flesh.
The two Malivoires, mother and daughter, kneeling beneath the animal’s belly, tug with a swift movement of their hands at the swollen teat, which at each squeeze sends a slender jet of milk into the pail. The yellowish froth mounts to
