that!'

But by degrees the whole statue was becoming animated. The loins swayed
and the bosom swelled, as with a deep sigh, between the parted arms. And
suddenly the head drooped, the thighs bent, and the figure came forward
like a living being, with all the wild anguish, the grief-inspired
spring of a woman who is flinging herself down.

Claude at last understood things, when Mahoudeau uttered a terrible cry.
'By heavens, she's breaking to pieces!--she is coming down!'

The clay, in thawing, had snapped the weak wooden trusses. There came a
cracking noise, as if bones indeed were splitting; and Mahoudeau, with
the same passionate gesture with which he had caressed the figure from
afar, working himself into a fever, opened both arms, at the risk of
being killed by the fall. For a moment the bathing girl swayed to and
fro, and then with one crash came down on her face, broken in twain at
the ankles, and leaving her feet sticking to the boards.

Claude had jumped up to hold his friend back.

'Dash it! you'll be smashed!' he cried.

But dreading to see her finish herself off on the floor, Mahoudeau
remained with hands outstretched. And the girl seemed to fling herself
on his neck. He caught her in his arms, winding them tightly around her.
Her bosom was flattened against his shoulder and her thighs beat against
his own, while her decapitated head rolled upon the floor. The shock was
so violent that Mahoudeau was carried off his legs and thrown over, as
far back as the wall; and there, without relaxing his hold on the girl's
trunk, he remained as if stunned lying beside her.

'Ah! confound it!' repeated Claude, furiously, believing that his friend
was dead.

With great difficulty Mahoudeau rose to his knees, and burst into
violent sobs. He had only damaged his face in the fall. Some blood
dribbled down one of his cheeks, mingling with his tears.

'Ah! curse poverty!' he said. 'It's enough to make a fellow drown
himself not to be able to buy a couple of rods! And there she is, there
she is!'

His sobs grew louder; they became an agonising wail; the painful
shrieking of a lover before the mutilated corpse of his affections. With
unsteady hands he touched the limbs lying in confusion around him; the
head, the torso, the arms that had snapped in twain; above aught else
the bosom, now caved in. That bosom, flattened, as if it had been
operated upon for some terrible disease, suffocated him, and he
unceasingly retur