A rapture unspeakable, a faintness full of peril, invaded our whole being. She would have fallen, but that I supported her in my arms.
Heaven willed that we should at this moment hear the step and the cough of the reverend vicar, who was approaching, and we instantly drew apart.
Recovering myself, and summoning all the strength of my will, I brought to an end this terrible scene, that had been enacted in silence, with these words, which I pronounced in low and intense accents:
"The first and the last!"
I made allusion to our profane kiss, but, as if my words had been an invocation, there rose before me the vision of the Apocalypse in all its terrible majesty. I beheld Him who is indeed the First and the Last, and, with the two-edged sword that proceeded from his mouth, he pierced my soul, full of evil, of wickedness, and of sin.
All that evening I passed in a species of frenzy, an inward delirium, that I know not how I was able to conceal.
I withdrew from Pepita's house very early.
The anguish of my soul was yet more poignant in solitude.
When I recalled that kiss, and those words of farewell, I compared myself with the traitor Judas, who made use of a kiss to betray; and with the sanguinary and treacherous assassin Joab, who plunged the sharp steel into the bowels of Amasa while in the act of kissing him.
I had committed a double treason; I had been guilty of a double perfidy. I had sinned against God and against her.