But this Juliette whom I loved, was she not altogether different, was she not the Juliette that I had myself created, that had been born of my own imagination, that had originated in my own brains, whom I had endowed with a soul, with a spark of divinity, whom I had fashioned into being with the ideal essence of angels?... And did I not still love her as one does a beautiful book, a beautiful verse, a beautiful statue, a visible and tangible realization of an artist's dream!... But this other Juliette!... This one here?... This pretty, senseless, ignorant animal, this knick-knack, this piece of cloth, this nothing?... I studied her carefully while she was polishing her nails.... Oh, how I would have liked to break this neck and sound its emptiness, to open this heart and probe its nothingness! And I said to myself: "What sort of a life will mine be with this woman whose tastes are only for pleasure, who is happy only when she is dressed up, whose every wish costs a fortune, who in spite of her chaste appearance, has an instinctive predilection for vice; who used to leave unhappy Malterre every evening, without a single regret, without a single thought; who will leave me tomorrow, perhaps; this woman who is a living denial of my aspirations, of my ideals; who will never, never enter into my intellectual life; and lastly this woman who already weighs upon my intelligence like folly, upon my whole being like a crime." I had a notion to flee, to tell Juliette: "I am going out, I'll be back in an hour," and never to return to this house where the very ceiling was more oppressive to me than the lid of a coffin, where the air stifled me, where the very furniture seemed to say to me: "Leave this place" ... But no!... I loved her, and it was this very Juliette that I loved, not the other one who has gone the way of all dreams!... I loved her with all her qualities which made me suffer, I loved her in spite of all her lack of understanding, I loved her with all her frivolity, with all her suspected perversions; I loved her with that tormenting love which a mother has for her afflicted child. Have you ever met a poor creature huddled up behind the door on some wintry day, a wretched human being with chapped lips and chattering teeth, shivering in his tattered rags?... And when you met him, were you not carried away by a feeling of keen pity, and did you not have a desire to take him and warm him against your breast, give him something to eat, cover his shivering body with warm clothes?... That is how I loved Juliette; I loved her with an immense pity ... ah, don't laugh, with a mother's pity, with an endless pity!... "Aren't we going out, my dear? It would be so nice to take a stroll through the Bois." And casting her eyes on the blank sheet of paper on which I had not written a line: