“i am going to inform you our story, for romance handiest has one, that is always the identical. I met her and loved her; that is all. And for a whole 12 months i have lived on her tenderness, on her caresses, in her palms, in her dresses, on her words, so absolutely wrapped up, sure, imprisoned in everything which came from her, that I now not knew whether it became day or night time, if i was useless or alive, in this old earth of ours, or someplace else.
“after which she died. How? I do no longer recognize. I now not understand; however one evening she got here domesticwet, for it become raining heavily, and the next day she coughed, and he or she coughed for about a week, and took to her bed. What happened I do now not recollect now, but doctors got here, wrote and went away. drugs had been added, and a few ladies made her drink them. Her hands have been hot, her brow become burning, and her eyes vivid and sad. after Ispoke to her, she replied me, but I do now not take into account what we stated. i've forgotten everything, the entirety, the whole thing! She died, and that i very well recall her slight, feeble sigh. The nurse stated: ‘Ah! and that i understood, I understood!’
“I knew not anything extra, not anything. I noticed a priest, who stated: ‘Your mistress?’ and it appeared to me as thoughhe have been insulting her. As she became useless, no person had the right to recognize that any longer, and i grew to become him out. any other came who turned into very type and smooth, and that i shed tears when he spoke to me approximately her.
“They consulted me approximately the funeral, however I do no longer don't forget whatever that they stated, even though I recollected the coffin, and the sound of the hammer once they nailed her down in it. Oh! God, God!
“She turned into buried! Buried! She! In that hollow! a few people came—lady buddies. I made my escape, and ran away; I ran, after which I walked via the streets, and went domestic, and tomorrow I began on a adventure.”
“the day gone by I lower back to Paris, and after I noticed my room again—our room, our mattress, our furnishings, the entirety that remains of the life of a individual after demise, i was seized by using this sort of violent assault of fresh grief, that i was very near commencing the window and throwing myself out into the road. As I could not stay to any extent further among these items, among those walls which had enclosed and sheltered her, and which retained one thousandatoms of her, of her pores and skin and of her breath of their imperceptible crevices, I took up my hat to make my get away, and just as I reached the door, I handed the massive glass within the corridor, which she had placed there in order that she might be able to look at herself every day from head to foot as she went out, to peer if her rest room lookedproperly, and become accurate and pretty, from her little boots to her bonnet.
“and that i stopped brief in front of that searching-glass wherein she had so regularly been contemplated. So frequently, so often, that it also have to have retained her reflection. i was status there, trembling, with my eyes constant on the glass—on that flat, profound, empty glass—which had contained her entirely, and had possessed her as a good deal as I had, as my passionate looks had. I felt as if I loved that glass. I touched it, it was bloodless. Oh! the recollection! sorrowful mirror, burning mirror, terrible replicate, which makes us suffer such torments! glad are the guys whose hearts forget about the entirety that it has contained, everything that has exceeded before it, everything that has looked at itself in it, that has been meditated in its affection, in its love! How I go through!
“I went on without understanding it, without wishing it; I went towards the cemetery. i found her easy grave, a white marble move, with these few phrases:
“‘She cherished, turned into cherished, and died.‘
“She is there, underneath, decayed! How horrible! I sobbed with my brow on the ground, and i stopped there for a long time, a long time. Then I noticed that it turned into getting dark, and a extraordinary, a mad want, the want of a despairing lover seized me. I wished to skip the night time, the remaining night time in weeping on her grave. but I ought to be seen and driven out. How changed into I to control? i used to be cunning, and got up, and started out to roam approximately in that city of the useless. I walked and walked. How small this metropolis is, in evaluation with the opposite, the city wherein we live: And but, how plenty greater severa the useless are than the living. We need excessivehomes, wide streets, and plenty room for the 4 generations who see the daylight hours at the same time, drink water from the spring, and wine from the vines, and consume the bread from the plains.
“And for all the generations of the dead, for all that ladder of humanity that has descended right down to us, there isscarcely anything afield, scarcely some thing! The earth takes them back, oblivion effaces them. Adieu!
“at the end of the abandoned cemetery, I all at once perceived that the one in which those who have been lifeless a long time end mingling with the soil, in which the crosses themselves decay, wherein the closing comers might be positionedto-morrow. it's far complete of untended roses, of sturdy and dark cypress timber, a sad and exquisite garden, nourished on human flesh.
“i was on my own, perfectly alone, and so I crouched in a inexperienced tree, and hid myself there absolutely a number of the thick and somber branches, and that i waited, clinging to the stem, like a shipwrecked guy does to a plank.
“when it changed into quite dark, I left my refuge and commenced to walk softly, slowly, inaudibly, through that groundcomplete of dead humans, and that i wandered about for a long time, however couldn't discover her again. I went on with prolonged hands, knocking towards the tombs with my fingers, my ft, my knees, my chest, despite my head, with outbeing able to discover her. I touched and felt approximately like a blind man groping his way, I felt the stones, the crosses, the iron railings, the steel wreaths, and the wreaths of faded plant life! I read the names with my palms, by means ofpassing them over the letters. What a night! What a night time! I could not find her again!
“there has been no moon. What a night time! i am anxious, horribly frightened in these slender paths, among two rows of graves. Graves! graves! graves! nothing but graves! On my proper, on my left, in front of me, round me, everywhere there had been graves! I sat down on one among them, for I couldn't stroll any more, my knees had been so susceptible. I should pay attention my heart beat! and i ought to listen something else as nicely. What? A pressured, nameless noise. become the noise in my head within the impenetrable night, or under the mysterious earth, the earth sown with human corpses? I looked all round me, but I can not say how long I remained there; i was paralyzed with terror, inebriated with fright, ready to shout out, prepared to die.
“, it appeared to me as if the slab of marble on which i was sitting, turned into transferring. actually, it changed intotransferring, as if it had been being raised. With a certain, I sprang directly to the neighboring tomb, and i noticed, sure, I enormously saw the stone which I had just quitted, upward push upright, and the useless person regarded, a nakedskeleton, which turned into pushing the stone back with its bent returned. I saw it pretty absolutely, although the nightturned into so darkish. at the go I should examine:
“‘here lies Jacques Olivant, who died at the age of 50-one. He loved his circle of relatives, was type and honorable, and died inside the grace of the Lord.‘
“The dead guy also read what became inscribed on his tombstone; then he picked up a stone off the course, a touch, pointed stone, and commenced to scrape the letters cautiously. He slowly effaced them altogether, and with the hollows of his eyes he looked at the locations where they had been engraved, and, with the top of the bone, that have been his forefinger, he wrote in luminous letters, like those traces which one strains on partitions with the end of a lucifer in shape:
“‘right here reposes Jacques Olivant, who died on the age of fifty-one. He hastened his father’s demise by way of his unkindness, as he wanted to inherit his fortune, he tortured his wife, tormented his kids, deceived his neighbors, robbed absolutely everyone he may want to, and died wretched.‘
“when he had finished writing, the dead guy stood immobile, looking at his paintings, and on turning spherical I noticedthat all the graves were open, that each one the dead bodies had emerged from them, and that every one had effaced the lies inscribed on the gravestones by their relations, and had substituted the reality rather. and that i noticed that each one were tormentors of their friends—malicious, dishonest, hypocrites, liars, rogues, calumniators, resentful; that that they had stolen, deceived, done every disgraceful, every abominable motion, these correct fathers, those faithful better halves, those dedicated sons, those chaste daughters, these sincere tradesmen, those women and men who have beencalled irreproachable, and they have been referred to as irreproachable, and they have been all writing at the identicaltime, on the edge in their eternal home, the truth, the horrible and the holy fact which anyone is ignorant of, or pretends to be ignorant of, whilst the others are alive.
“I idea that she also have to have written something on her tombstone, and now, going for walks with none worry many of the half of-open coffins, the various corpses and skeletons, I went in the direction of her, certain that I must discoverher without delay. I identified her at once, without seeing her face, which changed into blanketed via the winding-sheet, and on the marble pass, wherein shortly before I had examine: ‘She loved, became loved, and died,’ I now noticed: ‘Having long gone out sooner or later, if you want to lie to her lover, she caught bloodless in the rain and died.‘”
“It appears that they found me at daybreak, lying at the grave unconscious.”
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