"From the window."
I gave her a few pence.
"Tell me about it," I said.
No doubt she strongly wished to talk of it, no doubt, too, she had often repeated this history for the last six months, for she retailed it at great length, as a story well-known by heart and invariable in its repetition.
Then I learnt that for thirty years, the old deaf man had had a mistress in the neighbouring village, and that his wife having learnt this by chance from a passing carter, who spoke of it without knowing who she was, rushed panting and bewildered to the attic, and there hurled herself from the window, not perhaps with deliberate purpose, but impelled by the torture of the horrible agony caused by her discovery, which goaded her forward in an irresistible gust of passion, like a whip lashing and cutting. She had flown up the staircase, burst open the door, and without knowing, without being able to stop her headlong speed, had continued to run straight ahead and had leaped into empty space.
He had known nothing of it; he did not know even now; he would never know, because he was deaf. His wife was dead, that was all. All the world must die some time or other!
I could see him at a distance giving orders by signs to his labourers.
Then I caught sight of the carriage which was waiting for me in the shade of a tree, and I returned to Saint-Tropez.
April 14th.