Page:Musset - Gamiani, or Two Passionate Nights.djvu/157

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and of torture, redoubled her attack. She tears through everything, and swims in a bath of blood; but now it is her own turn. Her limbs twist in cramp, the bones, and joints of her fingers crack. I have no longer any doubt that she has swallowed and given a violent poison. Horrified, I rush to their help. I force open the doors in my anger. Alas! Fanny had ceased to breathe. Her arms and legs, clasped in the convulsions of a horrible death are entwined in Gamiani's who was just breathing and gasping in her struggle against death.

I tried to part them.

"Don't you see," a dying voice said, "that the poison is killing me… that my sinews are twisting. Go away… This woman is mine! Ha, ha!"

"Ah, it's terrible!" I cried, beside myself.

GAMIANI

Ah, yes. But I have known all the excesses of sensuality in the torture caused by the poison. If, in the martyrdom of another woman mingled with my own, there was any possible sensuality. It is atrocious! Do you hear! I am dying in the rage of