After endless preparations the date of our departure was fixed. But now a new difficulty arose, a difficulty which I had long forseen and which was accompanied by a series of unpleasant scenes. The dog was still alive! How much annoyance it had caused me already! especially as so much attention was devoted to him that the children were habitually neglected.
However, the day had dawned when to my inexpressible joy Marie's idol and my evil genius, old, diseased, half-rotten, was to end its days; Marie herself now desired the animal's death, and only the thought of the innocent pleasure which its disappearance would cause me led her to postpone the "dog-question" again and again, and invent fresh annoyances to make me pay for the longed-for relief.
But at last a farewell feast was arranged. She made heart-rending scenes, had a fowl killed, of which I, still a semi-invalid, received the bones, and then—we were in the country at the time—she went to town, taking the dog with her.
After two days' absence she announced her return in a few cold words. What else could a murderer expect? Full of happiness, freed of a burden which I had borne for six years, I went to the landing-stage to meet her, expecting to find her alone. She received me as if I were a poisoner, her eyes were suffused with tears, and when I approached to kiss her, she pushed me aside. Carrying in her arms a large parcel of extraordinary shape, she walked on, slowly, as if she were walking in a funeral procession, with a certain rhythm as if to the strains of a funeral march.
The parcel held the corpse! The funeral ceremony had been reserved for me! She ordered a coffin and sent for two men to dig a grave. Although determined to have nothing to do with the matter, I was compelled to be present at the obsequies of the murdered innocent. It was most touching. Marie collected her thoughts and then prayed to God for the victim and its slayer. Amid the laughter of the onlookers she placed a cross on the grave, the cross of the Saviour who had—at last—delivered me from a monster, innocent itself, but yet terrible as the embodiment and instrument of the malice of a woman who lacked the courage to persecute her husband openly.
After a few days' mourning, during which she refused to have anything to say to me—for she could have nothing to say to a murderer—we left for Paris.