These sensations that I feel are so new, so imperious, so strongly tenacious, that they do not leave me a minute's rest, and that I remain always under the influence of their stupefying fascination. In vain do I seek to occupy my mind with other thoughts. I try to read and walk in the garden, when my masters are away, and, when they are at home, to work furiously at my mending in the linen-room. Impossible! Joseph has complete possession of my thought. And not only does he possess it in the present, but he possesses it also in the past. Joseph so interposes himself between my entire past and myself that I see, so to speak, nothing but him, and that this past, with all its ugly or charming faces, draws farther and farther from me, fades away, disappears. Cléophas Biscouille; M. Jean; M. Xavier; William, of whom I have not yet spoken; M. Georges, himself, by whom I believed my soul to have been branded forever, as the shoulder of the convict is branded by the red iron; and all those to whom, voluntarily, joyously, passionately, I have given a little or much of myself, of my vibrant flesh and of my sorrowful heart,--all of them shadows already! Uncertain and ludicrous shadows that fade away until they are hardly recollections, and then become confused dreams ... intangible, forgotten realities ... vapors ... nothing. Sometimes, in the kitchen, after dinner, when looking at Joseph and his criminal mouth, and his criminal eyes, and his heavy cheek-bones, and his low, knotty, humpy forehead, upon which the lamplight accumulates hard shadows, I say to myself: "No, no, it is not possible. I am under the influence of a fit of madness; I will not, I cannot, love this man. No, no, it is not possible." And yet it is possible, and it is true. And I must at last confess it to myself, cry out to myself: "I love Joseph!" Ah! now I understand why one should never make sport of love; why there are women who rush, with all the consciencelessness of murder, with all the invincible force of nature, to the kisses of brutes and to the embraces of monsters, and who voluptuously sound the death-rattle in the sneering faces of demons and bucks. Joseph has obtained from Madame six days' leave of absence, and to-morrow he is to start for Cherbourg, pretending to be called by family matters. It is decided; he will buy the little café. But for some months he will not run it himself. He has some one there, a trusted friend, who is to take charge of it. "Do you understand?" he says to me. "It must first be repainted, and made to look like new; it must be very fine, with its new sign, in gilt letters: 'To the French Army!' And besides, I cannot leave my place yet. That I cannot do." "Why not, Joseph?" "Because I cannot now." "But when will you go, for good?" Joseph scratches his neck, gives me a sly glance, and says: "As to that I do not know. Perhaps not for six months yet; perhaps sooner; perhaps even later. I cannot tell. It depends."