would become again
human flesh. But that which is called the soul, had been extinguished at
the bottom of the dark well. She suffered no longer. She had changed
her life for that of others yet to be born.

Hours passed away in this silent and sinister communion with the dead. A
pale light at length announced the dawn of a new day, when a bright ray
glistened on the bed, shed a dash of fire on the bed clothes and on her
hands. This was the hour she had so much loved, when the awakened birds
began to sing in the trees.

I opened the window to its fullest extent, I drew back the curtains, so
that the whole heavens might look in upon us, and bending towards the
glassy corpse, I took in my hands the mutilated head; then, slowly,
without terror or disgust, I imprinted a kiss, a long kiss, upon those
lips, which had never before received any.

* * * * *

Leon Chenal remained silent. The women wept. We heard on the box seat
the Count d'Etraille, who blows his nose, from time to time. The
coachman alone had gone to sleep. The horses, which felt no longer the
sting of the whip, had slowed their pace and dragged along softly, and
the brake, hardly advancing at all, became suddenly torpid, as if it had
been charged with sorrow.

FRANCESCA AND CARLOTTA RONDOLI

I

No (said my friend Charles Jouvent), I do not know Italy; I started to
see it thoroughly twice, and each time I was stopped at the frontier and
could not manage to get any further. And yet my two attempts gave me a
charming idea of the manners of that beautiful country. I must, however,
some time or other visit its cities, as well as the museums and works of
art with which it abounds. I will also make another attempt to penetrate
into the interior, which I have not yet succeeded in doing.

You don't understand me, so I will explain myself: In the spring of 1874
I was seized with an irresistible desire to see Venice, Florence, Rome,
and Naples. I am, as you know, not a great traveler; it appears to me a
useless and fatiguing business. Nights spent in a train, the disturbed
slumbers of the railway carriage, with the attendant headache, and
stiffness in every limb, the sudden waking in that rolling box, the
unwashed feeling with your eyes and hair full of dust, the smell of the
coal on which one's lungs feed, those bad dinners in the draughty
refreshment rooms are, according to my ideas, a horrible way of
beginning a pleasure t