breakfasted on the remains of a bird, or a wedge of cold spiced meat, or even on a bunch of grapes and a crust of bread rubbed with garlic: his only decent meal in the day. He threw some bits to Flambeau and Diane whose jaws were chattering. The mist had the smell of Autumn. It was the hour when Bernard was no longer in pain, when he felt his all-powerful youth once more within him. The pigeons would soon be coming over: it was time to see about the decoy-birds, and take their eyes out. At eleven o’clock he found Thérèse still in bed. “Well: and the Azévédo boy? You know my mother is waiting for news at Biarritz, at the Poste Restante.” “And your heart?” “Don’t talk about my heart. You’ve only got to start talking about it and I begin to feel it again. That shows it’s nervous: don’t you think so?” She never gave him the answer he wanted. “You never know: you alone can say what you feel like. There’s no reason because your father died of angina pectoris ... especially at your age.... Evidently the heart is the weak point of the Desqueyroux family. How absurd you are, Bernard, with your fear of death! Don’t you ever feel as I do, profoundly convinced of your own uselessness? No? Don’t you think that the life of people like us is already terribly like death?” He shrugged his shoulders: her paradoxes were really too tiresome. It is easy enough to be witty, he said: you have only to say exactly the opposite to what is sensible. But she was wrong to waste her efforts on him: she had better save herself for her interview with young Azévédo. “You know he is going to leave Vilméja about the middle of October?” * * * * * At Villandraut, the station before Saint Clair, Thérèse thought: “How shall I persuade Bernard that I was never in love with that young man? He will certainly believe I adored him. Like every one who knows nothing about love, he imagines that a crime like mine could only be a crime of passion.”