Thereupon he, deeply moved, would seize her, press her to his heart and carry her away in his arms, saying:
“Oh! no, do not die. I need you to comfort me, to cure all the wounds the other has inflicted on me.”
But that is a mere poet’s dream, one of the meetings that life can not bring about.
Streets, more streets, then a square and a bridge whose lanterns make another luminous bridge in the black water. Here is the river at last. The mist of that damp, soft autumn evening causes all of this huge Paris, entirely strange to her as it is, to appear to her like an enormous confused mass, which her ignorance of the landmarks magnifies still more. This is the place where she must die.
Poor little Desiree!
She recalls the country excursion which Frantz had organized for her. That breath of nature, which she breathed that day for the first time, falls to her lot again at the moment of her death. “Remember,” it seems to say to her; and she replies mentally, “Oh! yes, I remember.”
She remembers only too well. When it arrives at the end of the quay, which was bedecked as for a holiday, the furtive little shadow pauses at the steps leading down to the bank.
Almost immediately there are shouts and excitement all along the quay:
“Quick—a boat—grappling-irons!” Boatmen and policemen come running from all sides. A boat puts off from the shore with a lantern in the bow.
The flower-women awake, and, when one of them asks with a yawn what is happening, the woman who keeps the cafe that crouches at the corner of the bridge answers coolly: