Volume I Part 38 (1/2)
Suddenly the whole roof fell in between the walls, and a volcano of flah all the hich opened onto that furnace, I saw the flaht that he was there, in that kiln, dead
Dead? perhaps? His body? Was not his body, which was transparent, indestructible by such means as would kill ours?
If he was not dead? Perhaps ti Why this transparent, unrecognizable body, this body belonging to a spirit, if it also had to fear ills, infirmities and premature destruction?
Pres from that! After man the Horla After him who can die every day, at any hour, at any moment, by any accident, he came as only to die at his own proper hour and minute, because he had touched the limits of his existence!
Nonowithout any doubthe is not dead Thenthen
I suppose I must kill myself!
LOVE
THREE PAGES FROM A SPORTSMAN'S BOOK
I have just read a the General News in one of the papers, a drama of passion He killed her and then he killed himself, so he must have loved her What matter He or She? Their love alone matters to me; and it does not interest me because it moves me or astonishes me, or because it softens me or makes me think, but because it recalls to e recollection of a hunting adventure where Love appeared to me, as the Cross appeared to the early Christians, in the midst of the heavens
I was born with all the instincts and the senses of pris of a civilized being I aht of the bleeding animal, with the blood on its feathers and on my hands, affect my heart so, as almost to make it stop
That year the cold weather set in suddenly towards the end of autumn, and I was invited by one of o with him and shoot ducks on the marshes, at daybreak
My cousin, as a jolly fellow of forty, with red hair, very stout and bearded, a country gentleman, an amiable semi-brute, of a happy disposition and endoith that Gallic hich reeable, lived in a house, half farh which a river ran The hills right and left were covered oods, old seignorial woods where nificent trees still reales were shot there occasionally, and birds of passage, those which rarely come into our over-populated part of the country, almost infallibly stopped amid these branches, which were centuries old, as if they knew or recognized a little corner of a forest of ancient ti their short nocturnal halting place
In the valley there were large es; then, further on the river, which up to that point had been canalized, expanded into a vast round which I ever saasthe nu and rough, narrow passages had been h which the flat-bottomed boats, which were i silently over the dead water, brushed up against the reeds andthe weeds, and the wild fowl dive, whose pointed, black heads disappeared suddenly
I ah it is too vast, too full of movement, impossible to hold, the rivers, which are so beautiful, but which pass on, flee away and go, and above all the marshes, where the whole unknown existence of aquatic animals palpitates The marsh is an entire world to itself on earth, a different world which has its own life, its settled inhabitants and its passing travelers, its voices, its noises, and above all its ,occasionally, than a fen Why should this terror hang over these low plains covered ater? Is it the vague rustling of the rushes, the strange Will-o'-the-wisps, the profound silence which envelops the over the rushes like a shroud; or else it is the ientle, and so than the cannons of men or the thunders of skies, which make these marshes resemble countries which none has dreaerous secret
No, sos to it, another raver floats amid these thick mists, perhaps the nant and muddy water, amid the heavy humidity of erm of life vibrated and expanded to the day?
I arrived at h to split stones
During dinner, in the large roos were covered with stuffed birds, with extended wings or perched on branches to which they were nailed, hawks, herons, owls, nightjars, buzzards, tiercels, vultures, falcons, e animal from a cold country, dressed in a sealskin jacket, told ht
We were to start at half past three in the , so as to arrive at the place which he had chosen for our watching place at about half past four On that spot a hut had been built of lumps of ice, so as to shelter us somewhat from the terrible hich precedes daybreak, that hich is so cold that it tears the flesh as if with a saw, cuts it like the blade of a knife and pricks it like a poisoned sting, twists it like a pair of pincers, and burns it like fire
My cousin rubbed his hands: ”I have never known such a frost,” he said; ”it is already twelve degrees below zero at six o'clock in the evening”
I threw myself onto my bed immediately after we had finished our ht fire burning in the grate
At three o'clock he woke me In my turn, I put on a sheepskin, and I foundeach of us so cups of scalding coffee, followed by glasses of liqueur brandy, we started, accoeon and Pierrot