“And then she died.  How?  I do not know.  I no longer know; but one evening she came home wet, for it was raining heavily, and the next day she coughed, and she coughed for about a week, and took to her bed.  What happened I do not remember now, but doctors came, wrote and went away.  Medicines were brought, and some women made her drink them.  Her hands were hot, her forehead was burning, and her eyes bright and sad.  When I spoke to her, she answered me, but I do not remember what we said.  I have forgotten everything, everything, everything!  She died, and I very well remember her slight, feeble sigh.  The nurse said:  ’Ah! and I understood, I understood!’

“I knew nothing more, nothing.  I saw a priest, who said:  ’Your mistress?’ and it seemed to me as if he were insulting her.  As she was dead, nobody had the right to know that any longer, and I turned him out.  Another came who was very kind and tender, and I shed tears when he spoke to me about her.

“They consulted me about the funeral, but I do not remember anything that they said, though I recollected the coffin, and the sound of the hammer when they nailed her down in it.  Oh!  God, God!

“She was buried!  Buried!  She!  In that hole!  Some people came—­female friends.  I made my escape, and ran away; I ran, and then I walked through the streets, and went home, and the next day I started on a journey.”

* * * * *

“Yesterday I returned to Paris, and when I saw my room again—­our room, our bed, our furniture, everything that remains of the life of a human being after death, I was seized by such a violent attack of fresh grief, that I was very near opening the window and throwing myself out into the street.  As I could not remain any longer among these things, between these walls which had enclosed and sheltered her, and which retained a thousand atoms of her, of her skin and of her breath in their imperceptible crevices, I took up my hat to make my escape, and just as I reached the door, I passed the large glass in the hall, which she had put there so that she might be able to look at herself every day from head to foot as she went out, to see if her toilet looked well, and was correct and pretty, from her little boots to her bonnet.

“And I stopped short in front of that looking-glass in which she had so often been reflected.  So often, so often, that it also must have retained her reflection.  I was standing there, trembling, with my eyes fixed on the glass—­on that flat, profound, empty glass—­which had contained her entirely, and had possessed her as much as I had, as my passionate looks had.  I felt as if I loved that glass.  I touched it, it was cold.  Oh! the recollection! sorrowful mirror, burning mirror, horrible mirror, which makes us suffer such torments!  Happy are the men whose hearts forget everything that it has contained, everything that has passed before it, everything that has looked at itself in it, that has been reflected in its affection, in its love!  How I suffer!