sensations. No doubt a strange phenomenon had been
accomplished in the organism of the murderer of Camille. It is difficult
for analysis to penetrate to such depths. Laurent had, perhaps, become
an artist as he had become afraid, after the great disorder that had
upset his frame and mind.

Previously, he had been half choked by the fulness of his blood, blinded
by the thick vapour of breath surrounding him. At present, grown
thin, and always shuddering, his manner had become anxious, while he
experienced the lively and poignant sensations of a man of nervous
temperament. In the life of terror that he led, his mind had grown
delirious, ascending to the ecstasy of genius. The sort of moral malady,
the neurosis wherewith all his being was agitated, had developed an
artistic feeling of peculiar lucidity. Since he had killed, his frame
seemed lightened, his distracted mind appeared to him immense; and, in
this abrupt expansion of his thoughts, he perceived exquisite creations,
the reveries of a poet passing before his eyes. It was thus that his
gestures had suddenly become elegant, that his works were beautiful, and
were all at once rendered true to nature, and life-like.

The friend did not seek further to fathom the mystery attending this
birth of the artist. He went off carrying his astonishment along with
him. But before he left, he again gazed at the canvases and said to
Laurent:

"I have only one thing to reproach you with: all these studies have
a family likeness. The five heads resemble each other. The women,
themselves, have a peculiarly violent bearing that gives them the
appearance of men in disguise. You will understand that if you desire
to make a picture out of these studies, you must change some of the
physiognomies; your personages cannot all be brothers, or brothers and
sisters, it would excite hilarity."

He left the studio, and on the landing merrily added:

"Really, my dear boy, I am very pleased to have seen you. Henceforth, I
shall believe in miracles. Good heavens! How highly respectable you do
look!"

As he went downstairs, Laurent returned to the studio, feeling very much
upset. When his friend had remarked that all his studies of heads bore
a family likeness, he had abruptly turned round to conceal his paleness.
The fact was that he had already been struck by this fatal resemblance.
Slowly entering the room, he placed himself before the pictures, and
as he contemplated them, as he passed fro