"And—she?" I asked timidly.
He smiled triumphantly. It was triumph at having led me to think no longer of Morhange, or of his crime, the triumph of feeling that he had succeeded in imbuing me with his own madness.
"
Yes," he said. "She! For six years I have learned nothing more about her. But I see her, I talk with her. I am thinking now how I shall reenter her presence. I shall throw myself at her feet and say simply, 'Forgive me. I rebelled against your law. I did not know. But now I know; and you see that, like Lieutenant Ghiberti, I have come back.'
"'Family, honor, country,' said old Le Mesge, 'you will forget all for her.' Old Le Mesge is a stupid man, but he speaks from experience. He knows, he who has seen broken before Antinea the wills of the fifty ghosts in the red marble hall.
"And now, will you, in your turn, ask me 'What is this woman?' Do I know myself? And besides, what difference does it make? What does her past and the mystery of her origin matter to me; what does it matter whether she is the true descendant of the god of the sea and the sublime Lagides or the bastard of a Polish drunkard and a harlot of the Marbeuf quarter?
"At the time when I was foolish enough to be jealous of Morhange, these questions might have made some difference to the ridiculous self-esteem that civilized people mix up with passion. But I have held Antinea's body in my arms. I no longer wish to know any other, nor if the fields are in blossom, nor what will become of the human spirit....
"I do not wish to know. Or, rather, it is because I have too exact a vision of that future, that I pretend to destroy myself in the only destiny that is worth while: a nature unfathomed and virgin, a mysterious love.
"A nature unfathomed and virgin. I must explain myself. One winter day, in a large city all streaked with the soot that falls from black chimneys of factories and of those horrible houses in the suburbs, I attended a funeral.
"We followed the hearse in the mud. The church was new, damp and poor. Aside from two or three people, relatives struck down by a dull sorrow, everyone had just one idea: to find some pretext to get away. Those who went as far as the cemetery were those who did not find an excuse. I see the gray walls and the cypresses, those trees of sun and shade, so beautiful in the country of southern France against the low purple hills. I see the horrible undertaker's