Page:Calvary mirbeau.djvu/236

230 frenzies I purposely choose holy and hallowed places, altars in churches, tombs at the cemeteries. I no longer suffer in my soul; I suffer only in my flesh. My soul died in Juliette's last kiss, and now I am nothing but a form of foul, sensuous flesh, into which demons have been furiously at work pouring streams of molten, seething metal. Oh! I could never have forseen such castigation!

The other day I met a fisherwoman on the strand. She was black, dirty, foul-smelling, like a heap of putrified sea wrack. I made advances to her with silly gestures. And suddenly I fled, for I felt a diabolic temptation to rush upon her and throw her down amid the pebbles and small pools of water. I roamed and tramped across the country with dilated nostrils, taking in, like a harrier, the odor of sex. . . . One night, with burning throat, driven mad by abominable visions, I found my way into the crooked alleys of the village and rapped at the door of a loose woman. And I went into this den. But as soon as I felt the unknown contact I uttered a cry of rage; I wanted to leave; she held me back.

"Let me go!" I shouted.

"Why are you going away?"

"Let me go!"

"Stay here. I'll love you. I often followed you on the beach. I often roamed about the house where you are staying. I wanted you. Stay here!"

"Let me go, I tell you! You don't know how disgusting you are to me!"

And when she hung on my neck, I struck her. She groaned.

"Ah! My God! He is mad!"

Mad! Yes, I am mad! I have looked at myself in the mirror and I am afraid of my own image. My distended eyes shine from the midst of their orbits which