Chương Chương 16 · 第14章（3）

Renardet, standing up, with his hands behind his back, kept staring with

a stony look at the little body exposed to view on the grass. He

murmured:

"What a wretch! We must find the clothes."

The doctor felt the hands, the arms, the legs. He said:

"She must have been bathing, no doubt. They ought to be at the water's

edge."

The Mayor thereupon gave directions:

"Do you, Princepe" (this was his secretary), "go and look for those

clothes for me along the river. Do you, Maxime" (this was the steward),

"hurry on towards Roug-le-Tors, and bring on here to me the examining

magistrate with the gendarmes. They must be here within an hour. You

understand."

The two men quickly departed, and Renardet said to the doctor:

"What miscreant has been able to do such a deed in this part of the

country."

The doctor murmured:

"Who knows? Everyone is capable of that? Everyone in particular and

nobody in general. No matter, it must be some prowler, some workman out

of employment. As we live under a Republic, we must expect to meet only

this kind of person along the roads."

Both of them were Bonapartists.

The Mayor went on:

"Yes, it can only be a stranger, a passer-by, a vagabond without heart

or home."

The doctor added with the shadow of a smile on his face:

"And without a wife. Having neither a good supper nor a good bed, he

procured the rest for himself. You can't tell how many men there may be

in the world capable of a crime at a given moment. Did you know that

this little girl had disappeared?"

And with the end of his stick he touched one after the other the

stiffened fingers of the corpse, resting on them as on the keys of a

piano.

"Yes, the mother came last night to look for me about nine o'clock, the

child not having come home from supper up to seven. We went to try and

find her along the roads up to midnight, but we did not think of the

wood. However, we needed daylight to carry out a search with a practical

result."

"Will you have a cigar?" said the doctor.

"Thanks, I don't care to smoke. It gives me a turn to look at this."

They both remained standing in front of this corpse of a young girl, so

pale, on the dark moss. A big fly with a blue belly that was walking

along one of the thighs, stopped at the bloodstains, went on again,

always rising higher, ran along the side with his lively, jerky

movements, climbed up one of the breasts, then came back again to

explore the other, looking out for something to drink on this dead girl.

The two men kept watching this wandering black speck.

The doctor said:

"How pretty it is, a fly on the skin! The ladies of the last century

had good reason to paste them on their faces. Why has this fashion gone

out?"

The Mayor seemed not to hear, plunged as he was in deep thought.

But, all of a sudden, he turned round, for he was surprised by a shrill

noise. A woman in a cap and a blue apron rushed up under the trees. It

was the mother, La Roque. As soon as she saw Renardet she began to

shriek:

"My little girl, where's my little girl?" in such a distracted manner

that she did not glance down at the ground. Suddenly, she saw the

corpse, stopped short, clasped her hands, and raised both her arms while

she uttered a sharp, heartrending cry--the cry of a mutilated animal.

Then she rushed towards the body, fell on her knees, and took off, as if

she would have snatched it away, the handkerchief that covered the face.

When she saw that frightful countenance, black and convulsed, she rose

up with a shudder, then pressed her face against the ground, giving vent

to terrible and continuous screams with her mouth close to the thick

moss.

Her tall, thin frame, to which her clothes were clinging tightly, was

palpitating, shaken with convulsions. They could see her bony ankles and

her dried up calves covered with thick blue stockings, shivering

horribly; and she went digging the soil with her crooked fingers as if

in order to make a hole there to hide herself in it.

The doctor moved, said in a low tone:

"Poor old woman!"

Renardet felt a strange rumbling in his stomach; then he gave vent to a

sort of loud sneeze that issued at the same time through his nose and

through his mouth; and, drawing his handkerchief from his pocket, he

began to weep internally, coughing, sobbing, and wiping his face

noisily.

He stammered--

"Damn--damn--damned pig to do this! I would like to see him

guillotined."

But Princepe reappeared, with his hands empty. He murmured--

"I have found nothing, M'sieu le Maire, nothing at all anywhere."

The doctor, scared, replied in a thick voice, drowned in tears:

"What is that you could not find?"

"The little girl's clothes."

"Well--well--look again, and find them--or you'll have to answer to me."

The man, knowing that the Mayor would not brook opposition, set forth

again with hesitating steps, casting on the corpse indirect and timid

glances.

Distant voices arose under the trees, a confused sound, the noise of an

approaching crowd; for Mederic had, in the course of his rounds carried

the news from door to door. The people of the neighborhood, stupefied at

first, had gone chatting from their own firesides into the street, from

one threshold to another. Then they gathered together. They talked over,

discussed, and commented on the event for some minutes, and they had now

come to see it for themselves.

They arrived in groups a little faltering and uneasy through fear of the

first impression of such a scene on their minds. When they saw the body

they stopped, not daring to advance, and speaking low. They grew bold,

went on a few steps, stopped again, advanced once more, and soon they

formed around the dead girl, her mother, the doctor, and Renardet, a

thick circle, agitated and noisy, which crushed forward under the sudden

pushes of the last comers. And now they touched the corpse. Some of them

even bent down to feel it with their fingers. The doctor kept them back.

But the mayor, waking abruptly out of his torpor, broke into a rage,

and, seizing Dr. Labarbe's stick, flung himself on his townspeople,

stammering:

"Clear out--clear out--you pack of brutes--clear out!"

And in a second, the crowd of sightseers had fallen back two hundred

meters.

La Roque was lifted up, turned round, and placed in a sitting posture,

and she now remained weeping with her hands clasped over her face.

The occurrence was discussed among the crowd; and young lads' eager eyes

curiously scrutinized this naked body of a girl. Renardet perceived

this, and abruptly taking off his vest, he flung it over the little

girl, who was entirely lost to view under the wide garment.

The spectators drew near quietly. The wood was filled with people, and a

continuous hum of voices rose up under the tangled foliage of the tall

trees.

The Mayor, in his shirt sleeves, remained standing, with his stick in

his hands, in a fighting attitude. He seemed exasperated by this

curiosity on the part of the people, and kept repeating:

"If one of you come nearer, I'll break his head just as I would a

dog's."

The peasants were greatly afraid of him. They held back. Dr. Labarbe,

who was smoking, sat down beside La Roque, and spoke to her in order to

distract her attention. The old woman soon removed her hands from her

face, and she replied with a flood of tearful words, emptying her grief

in copious talk. She told the whole story of her life, her marriage, the

death of her man, a bullsticker, who had been gored to death, the

infancy of her daughter, her wretched existence as a widow without

resources and with a child to support. She had only this one, her little

Louise, and the child had been killed--killed in this wood. All of a

sudden, she felt anxious to see it again, and dragging herself on her

knees towards the corpse, she raised up one corner of the garment that

covered her; then she let it fall again, and began wailing once more.

The crowd remained silent, eagerly watching all the mother's gestures.

But all of a sudden, a great swaying movement took place, and there was

a cry of "the gendarmes! the gendarmes!"

The gendarmes appeared in the distance, coming on at a rapid trot,

escorting their captain and a little gentleman with red whiskers, who

was bobbing up and down like a monkey on a big white mare.

The steward had just found M. Putoin, the examining magistrate, at the

moment when he was mounting his horse to take his daily ride, for he

posed as a good horseman to the great amusement of the officers.

He alighted along with the captain, and passed the hands of the Mayor

and the Doctor, casting a ferret-like glance on the linen vest which

swelled above the body lying underneath.

When he was thoroughly acquainted with the facts, he first gave orders

to get rid of the public, whom the gendarmes drove out of the wood, but

who soon reappeared in the meadow, and formed a hedge, a big hedge of

excited and moving heads all along the Brindelle, on the other side of

the stream.

The doctor in his turn, gave explanations, of which Renardet took a note

in his memorandum book. All the evidence was given, taken down, and

commented on without leading to any discovery. Maxime, too, came back

without having found any trace of the clothes.

This disappearance surprised everybody; no one could explain it on the

theory of theft, and as these rags were not worth twenty sous, even this

theory was inadmissible.

The examining magistrate, the mayor, the captain, and the doctor, set to

work by searching in pairs, putting aside the smallest branches along

the water.

Renardet said to the judge:

"How does it happen that this wretch has concealed or carried away the

clothes, and has thus left the body exposed in the open air and visible

to everyone?"

The other, sly and knowing, answered:

"Ha! Ha! Perhaps a dodge? This crime has been committed either by a

brute or by a crafty blackguard. In any case we'll easily succeed in

finding him."

The rolling of a vehicle made them turn their heads round. It was the

deputy magistrate, the doctor and the registrar of the court who had

arrived in their turn. They resumed their searches, all chatting in an

animated fashion.

Renardet said suddenly:

"Do you know that I am keeping you to lunch with me?"

Everyone smilingly accepted the invitation, and the examining

magistrate, finding that the case of little Louise Roque was quite

enough to bother about for one day, turned towards the Mayor:

"I can have the body brought to your house, can I not? You have a room

in which you can keep it for me till this evening."

The other got confused, and stammered:

"Yes--no--no. To tell the truth, I prefer that it should not come into

my house on account of--on account of my servants who are already

talking about ghosts in--in my tower, in the Fox's tower. You know--I

could no longer keep a single one. No--I prefer not to have it in my

house."

The magistrate began to smile:

"Good! I am going to get it carried off at once to Roug, for the legal

examination."

Turning towards the door:

"I can make use of your trap can I not?"

"Yes, certainly."

Everybody came back to the place where the corpse lay. La Roque now,

seated beside her daughter, had caught hold of her head, and was staring

right before her, with a wandering listless eye.

The two doctors endeavored to lead her away, so that she might not

witness the dead girl's removal; but she understood at once what they

wanted to do, and, flinging herself on the body, she seized it in both

arms. Lying on top of the corpse, she exclaimed:

"You shall not have it--'tis mine--'tis mine now. They have killed her

on me, and I want to keep her--you shall not have her--!"

All the men, affected and not knowing how to act, remained standing

around her. Renardet fell on his knees, and said to her:

"Listen, La Roque, it is necessary in order to find out who killed her.

Without this, it could not be found out. We must make a search for him

in order to punish him. When we have found him, we'll give her up to

you. I promise you this."

This explanation shook the woman's mind, and a feeling of hatred

manifested itself in her distracted glance.

"So then they'll take him?"

"Yes, I promise you that."

She rose up, deciding to let them do as they liked; but, when the

captain remarked:

"'Tis surprising that her clothes were not found."

A new idea, which she had not previously thought of, abruptly found an

entrance into her brain, and she asked:

"Where are her clothes. They're mine. I want them. Where have they been

put?"

They explained to her that they had not been found. Then she called out

for them with desperate obstinacy and with repeated moans.

"They're mine--I want them. Where are they? I want them!"

The more they tried to calm her the more she sobbed, and persisted in

her demands. She no longer wanted the body, she insisted on having the

clothes, as much perhaps through the unconscious cupidity of a wretched

being to whom a piece of silver represents a fortune, as through

maternal tenderness.

And when the little body rolled up in blankets which had been brought

out from Renardet's house, had disappeared in the vehicle, the old woman

standing under the trees, held up by the Mayor and the Captain,

exclaimed:

"I have nothing, nothing, nothing in the world, not even her little

cap--her little cap."

The cure had just arrived, a young priest already growing stout. He took

it on himself to carry off La Roque, and they went away together towards

the village. The mother's grief was modified under the sugary words of

the clergyman, who promised her a thousand compensations. But she

incessantly kept repeating:

"If I had only her little cap."

Sticking to this idea which now dominated every other.

Renardet exclaimed some distance away:

"You lunch with us, Monsieur l'Abbe--in an hour's time."

The priest turned his head round, and replied:

"With pleasure, Monsieur le Maire. I'll be with you at twelve."

And they all directed their steps towards the house whose gray front and

large tower built on the edge of the Brindelle, could be seen through

the branches.

The meal lasted a long time. They talked about the crime. Everybody was

of the same opinion. It had been committed by some tramp passing there

by mere chance while the little girl was bathing.

Then the magistrates returned to Roug, announcing that they would return

next day at an early hour. The doctor and the cure went to their

respective homes, while Renardet, after a long walk through the meadows,

returned to the wood where he remained walking till nightfall with slow

steps, his hands behind his back.

He went to bed early, and was still asleep next morning when the

examining magistrate entered his room. He rubbed his hands together with

a self-satisfied air. He said:

"Ha! ha! You're still sleeping. Well, my dear fellow, we have news this

morning."

The Mayor sat up on his bed.

"What, pray?"

"Oh! Something strange. You remember well how the mother yesterday

clamored for some memento of her daughter, especially her little cap?

Well, on opening her door this morning, she found on the threshold, her

child's two little wooden shoes. This proves that the crime was

perpetrated by some one from the district, some one who felt pity for

her. Besides, the postman, Mederic comes and brings the thimble, the

knife and the needle case of the dead girl. So then the man in carrying

off the clothes in order to hide them, must have let fall the articles

which were in the pocket. As for me, I attach special importance about

the wooden shoes, as they indicate a certain moral culture and a faculty

for tenderness on the part of the assassin. We will therefore, if I have

no objection, pass in review together the principal inhabitants of your

district."

The Mayor got up. He rang for hot water to shave with, and said:

"With pleasure, but it will take rather a long time, and we may begin at

once."

M. Putoin had sat astride on a chair, thus pursuing even in a room, his

mania for horsemanship.

Renardet now covered his chin with a white lather while he looked at

himself in the glass; then he sharpened his razor on the strop and went

on:

"The principal inhabitant of Carvelin bears the name of Joseph Renardet,

Mayor, a rich landowner, a rough man who beats guards and coachmen--"

The examining magistrate burst out laughing:

"That's enough; let us pass on to the next."

"The second in importance is ill. Pelledent, his deputy, a rearer of

oxen, an equally rich landowner, a crafty peasant, very sly, very

close-fisted on every question of money, but incapable in my opinion, of

having perpetrated such a crime."

M. Putoin said:

"Let us pass on."

Then, while continuing to shave and wash himself, Renardet went on with

the moral inspection of all the inhabitants of Carvelin. After two

hours' discussion, their suspicions were fixed on three individuals who

had hitherto borne a shady reputation--a poacher named Cavalle, a fisher

for trails and crayfish named Paquet, and a bullsticker named Clovis.

* * * * *

PART II

The search for the perpetrator of the crime lasted all the summer, but

he was not discovered. Those who were suspected and those who were

arrested easily proved their innocence, and the authorities were

compelled to abandon the attempt to capture the criminal.

But this murder seemed to have moved the entire country in a singular

fashion. There redisquietude, a vague fear, a sensation of mysterious

terror, springing not merely from the impossibility of discovering any

trace of the assassin, but also and above all from that strange finding

of the wooden shoes in front of La Roque's door on the day after the

crime. The certainty that the murderer had assisted at the

investigation, that he was still living in the village without doubt,

left a gloomy impression on people's minds, and appeared to brood over

the neighborhood like an incessant menace.

The wood besides, had become a dreaded spot, a place to be avoided, and

supposed to be haunted.

Formerly, the inhabitants used to come and sit down on the moss at the

feet of the huge tall trees, or walk along the water's edge watching the

trouts gliding under the green undergrowth. The boys used to play bowls,

hide-and-seek and other games in certain places where they had upturned,

smoothed out, and leveled the soil, and the girls, in rows of four or

five, used to trip along holding one another by the arms, and screaming

out with their shrill voices ballads which grated on the ear, and whose

false notes disturbed the tranquil air and set the teeth on edge like

drops of vinegar. Now nobody went any longer under the wide lofty vault,

as if people were afraid of always finding there some corpse lying on

the ground.

Autumn arrived, the leaves began to fall. They fell down day and night,

descended from the tall trees, round and round whirling to the ground;

and the sky could be seen through the bare branches. Sometimes when a

gust of wind swept over the tree-tops, the slow, continuous rain

suddenly grew heavier, and became a storm with a hoarse roar, which

covered the moss with a thick carpet of yellow water that made rather a

squashing sound under the feet. And the almost imperceptible murmur, the

floating, ceaseless murmur gentle and sad, of this rainfall seemed like

a low wail, and those leaves continually falling, seemed like tears,

big tears shed by the tall mournful trees which were weeping, as it

were, day and night over the close of the year, over the ending of warm

dawns and soft twilights, over the ending of hot breezes and bright

suns, and also perhaps over the crime which they had seen committed

under the shade of their branches, over the girl violated and killed at

their feet. They wept in the silence of the desolate empty wood, the

abandoned, dreaded wood, where the soul, the childish soul of the dead

little girl must be wandering all alone.

The Brindelle, swollen by the storms, rushed on more quickly, yellow and

angry, between its dry banks, between two thin, bare willow-hedges.

And here was Renardet suddenly resuming his walks under the trees. Every

day, at sunset, he came out of his house decended the front steps

slowly, and entered the wood, in a dreamy fashion with his hands in his

pockets. For a long time he paced over the damp soft moss, while a

legion of rooks, rushing to the spot from all the neighboring haunts in

order to rest in the tall summits, unrolled themselves through space,

like an immense mourning veil floating in the wind, uttering violent and

sinister screams. Sometimes, they rested, dotting with black spots the

tangled branches against the red sky, the sky crimsoned with autumn

twilights. Then, all of a sudden, they set again, croaking frightfully

and trailing once more above the wood the long dark festoon of their

flight.

They swooped down at last, on the highest treetops, and gradually their

cawings died away while the advancing night mingled their black plumes

with the blackness of space.

Renardet was still strolling slowly under the trees; then, when the

thick darkness prevented him from walking any longer, he went back to

the house, sank all of a heap into his armchair in front of the glowing

hearth, stretching towards the fire his damp feet from which for some

time under the flames vapor emanated.

Now, one morning, an important bit of news was circulated around the

district; the Mayor was getting his wood cut down.

Twenty woodcutters were already at work. They had commenced at the

corner nearest to the house, and they worked rapidly in the master's

presence.

At first, the loppers climbed up the trunk. Tied to it by a rope collar,

they cling round in the beginning with both arms, then, lifting one leg,

they strike it hard with a blow of the edge of a steel instrument

attached to each foot. The edge penetrates the wood, and remains stuck

in it; and the man rises up as if on a step in order to strike with the

steel attached to the other foot, and once more supports himself till he

lifts his first foot again.

And with every upward movement he raises higher the rope collar which

fastens him to the tree. Over his loins, hangs and glitters the steel

hatchet. He keeps continually clinging on in an easy fashion like a

parasitic creature attacking a giant; he mounts slowly up the immense

trunk, embracing it and spurring it in order to decapitate it.

As soon as he reaches the first branches, he stops, detaches from his

side the sharp ax, and strikes. He strikes slowly, methodically, cutting

the limb close to the trunk, and, all of a sudden, the branch cracks,

gives away, bends, tears itself off, and falls down grazing the

neighboring trees in its fall. Then, it crashes down on the ground with

a great sound of broken wood, and its slighter branches keep quivering

for a long time.

The soil was covered with fragments which other men cut in their turn,

bound in bundles, and piled in heaps, while the trees which were still

left standing seemed like enormous posts, gigantic forms amputated and

shorn by the keen steel of the cutting instruments.

And when the lopper had finished his task, he left at the top of the

straight slender shaft of the tree the rope collar which he had brought

up with him, and afterwards descends again with spurlike prods along the

discrowned trunk, which the woodcutters thereupon attacked at the base,

striking it with great blows which resounded through all the rest of the

wood.

When the foot seemed pierced deeply enough, some men commenced dragging

to the accompaniment of a cry in which they joined harmoniously, at the

rope attached to the top; and, all of a sudden, the immense mast cracked

and tumbled to the earth with the dull sound and shock of a distant

cannon-shot.

And each day the wood grew thinner, losing its trees which fell down one

by one, as an army loses its soldiers.

Renardet no longer walked up and down. He remained from morning till

night, contemplating, motionless, and with his hands behind his back the

slow death of his wood. When a tree fell, he placed his foot on it as if

it were a corpse. Then he raised his eyes to the next with a kind of

secret, calm impatience, as if he had expected, hoped for, something at

the end of this massacre.

Meanwhile, they were approaching the place where little Louise Roque had

been found. At length, they came to it one evening, at the hour of

twilight.

As it was dark, the sky being overcast, the woodcutters wanted to stop

their work, putting off till next day the fall of an enormous

beech-tree, but the master objected to this, and insisted that even at

this hour they should lop and cut down this giant, which had

overshadowed the crime.

When the lopper had laid it bare, had finished its toilets for the

guillotine, when the woodcutters were about to sap its base, five men

commenced hauling at the rope attached to the top.

The tree resisted; its powerful trunk, although notched up to the middle

was as rigid as iron. The workmen, altogether, with a sort of regular

jump, strained at the rope, stooping down to the ground, and they gave

vent to a cry with throats out of breath, so as to indicate and direct

their efforts.

Two woodcutters standing close to the giant, remained with axes in their

grip, like two executioners ready to strike once more, and Renardet,

motionless, with his hand on the bark, awaited the fall with an uneasy,

nervous feeling.

One of the men said to him:

"You're too near, Monsieur le Maire. When it falls, it may hurt you."

He did not reply and did not recoil. He seemed ready himself to catch

the beech-tree in his open arms in order to cast it on the ground like a

wrestler.

All at once, at the foot of the tall column of wood there was a rent

which seemed to run to the top, like a painful shake; and it bent

slightly, ready to fall, but still resisting. The men, in a state of

excitement, stiffened their arms, renewed their efforts with greater

vigor, and, just as the tree, breaking, came crashing down, Renardet

suddenly made forward step, then stopped, his shoulders raised to

receive the irresistible shock, the mortal shock which would crush him

on the earth.

But the beech-tree, having deviated a little, only rubbed against his

loins, throwing him on his face five meters away.

The workmen dashed forward to lift him up. He had already risen to his

knees, stupefied, with wandering eyes, and passing his hand across his

forehead, as if he were awaking out of an attack of madness.

When he had got to his feet once more, the men, astonished, questioned

him, not being able to understand what he had done. He replied, in

faltering tones, that he had had for a moment a fit of abstraction, or

rather a return to the days of his childhood, that he imagined he had to

pass his time under a tree, just as street-boys rush in front of

vehicles driving rapidly past, that he had played at danger, that, for

the past eight days, he felt this desire growing stronger within him,

asking himself whether, every time one was cracking, so as to be on the

point of falling, he could pass beneath it without being touched. It was

a piece of stupidity he confessed; but everyone has these moments of

insanity, and these temptations towards boyish folly.

He made this explanation in a slow tone, searching for his words, and

speaking in a stupefied fashion.

Then, he went off, saying:

"Till to-morrow, my friends--till to-morrow."

As soon as he had got back to his room, he sat down before his table,

which his lamp, covered with a shade, lighted up brightly, and, clasping

his hands over his forehead, he began to cry.

He remained crying for a long time, then wiped his eyes, raised his

head, and looked at the clock. It was not yet six o'clock.

He thought:

"I have time before dinner."

And he went to the door and locked it. He then came back, and sat down

before his table. He pulled out a drawer in the middle of it, and taking

from it a revolver, laid it down over his papers, under the glare of the

sun. The barrel of the fire-arm glittered and cast reflections which

resembled flames.

Renardet gazed at it for some time with the uneasy glance of a drunken

man; then he rose by, and began to pace up and down the room.

He walked from one end of the apartment to the other, and stopped from

time to time, and started to pace up and down again a moment afterwards.

Suddenly, he opened the door of his dressing room, steeped a napkin in a

water-jug and moistened his forehead, as he had done on the morning of

the crime.

Then he went walking up and down once more. Each time he passed the

table the gleaming revolver attracted his glance, tempted his hand; but

he kept watching the clock, and reflected:

"I have still time."

It struck half-past six. Then he took up the revolver, opened his mouth

wide with a frightful grimace, and stuck the barrel into it, as if he

wanted to swallow it. He remained in this position for some seconds

without moving, his finger on the lock, then, suddenly, seized with a

shudder of horror, he dropped the pistol on the carpet.

And he fell back on his arm-chair, sobbing:

"I can't. I dare not! My God! My God! How can I have the courage to kill

myself?"

There was a knock at the door. He rose up in a stupefied condition. A

servant said:

"Monsieur's dinner is ready."

He replied:

"All right. I'm going down."

Then he picked up the revolver, locked it up again in the drawer, then

he looked at himself in the glass over the mantelpiece to see whether

his face did not look too much convulsed. It was as red as usual, a

little redder perhaps. That was all. He went down, and seated himself

before the table.

He ate slowly, like a man who wants to drag on the meal, who does not

want to be alone with himself.

Then he smoked several pipes in the hall while the plates were being

removed. After that, he went back to his room.

As soon as he was shut up in it, he looked under his bed, opened all his

cupboards, explored every corner, rummaged through all the furniture.

Then he lighted the tapers over the mantelpiece, and, turning round

several times, ran his eye all over the apartment with an anguish of

terror that made his face lose its color, for he knew well that he was

going to see her, as on every night--Little Louise Roque, the little

girl he had violated and afterwards strangled.

Every night the odious vision came back again. First, it sounded in his

ears like a kind of snorting such as is made by a threshing machine or

the distant passage of a train over a bridge. Then he commenced to pant,

to feel suffocated, and he had to unbutton his shirt-collar and his

belt. He moved about to make his blood circulate, he tried to read, he

attempted to sing. It was in vain. His thoughts, in spite of himself,

went back to the day of the murder, and made him begin it all over again

in all its most secret details, with all the violent emotions he had

experienced from the first minute to the last.