"Juliette! Juliette!"
At last Juliette moves her head, heaves a sigh and murmurs, as if in a dream:
"Jean!. . . My Jean!"
Forcefully I grasp her into my arms as if to defend her against some one; I draw her toward me and trembling, with my blood running cold, I beg her:
"Juliette! . . . My own Juliette. . . don't sleep. . . Oh, please don't sleep! . . . You frighten me! . . Let me see your eyes; talk to me, talk to me! . . . And pinch me, pinch yourself, too, pinch me hard. . . . But don't sleep any more, please. . . ."
She cuddles into my arms, whispers some unintelligible words and falls asleep again, her head hanging on my shoulder. . . . But the apparition of death, stronger than the awakening of love, persists, and although I feel the regular beating of Juliette's heart against my own, it does not vanish until day.
How often since that time, when with her, I have felt the frigid touch of death in her fiery kisses! . . . And how often in the midst of rapture there appeared to me the sudden and capering image of the singer at the Bouffes! . . . How many times did his lustful laugh drown the ardent words of Juliette! . . . How often I have heard him say to me, while his image kept leaping above me: "Go ahead, glut yourself upon this imbecile body, upon this unclean body which I defiled! . . . Go on! . . . Go on! . . . wherever you touch your lips you will breathe the impure odor of my own; wherever your caresses may wander upon this body of a prostitute they will encounter the filthy marks of my own manhandling. . . . Go ahead, wash her, your Juliette, wash her in the lustral water of your love, cleanse her with the acid of your mouth. . . Strip off her skin with your teeth, if you will; you will
