here openly.
It sat on the chairs, took its place at table, extended itself on the
bed, making use of the various articles of furniture, and of the objects
lying about hither and thither. Laurent could touch nothing, not a fork,
not a brush, without Therese making him feel that Camille had touched it
before him.

The murderer being ceaselessly thrust, so to say, against the man he had
killed, ended by experiencing a strange sensation that very nearly drove
him out of his mind. By being so constantly compared to Camille, by
making use of the different articles Camille had used, he imagined he
was Camille himself, that he was identical with his victim. Then, with
his brain fit to burst, he blew at his wife to make her hold her tongue,
so as to no longer hear the words that drove him frantic. All their
quarrels now ended in blows.

CHAPTER XXX

A time came when Madame Raquin, in order to escape the sufferings she
endured, thought of starving herself to death. She had reached the
end of her courage, she could no longer support the martyrdom that the
presence of the two murderers imposed on her, she longed to find supreme
relief in death. Each day her anguish grew more keen, when Therese
embraced her, and when Laurent took her in his arms to carry her along
like a child. She determined on freeing herself from these clasps
and caresses that caused her such horrible disgust. As she had not
sufficient life left within her to permit of her avenging her son, she
preferred to be entirely dead, and to leave naught in the hands of the
assassins but a corpse that could feel nothing, and with which they
could do as they pleased.

For two days she refused all nourishment, employing her remaining
strength to clench her teeth or to eject anything that Therese succeeded
in introducing into her mouth. Therese was in despair. She was asking
herself at the foot of which post she should go to weep and repent, when
her aunt would be no longer there. She kept up an interminable discourse
to prove to Madame Raquin that she should live. She wept, she even
became angry, bursting into her former fits of rage, opening the jaw of
the paralysed woman as you open that of an animal which resists. Madame
Raquin held out, and an odious scene ensued.

Laurent remained absolutely neutral and indifferent. He was astonished
at the efforts of Therese to prevent the impotent old woman committing
suicide. Now that the presence of the old lady had becom