Page:Calvary mirbeau.djvu/200

194 or plunge into the Seine. I don't know! . . . Day came. . . . I had a notion to surrender to the police. I wanted to go up to a policeman on the street and say to him: 'I have killed Juliette. . . . Arrest me!' But thoughts, each wilder than the other, came to my mind, clashed and yielded to others. And I ran and ran as if pursued by a pack of barking hounds. . . . It was Sunday, I remember. There were many people on the streets flooded with sunshine. I was sure that all looked at me, that these people, seeing me run, cried out in horror: 'Here is Juliette's murderer!'

"Toward evening, worn out, on the verge of collapsing on the sidewalk, I met Jesselin! 'I say,' he exclaimed, 'you have done a nice thing, you have!' 'Do you already know it?' ’Why, all Paris knows it, dear friend. A little while ago, at the races, Juliette showed us her neck and the marks which your fingers had left on it. She said: "Jean did this to me." Why, man you are getting on fine!' And while parting, he added: 'For the rest, she has never been more beautiful. And such a success!' And so you see that while I believed her to be dead, she was promenading at the racetrack. I had left the house and she could have thought that I would never come back again, and yet she went to the races. . . prettier than ever!"

Lirat gravely listened to me. He was not pacing about any more; he seated himself and shook his head.

"What do you want me to tell you? You must go away."

"Go away?" I rejoined. "I should go away? But I don't want to! An adhesive force like glue which is getting thicker every day holds me fast to her carpets, a chain growing heavier every day holds me riveted to her walls. I can't leave her! Look, at this very moment I am dreaming of committing all sorts of mad, heroic acts. To cleanse myself of all this