Little Poems in Prose

past. How many times did I not hold myself back from leaping at her throat and crying, ‘Be imperfect then for once, wretched woman, that I may love you without discomfort and anger.’ For several years I admired her, my heart full of hatred. In the end it was not I who died of it.” “Ah,” said the others, “she died, then?” “Yes, it could not go on like that. Love had become for me a crushing nightmare; to con- quer or die, as the political phrase goes, was the alternative which Fate laid upon me. One evening in a wood by the shore of a mere, af- ter a melancholy walk where her eyes, hers, reflected the softness of heaven, and my heart, mine, shuddered like hell——” “What!” { “How” “What do you mean?” “It was inevitable. My sense of justice is too strong to allow me to beat, insult or dismiss an irreproachable servant; but I had to reconcile this sentiment with the horror with which this being inspired me: to disencumber myself without lacking in respect. What would you that I should do with her, since she was per- fect?” The three other men looked at their com- panion with a vague and slightly stupefied