At the expiration of half an hour, the flames of the candles paled and spread out, the chamber grew red in every part, a dim and vacillating red. My reason, which had been wavering, was strengthened in a strange fashion; it had acquired a frightful lucidity. I was intoxicated; I must have had upon my countenance the stupid mask and idiotic smile of drunkards; but, within me, in the depths of my intelligence, I felt myself calm and sensible, I reasoned in full liberty. It was a terrible species of drunkenness; I suffered from the weakening of my body, which was greatly overcome, and from the vigor of my mind, which saw and judged. Amid the clatter of glasses and forks, I looked at the women and Jacques, who were laughing and chatting among themselves. Their visages and their words came to me sharply and clearly, producing a sensation painful in its sharpness and penetration. My love was still in me, troubling and transforming my being; but the man of other days, the philosophical reasoner, had been again awakened. I took delight in my intoxication and in Laurence, at the same time thoroughly comprehending the nature of these two disgraces. Jacques was seated at my left; I know not if he had succeeded in intoxicating himself; however, he feigned to be under the influence of liquor. Seated opposite to me were the three women, Marie on my right, then Pâquerette, then Laurence, who was on Jacques' left. My looks were fixed upon these women, who seemed to me to possess new visages and tones of voice. I had not seen Marie since the day I had found her upon the sofa, white and languishing. Then, she looked like a young girl in the last stage of consumption. Now, her flaxen locks hanging loosely, her face flushed with excitement, her cheeks tinged with a pale violet, she agitated her bare arms with the fever of an ignorant child who is marching to her first delight. I was bewildered by the brightness of her youthful countenance. I cannot describe the painful sensation produced in me by this creature, who had thrown off her agony to laugh and drink, to try to enjoy the delicious anguish of that life which she had unconsciously lived in her childish innocence. As I stared at her, quivering and with her hair thus dishevelled, her eyes flashing and her lips humid, it seemed to me, in the bewilderment of my intoxication, that I was gazing upon some expiring creature, who, on her death bed, suddenly hears the voice of her senses and her heart, and who, hesitating, not knowing what to do at that supreme moment, nevertheless does not wish to die before having satisfied her vague longings.