“So I said to the father:
“ ‘You may be right … we might try … try by all means … but … but … you’ll never find a man who’ll consent to it.’
“ ‘I have found one,’ he said in a low voice.
“I was amazed.
“ ‘A decent fellow?’ I stammered. ‘A man in your own walk of life?’
“ ‘Yes … absolutely,’ he replied.
“ ‘Ah. … And … might I ask you his name?’
“ ‘I was just coming to tell you and ask your advice. It is Monsieur Gaston du Boys de Lucelles.’
“I nearly exclaimed: ‘The swine!’ but I kept my mouth shut, and after a pause I murmured:
“ ‘Yes, quite all right. I see no obstacle.’
“The poor man shook my hand.
“ ‘They shall be married next month,’ he said.
“Monsieur Gaston du Boys de Lucelles was a young scamp of good family who had consumed his paternal inheritance and had run into debt in a thousand disreputable ways; he was now hunting for a new method of obtaining money.
“He had found this one.
“He was a good-looking lad, well set up, but a rake, one of the loathsome tribe of provincial rakes. He seemed to give promise of being an adequate husband, and one that an allowance would easily remove again.
“He came to the house to press his suit and show himself off before the beautiful idiot, whom he seemed to like. He brought her flowers, kissed her hands, sat at her feet and gazed at her with tender eyes; but she took no notice of any of his attentions, and in no way distinguished him from any of the people among whom she lived.
“The marriage took place.
“You will understand to what a degree my curiosity was inflamed.
“The next day I went to see Berthe, to judge from her face whether any inner part of her had been stirred. But I found her just the same as on other days, solely preoccupied with the clock and dinner. Her husband, on the contrary, seemed very fond of her, and tried to rouse her gaiety and affection by little teasing games such as one plays with kittens.
“He had found nothing better.
“I then started to pay frequent visits to the newly married couple, and I soon perceived that the young woman recognised her husband and directed upon him the greedy looks which hitherto she had lavished only upon sweet things to eat.
“She followed his movements, distinguished his step on the stairs, or in a neighbouring room, clapped her hands when he came in, and her transfigured countenance burned with a flame of profound happiness and desire.
“She loved him with all her body, with all her soul, her poor feeble soul, with all her heart, the poor heart of a grateful animal.
“She was truly an admirable innocent picture of simple passion, of passion at once carnal and modest, such as nature had set in human beings before man complicated and distorted it with all the subtleties of sentiment.
“As for the man, he quickly wearied of the beautiful, passionate, dumb creature. He no longer spent more than a few hours of each day with her, finding it enough to devote his nights to her.
“And she began to suffer.
“From morning to night she waited for him, her eyes fixed on the clock, not even paying attention to meals, for he always went away for his meals, to Clermont, Châtel-Guyon, Royat, anywhere so as not to be at home.
“She grew thin.
“Every other thought, every other desire, every other interest, every other vague hope, vanished from her mind; the hours in which she did not see him became for her hours of terrible torment. Soon he began to sleep away from her. He spent his nights at the Casino at Royat with women, coming home early at the first gleam of day.
“She refused to go to bed before he returned. She stayed motionless on a chair, her eyes vaguely fixed on the little brass hands which turned round and round in slow, regular progress, round the china dial whereon the hours were inscribed.
“She heard the distant trotting of his horse, and would start up with a bound; then, when he came into the room, she would raise her fingers to the clock with a ghostly gesture, as though to say to him: ‘Look how late it is!’ He began to be afraid in the presence of this loving, jealous idiot; he became possessed of a slow resentment, as an animal might be. One night he struck her.
“I was sent for. She was screaming in a terrible fit of grief, rage, passion, I knew not what. How can one tell what is going on in these rudimentary brains?
“I calmed her with injections of morphine; and I forbade her ever to see the man again, for I realised that the marriage would inevitably end in her death.
“Then she went mad! Yes, my dear fellow, that idiot girl went mad. She thinks of him always, and waits for him. She waits for him all day and all night, every moment, waking or sleeping, perpetually. As I saw her growing thinner and thinner, and as her obstinate gaze never left the faces of the clocks, I had all these instruments for measuring time removed from the house. Thus I have taken from her the possibility of counting the hours, and of forever searching her dim memory for the moment at which once upon a time he had been wont to come home. I hope in the long run to kill the remembrance of it in her, and to extinguish the spark of reason that I took such trouble to set alight.
“The other day I tried an experiment. I offered her my watch. She took it and studied it for some time; then she began to scream in a terrible way, as though the sight of the little instrument had suddenly reawakened the memory that was beginning to slumber.
“She is thin in these days, pitifully thin, with shining hollow
