“Ah! poor wounds!” I said, “you will soon heal, but what balm is there for that other deeper wound?”

I had reason to hate this woman; she was, so to speak, mingled with the blood of my veins; I cursed her, but I dreamed of her.  What could I do with a dream?  By what effort of the will could I drown a memory of flesh and blood?  Lady Macbeth, having killed Duncan, saw that the ocean would not wash her hands clean again; it would not have washed away my wounds.  I said to Desgenais:  “When I sleep, her head is on my pillow.”

My life had been wrapped up in this woman; to doubt her was to doubt all; to deny her, to curse all; to lose her, to renounce all.  I no longer went out; the world seemed peopled with monsters, with horned deer and crocodiles.  To all that was said to distract my mind, I replied: 

“Yes, that is all very well, but you may rest assured I shall do nothing of the kind.”

I sat in my window and said: 

“She will come, I am sure of it; she is coming, she is turning the corner at this moment, I can feel her approach.  She can no more live without me than I without her.  What shall I say?  How shall I receive her?”

Then the thought of her perfidy occurred to me.

“Ah! let her come!  I will kill her!”

Since my last letter I had heard nothing of her.

“What is she doing?” I asked myself.  “She loves another?  Then I will love another also.  Whom shall I love?”

While thinking, I heard a far distant voice crying: 

“Thou, love another?  Two beings who love, who embrace, and who are not thou and I!  Is such a thing possible?  Are you a fool?”

“Coward!” said Desgenais, “when will you forget that woman?  Is she such a great loss?  Take the first comer and console yourself.”

“No,” I replied, “it is not such a great loss.  Have I not done what I ought?  Have I not driven her away from here?  What have you to say to that?  The rest concerns me; the bull wounded in the arena can lie down in a corner with the sword of the matador ’twixt his shoulders, and die in peace.  What can I do, tell me?  What do you mean by first comer?  You will show me a cloudless sky, trees and houses, men who talk, drink, sing, women who dance and horses that gallop.  All that is not life, it is the noise of life.  Go, go, leave me in peace.”

CHAPTER V

A PHILOSOPHER’S ADVICE

Desgenais saw that my despair was incurable, that I would neither listen to any advice nor leave my room, he took the thing seriously.  I saw him enter one evening with an expression of gravity on his face; he spoke of my mistress and continued in his tone of persiflage, saying all manner of evil of women.  While he was speaking I was leaning on my elbow, and, rising in my bed, I listened attentively.