ear
pervaded them also! The birds awoke; a dog began to howl, and it seemed
to me as if the day were breaking! Almost immediately two other windows
flew into fragments, and I saw that the whole of the lower part of my
house was nothing but a terrible furnace. But a cry, a horrible, shrill,
heartrending cry, a woman's cry, sounded through the night, and two
garret windows were opened! I had forgotten the servants! I saw the
terror-struck faces, and their frantically waving arms!...

Then, overwhelmed with horror, I set off to run to the village,
shouting: "Help! help! fire! fire!" I met some people who were already
coming onto the scene, and I went back with them to see!

By this time the house was nothing but a horrible and a magnificent
funeral pile, a monstrous funeral pile which lit up the whole country, a
funeral pile where men were burning, and where he was burning also, He,
He, my prisoner, that new Being, the new master, the Horla!

Suddenly the whole roof fell in between the walls, and a volcano of
flames darted up to the sky. Through all the windows which opened onto
that furnace, I saw the flames darting, and I thought that he was there,
in that kiln, dead.

Dead? perhaps?... His body? Was not his body, which was transparent,
indestructible by such means as would kill ours?

If he was not dead?... Perhaps time alone has power over that Invisible
and Redoubtable Being. Why this transparent, unrecognizable body, this
body belonging to a spirit, if it also had to fear ills, infirmities and
premature destruction?

Premature destruction? All human terror springs from that! After man the
Horla. After him who can die every day, at any hour, at any moment, by
any accident, he came who was only to die at his own proper hour and
minute, because he had touched the limits of his existence!

No ... no ... without any doubt ... he is not dead.... Then ... then ...
I suppose I must kill myself!...

LOVE

THREE PAGES FROM A SPORTSMAN'S BOOK

I have just read among the General News in one of the papers, a drama of
passion. He killed her and then he killed himself, so he must have loved
her. What matter He or She? Their love alone matters to me; and it does
not interest me because it moves me or astonishes me, or because it
softens me or makes me think, but because it recalls to my mind a
remembrance of my youth, a strange recollection of a hunting adventure
where Love appeared to me, as the Cross appeared t