“I have never lived more intensely; but I was as incapable of reflection as a Newfoundland dog, I suppose, when he jumps into the water. I can’t even understand now what happened; I only know that I had noticed a little girl in the boat--a darling thing of about five or six; and when I saw the boat overturn, I immediately made up my mind that it was her I would save. She was with her mother, but the poor woman was a bad swimmer; and as usual in such cases, her skirts hampered her. As for me, I expect I undressed mechanically; I was called to take my place in the second boatload. I must have got in; and then I no doubt jumped straight into the sea out of the boat; all I can remember is swimming about for a long time with the child clinging to my neck. It was terrified and clutched me so tight that I couldn’t breathe. Luckily the people in the boat saw us and either waited for us or rowed towards us. But that’s not why I’m telling you this story. The recollection which remains most vividly with me and which nothing will ever efface from my mind and my heart is this.--There were about forty or so of us in the boat, all crowded together, for a number of swimmers had been picked up at the last gasp like me. The water was almost on a level with the edge of the boat. I was in the stern and I was holding the little girl I had just saved tightly pressed against me to warm her--and to prevent her from seeing what I couldn’t help seeing myself--two sailors, one armed with a hatchet and the other with a kitchen chopper. And what do you think they were doing?... They were hacking off the fingers and hands of the swimmers who were trying to get into our boat. One of these two sailors (the other was a Negro) turned to me, as I sat there, my teeth chattering with cold and fright and horror, and said, ‘If another single one gets in we shall be bloody well done for. The boat’s full.’ And he added that it was a thing that had to be done in all shipwrecks, but that naturally one didn’t mention it. “I think I fainted then; at any rate, I can’t remember anything more, just as one remains deaf for a long time after a noise that has been too tremendous. “And when I came to myself on board the X., which picked us up, I realized that I was no longer the same, that I never could again be the same sentimental young girl I had been before; I realized that a part of myself had gone down with the _Bourgogne_; that henceforth there would be a whole heap of delicate feelings whose fingers and hands I should hack away to prevent them from climbing into my heart and wrecking it.” She looked at Vincent out of the corner of her eye and, with a backward twist of her body, went on: “It’s a habit one must get into.” Then, as her hair, which she had pinned up loosely, was coming down and falling over her shoulders, she rose, went up to a mirror and began to re-arrange it, talking as she did so: