I shook with fever, my brain was inflamed, my hands were moist and again I felt a stifling sensation in my chest.
"She won't come! Where is she? Did she go back to her house? Where, in what filthy hole of this great impure night is she wallowing?"
What made me particularly angry was that she did not let me know ahead of time. She had received my card. She knew she was not coming. And she did not send me a single word! I had cried, implored, begged her on my knees ... and not a word from her! How many tears, how much blood must one shed to soften that heart of flint? How could she run after pleasure with her ears still full of the echoes of my sobs, her mouth still moist with my entreating kisses? The most wretched women, the most detestable creatures at some time or other call a temporary halt to their life of dissipation and prey; there are moments when they permit the sun to penetrate their chilled hearts, when turning their eyes to heaven they pray for love that pardons and redeems! But Juliette ... never! Something more insensible than fate, something more relentless than death was driving her, was eternally drawing and spurring her on without respite, without pause, from impure to criminal love, from that which dishonors to that which kills! The more days passed, the more marks of infamy debauchery left on her. With her passion, formerly so normal and healthy, were now mingled a depraved inquisitiveness and that savage unsatiableness, that over-stimulation of irrepressible lust which comes as result of excessive and sterile pleasures. Except on the nights when exhaustion invested the sordid reality of her existence with unexpected forms of the purest ideal, one could see upon her the imprints of a thousand different and refined corruptions, of a thousand grotesque perversions practiced upon her by those palled by vice and age. Words and cries often escaped her which suddenly lit up her whole life and opened up vistas of frenzied sensuality, and although she would thereby communicate to me the consuming passion of her depravity, although I myself relished in all this a sort of infernal criminal voluptuousness, I could not look at Juliette without a shudder!... And when leaving her embrace, ashamed and disgusted, I felt the need, often experienced by reprobates, of looking at tranquil, restful sights, and I envied,—oh, with what keen regret!—the superior beings who had made purity and virtue the inflexible laws of their life!... I dreamed of convents where one spent one's life in prayer, of hospitals where one devoted oneself to others.... I was seized with a mad desire to enter the disreputable joints and preach the gospel to the unfortunate people who wallow in vice there, never hearing a single word of kindness; I promised myself to follow the prostitutes at night, into the shadow of public squares, to console them, to speak to them of virtue with such passionate earnestness, in accents so touching that they would be moved, would burst into tears and would say to me: "Yes, save us...." I liked to spend hours in the Monceau park, watching the children play, discovering a paradise of goodness in the glances of young mothers; I was moved to reconstruct their lives so remote from my own; to live through, while near them, their sacred joys forever lost to me.... On Sundays I used to loiter at the railway stations where I mingled with the merry crowds, among petty officials and workingmen leaving town with their families to get a little fresh air for their affected lungs, to gather a little strength to be able to withstand the fatigue of their work during the week. I followed the steps of some laborer whose face interested me; I would have liked to possess his bent back, his deformed hands turned brown through hard work, his stiff walk, his trusting eyes of a house dog.... Alas!... I would have liked to have everything I did not have, to be everybody that I was not! ... These wanderings which rendered the realization of my downfall even more painful, did me some good, however, and I used to come home each time with all sorts of courageous resolutions.... But in the evening I would see Juliette again, and Juliette was to me the oblivion of all honor and all duty.
Above the houses the sky was brightened by a feeble light announcing the approaching dawn, and at the end of the street, in the shadow, I noticed two glaring points, the two lights of a carriage, vacillating, swerving, approaching, which resembled two errant gas lamps.... Hope revived in me for a moment ... the carriage came nearer, dancing on the pavement, the lights grew larger, the rattling quickened.... I thought I recognized the familiar trundling of Juliette's brougham!... But no!... Suddenly the carriage turned to the left and disappeared.... Within an hour it would already be day!
"She won't come!... This time it is all over, she won't come!"
I closed the window, lay down again on the sofa, blood surging in my temples, all my members aching.... In vain I tried to sleep.... I could not do anything but weep, cry out:
"Oh! Juliette! Juliette!"
My chest was burning, I felt the sensation of boiling lava swirling in my head. My thoughts were in confusion, turning into hallucinations. Along the walls of my bedroom weasels were chasing one another, jumping, abandoning themselves to obscene frolics. I was hoping that I would succumb to fever, that it would chain me to my bed, that it would cause my death. To be sick! Ah! ... yes, to be sick, long, forever! I had visions of Juliette installing herself in my room. She nursed me, she lifted my head to make me take medicine, she saw the doctor to the door, while talking to him in a low voice, and the doctor had a grave air.
"No! No! Madame, not all is lost yet. Calm yourself."
"Ah! Doctor, save him, save my Jean!"