Story of the Month

I loved her madly.

Why does a man love? Why does a man love? How strange it is that one comes to see but a single creature in the world, that his mind holds but a single thought, his heart but a single desire, and his lips but a single name — a name that rises constantly, welling up like spring water from the depths of the soul to the lips, a name one repeats over and over, murmuring it without ceasing, everywhere, like a prayer and a supplication.

I want to tell you our story, for love has only one story, ever the same.

I met her, and I lived on her gentleness, on her caresses; I lived in her arms and in her dresses; I lived on every word she uttered. I was so wrapped up, so bound, so absorbed in everything that touched her that I no longer cared whether it was day or night, whether I was alive or dead, upon this old earth of ours.

Then death came suddenly upon her. How did she die? I do not know. I came to know nothing at all. But I know that she came home wet one evening, for the rain was heavy; the next day she began to cough, and she went on coughing a whole week and took to her bed. What happened? I do not remember. But doctors would come, write something, and go away. Medicines were brought, and some women made her drink them. How hot her hands were, how burning her forehead, how bright and sad her eyes! Whenever I spoke to her she

answered me, but I do not remember what we said. I have forgotten everything — everything, everything... She died, and I remember quite clearly her faint, feeble sigh. The nurse said: "Ah!" — and I understood,

Yes, I understood!

But beyond that I knew nothing, nothing. I saw a priest who said to me: "Your mistress?" — and it seemed to me that he was insulting her. Since she was dead, no one had the right to say that of her any longer, and I drove him away. Another priest came who was kind and gentle, and I shed tears when he began to speak to me of her.

They consulted me about the funeral, but I remember nothing of what they said, though I remember her coffin, and the sound of the hammer when they nailed the coffin shut upon her. Oh! my God, my God!

And she was buried — buried. And she was in that pit! Some people came to see me — lady friends. I resolved on escape; I fled. I fled, rushing through the streets; I returned home, and the next day I set out on a journey.

Then yesterday I returned to Paris; and when I saw our room again for the second time — when I saw our room, our bed, our furniture, everything that remains of the life of a human being after death — a new and violent grief fell upon me, so that I was on the point of opening the window and throwing myself from it into the street. I could not stay among these things, between these walls that had enclosed and sheltered her, that kept in their hidden crevices a thousand atoms of the departed beloved, of her skin and her breath. I picked up my hat to escape. But I had not reached the door before I passed the great mirror in the hall, which she had set up in that spot so that she might look at herself from the crown of her head to the sole of her foot every day as she went out, and see whether her toilette, from her little boots to her hat, was faultless

and pretty.

And I stopped short before that glass which had reflected her image time after time — and I reckon the mirror must have kept her image. I stood there trembling, my eyes fixed upon the mirror, upon that flat, deep, empty glass which had contained her wholly and pos-sessed her wholly, as I and my yearning glances had contained and possessed her. I felt as if I were in love with that glass. I touched it — it was cold. Oh, memory! And oh, the dense, burning, terrifying mirror that torments people with such torment! Happy is the man whose heart forgets everything it has held, everything that has passed through it, everything that has looked at itself in that heart and read its image in its tenderness and its love. Oh! how I suffer!

And I rushed outside without knowing it, without any wish to go out, and made my way to the cemetery. I found her simple tomb; I saw a white marble cross, and I read these words:

"She loved, was loved, and died."

She is here, beneath the earth, decaying. How dreadful the picture! I sobbed, my forehead pressed against the ground, and I stayed where I was a long, long time. Then I saw the darkness gathering and thickening. And a strange, mad desire took possession of me, the desire of a wretched lover: I wished to spend the night, one last night, weeping upon her grave. But I should be seen in that place and driven out. What was to be done? The stratagem did not fail me: I rose and began to