has descended upon me. ... I feel the heavy rocks on which my neck has crashed, against which my flesh has been bruised. . . . Why, with all the black despair in which I find myself, do these high walls rise up towards heaven? Why these dismal birds flying about in unexpected sunshine? . . . Why is this thing crouched down beside me crying? . . . Why? . . . I don't know. . . .

I am going to kill her. . . . She is in her bedroom without lights, in bed. ... I am in the dressing room pacing up and down. . . I am walking back and forth with constrained breath, my head on fire, with clinched fists eager to inflict punishment. ... I am going to kill her! . . . From time to time I stop near the door and listen. . . . She is crying. . . . And in a minute I will enter. ... I will enter and pull her off the bed, drag her by the hair, knock her senseless, break her neck against the marble edges of the fireplace. . . . I want the room to be red with her blood. ... I want to see her body beaten into lumps of battered flesh which I shall throw out with the rest of the rubbish and which the garbage man will take away tomorrow. . . . Cry, cry! ... In a minute you'll howl, my dearest! . . . Haven't I been stupid! . . . To think of everything but that ! . . . To fear everything except that ! . . . To say to myself : " she will leave me " and never, never: "she will deceive me. . . ." To have failed to divine the nature of this den, this old man. all this filth ! . . . Really I had never thought of it before, blind fool that I was. She must have laughed when I implored her not to leave me! . . . To leave me. . . . Ah ! yes, to leave me ! . . . She did not want to, of course. . . . Now I understand it. ... I inspired her neither with probity of heart nor with decency of conduct ; I was to her just a label, a trade mark. . . a mark of superior value! . . . Yes, when they saw