Little Poems in Prose

and she wished to keep it as a relic at once horrible and dear—and she took possession of the nail and the cord. At last, at last, all was over. There was nothing more to do but to go back to work even more eagerly than was my custom, so as to drive away, little by little, this tiny corpse which haunted the halls of my brain, and whose phantom with its great fixed eyes wore me out. But the next day I received a packet of letters, some from the tenants in my own house, some from next door; one from the first floor, another from the second, another from the third, and so on; some of them written in a half-jesting style as if seeking to disguise un- der the cloak of frivolity the sincerity of their request; others dully shameless and misspelt, but all of the same purport, namely, to obtain from me a piece of the fatal, the happiness- conferring cord. Among the signatories there were, I must say, more women than men, but not all, you may believe it, belonged to the lowest class or even to the vulgar. I have kept these letters. And then, of a sudden, light broke in my brain; I understood why the mother was so anxious to take away the cord, and by what commerce she proposed to console herself.